How to Begin Tips
Starter Base
Build a 3×3 greenhouse, in an orientation so there is always sun light for your plants during day. This means the airlocks needs to be in the south or north side of your base. Place your starter solar pannel over the airlock frame, conected to your APC’s for early energy. Keep your coal generator around for emergencies.
On Moon, Mars, Mimas or Europa this starter base will work…on Venus or Vulcan you need a totally different starter base, so don’t try a 3×3 there if you want to se the next sunrise.
Build airlock with manual hatch doors, don’t bother with automatic airlocks early, they need energy and you are still not there. On Mars or the Moon it’s not big problem, On Venus or Vulcan use manual doors or you die. If the starter kit only has one active vent you place some pipes to the exterior and some to the interior, with some size so you can store enough gas inside before you build the pipe bender and get all the vents you need. Then you use your only active vent swapping it between both pipe lines to do a manual handling of the airlock cycles.
Now, on the Moon, open your oxygen tank inside the closed room to 25-30KPa and soon you will have a breathable atmosphere and can drink and eat inside. On Mars close the base in daytime so you get some Nitrogen and CO2 at 20ºC, open the Oxygen tank here too, and get rid of the pollutants with a portable scrubber.
Mine some iron, copper and gold and smelt it in your Arc Furnace outside the base. Build a pipe bender, get the active and pasive vents to finish properly the airlock, craft a pollutants filter for your scrubber, build the electronics printer, a couple basic solars more to get energy, facing the morning and evening angles. If you cycle with your middle mouse you will see that the basic pannel kits has two different shapes.
Build an ice crusher to get water and Nitrogen for your propellent. Start an initial hydroponics system with a couple of potatoes for food and a heap of ferns for oxygen. You will need a system to get CO2 for the plants or they will die.
Build the Furnace and get steel asap. With it you can build some very important things: station battery to store more energy and more efficiently, solar pannels (these ones support automatization), etc.
This is the starter base, with all the basics on track you can develope more sofisticated things without an imminent death on the horizon.
As a noob I would suggest creating a ‘playtest file’ set it to creative with ‘easy’ setting. I have done this because I havent played in 2 years and kept failing.
My current ‘playtest file’ has a 3 by 2 greenhouse with everything I would want (but not need) in it. The walls by the way are on the 2 side. Although given how the airlock works might as well make it 3×3 to be frank.
Moon:
small water filler set up with crusher outside.
wall cooler
wall heater (using Co2 from tank outside)
Table with microwave
locker for food
gas sensor with consoles outside to see temp and pressure.
active vent in, active vent out.
In is to pump Co2 in
out will link up with my atmospherics
I think a 3×3 one could grow all the food and plants they would want for a long time.
Given the Phase changes do NOT use POL for cooling until you get a solid understanding of Phase changes which for me has taken about 2 full working days. I am currently working on a text file that explains it all (well mostly) in terms us Atmo dummies can understand. I will post it later today and hope its right.
oh and the new mini tanks (I forget the actual in game name) is perfect for a water holding tank inside.