What is the meta things to do at start of game?

[TPTI]

What is the meta things to do at start of game?

eg

I hunted animal but didn't know what else to do

Many thanks

[The Yeen Queen]

A lot is going to be influenced by your colonists' skills, the scenario conditions ( What resources, equipment, and research you start with ), and the map you start on. But, generally top priority is a basic shelter ( On big "barracks" with multiple beds to start with. Just want them in out of the weather ) and building to store stuff indoors to reduce deterioration ( Just mark out the stockpile zone first so everything gets moved there then build a building around it ), designate a farming zone to grow food, then a basic power grid if you have the tech.

If your scenario starts you without food ( like Naked Brutality ), might be good to put foraging a couple meals worth of food before even the shelter.

From there you can start focusing on a workshop, cooler to keep your perishable foods from rotting, research lab, a rec room, individual bedrooms, and so on in whatever order suits your goals. Once you have the basics down, I'd say there's really no right or wrong order to pursue the rest. Don't neglect defenses as you build up, as raids could become a problem if you're not prepared to fight them off.

[TPTI]

Many thanks

[Veylox]

1) Build a big living room, you can put your beds in there for a while, a table with chairs too.
2) Grow crops (usually rice), make a butcher's table, set a bill to always butcher dead animals, and make a cooking table with simple meals and fine meals on higher priority (if you have a good enough cook for fine)
3) Have an early form of defense that you know is gonna work, best bet is to force the enemy through a single entrypoint and deal with him there with melee blockers, on lower difficulties you can do it hands-free using wood traps instead, as long as there are less than 5 raiders it'll cripple them.
4) If you don't like juggling with items going bad early on, pick a power source, research it, and build a fridge. It's usually either geothermal or toxifiers for me. Geothermals is a no-brainer if you have good access to vents, but takes slightly longer to research. Toxifiers in every other scenario, much easier to get and place but it's higher maintenance.
5) Look at the negative mood modifiers in your colonists and fix that, while improving your defenses bit by bit.

You're gonna want to build hoops or a chess board early on but the game's gonna tell you that anyway

As long as you have food, cooling, raids and mood sorted, you're good to last forever and can focus on less important stuff.

[nosedigger]

Just to add, the main difference between Space colonists and Tribe is Research. Since there are 3 colonists, research is not crucial, so focus on building, mining (electricity and production benches need steel) and crops.
However, the Tribe starts with 5, and you do not have a lot of crucial technology.

So for Tribe, start with 11x11 room, put in each corner:
1. sleeping spots
2. research table
3. stockpile
4. table with 4 stools

Try to build the room asap, mine 2 chunks for steel, and build Research station, starting with Complex furniture. You need beds, chairs and other furniture, because comfort can boost early mood, since there are not too much pleasure around. Afterwards clothing, tools, electricity, cooling. Once you have refrigerator for storing meals, meat and crops, you can start breathing again :D

As for food, on the first day, Planter would first chop woods for building and then start on rice field. Try to grow it on rich soil, and you will have initial vegetable source very soon.
At the same time, plant Cotton field, and it should be at least twice the size of rice, because you will need clothes, for protection and for temperature.

Hunting is ok, but you can run out of animals to hunt very soon, considering you need to feed 5 Tribesmen and their pets. So I prefer to have Animal specialist, who can tame early on Yaks for milk, Alpacas for wool/selling, donkeys for transport and if you are really lucky, stallions to get those caravans going.

[nazerick]

I just wanted to add it's best to pause the game and take a good long look at your map.

You want to check for any dangerous animals/insects, possible ancient dangers, and any good defensible areas to set up your base. Hunting for food is fine if your pawns can't grow well enough in the beginning.

For everything else the advice above works great.

[Edmund Greyfox]

Lots of good advice here.

I normally have a set pattern for the first week or so.

Day 1, build a single 5x6 room with beds for my colonists with half the room being storage, get a 7x6 field of rice or potatoes growing, haul everything that landed with me to storage, and cut some more wood.

Day 2. Build a couple more wooden rooms so my colonist each have their own, get a research bench and stone cutter built, and add a small field of heal root and another of cotton (need 8 growing to plant heal root though). Start researching batteries and cutting stone.

Day 3. Cut stone, research. Decide where I'm going to set up my kitchen and freezer, then cut down all the trees in that area.

Day 4. Start converting rooms to stone walls and put up a small wooden room w/bed in case i get an early prisoner.

Day 5. Finish converting existing rooms to stone walls, build my freezer and hopefully have enough stone ready to also build the kitchen. Add a bill for a second kind of stone block to use for tile floors (I normally use the "make until you have X" setting, with 250 being what i want of each on hand).

Day 6-7. Finish building kitchen, finish researching batteries, build battery/windmill, and complete setting up my freezer. If you planted rice you should also get your first harvest about this point. Hunt something for meat, and set up cooking bills so i always have 10 of each fine meal/simple meal in the freezer. Start installing floors as tile blocks become available.

[Steelfleece]

table, chairs.

[Ivarukฅ(^•ᴥ•^)ฅﾉ彡]

i'll chime in here that i really value Hospital beds and medicine production, so you don't have people die to a disease for not having industrial medicine or having a bad hospital area. it hit me like a truck when i realized jungle biomes don't spawn healroot, and it has higher occurrence of disease

[TPTI]

Many thanks

[DreamFree]

Originally posted by Steelfleece:

table, chairs.

[Astasia]

Building individual non-awful bedrooms on day one or two can really trivialize mood concerns early game when stacked on top of low expectations. It's an easy +5-8 mood over cramming colonists into a starting barrack and only takes a few minutes and a small amount of wood. I'd only go for an early barracks on an extreme map where you need to temperature control rooms to keep your starting colonists alive, as cooling/heating one room is a lot easier early on than a bunch of bedrooms, or on maps where there is no wood and you have limited building materials.