Starting out you want to focus on:
1: Food
2: Harvesting Iron and turning it into Alloys
3: Crew Trust

The first 2 levels are the hardest since these are the levels where you need the most setup and prep.

Later you'll want to focus on unlocking more housing through research to make your space and housing more efficient.

• Rebuild OFTEN.
  - You lose no resources in deconstructing and reconstructing buildings elsewhere. Part of the challenge of the game is finding an optimal layout for your stations and housing so rebuild often.
  
• Max out Research around FOOD and TECH LAB asap
  - This includes mess halls and whichever farms you are using. Your tech lab also gives passive bonuses to science and research speed and is in your best interest to max that out asap.
  
• Don't open the second sector until the end of the second level.
  - You need a glute of excess material to properly open another sector, including alloys and PEOPLE. Something you probably wont have until the end of the second level once youve found a few cryopods.
  
• You can build and store extra mining/science/cargo ships.
  - dont forget to research them either, the science ship especially. Certain missions are impossible without certain upgrades. The docking bays only count how many can be launched at a time.
  
• Build 2 docking bays and 2 Steel mills at the start.
  - The docking bay you came in counts as 1 so your first sector should have another built somewhere.
  - At first you will only need 1 steel mill but when you open your second sector you will need another steel mill. Consider putting both steel mills in your second sector to specialize it for industry.
  
• Build 2 EVA Airlocks to repair your hull
  - 1 in sector one and 1 in sector two should be enough for most of the game. Build the second EVA airlock with your second sector since thats when you'll need it most.
  
• Stripmine the solar system of resources before you leave.
  - Load up before you leave since you dont know what youll need in the next system.
  
• start researching and building Alternate Life Centres and DLS Centres
  - building 1 of each in each sector should be enough to keep crew trust stable until you unlock more options and research. Remember to turn on propaganda with DLS centre.
  
• the nuclear power plant is useless
  - Upgrading the solar panels and building more of them should be enough to carry you through the game. The Power plant also occasionally shuts down to dispose of waste. It MIGHT be useful to power EVA airlocks while moving but thats about it, you might not even need that if you plan properly.
  
• Upgrade your resource rack capacity
  - More room is better. Eventually youll be able to build bigger resource racks.

At the start you sort of want 5 Insect Farm in your first two sectors. Eventually you'll be able to remove these for more space once you open a third sector focused on farming.

Eventually you'll want to build a third sector, this sector should be specialised for food. 2 Water factories and 2 crop farms in this sector should be enough for the entirety of your playthrough so long as you remember to upgrade crops. And when I say 2 crop farms, I mean 2 sets of 9 plots.

In my playthrough I settles for 1 crop farm and 1 algae farm, 1 mushroom wall and 1 ant farm. That was enough for a crew of 3000+ when fully upgraded. You know, just for variety.

The majority of resource racks in this sector should focus on Ice and food. Make sure you have enough stored so you are never out of water/ice and food.

Later on you'll want to build a Drone Bay here so you can better distribute food to the other sectors. Its..a little aggravating when your entire ship starves to death and you have 720 food stored in your farming sector.

REMEMBER TO UPGRADE YOUR MESS HALL. It lets you feed more people with the same amount of food.

You might be different but when I opened my second sector, I focused it on Industrialization.

I moved my sector one steel mill to sector two and had the 2 steel mills here. Its enough until the later parts of the game. Then I had it so they redistributed the alloys to different sectors.

Other than that, make sure you have proper storage for Iron and Alloys.

I also build the other Production stations for Carbon and Silicon here so make sure you have room for those. And remember to upgrade them on occasion. They aren't so important but researching them so they use less material to produce the same amount of resources or make them faster for example, helps.

Make sure you're always topped up with Iron and Alloys. Running out of Iron/Alloys starts the death spiral of your ship of not being able to repair the hull, which makes people freak out and lose trust in you, which makes them not work, which means no food or alloys to repair the hull or feed people and there's no way you can get out of it once it starts.

Always top up on iron and alloy first before and after you leave a system. having extra silicon and carbon doesnt hurt either.

Build an Alternate Life centre and a DLS centre in each sector you have open.

use the DLS centre and use the propaganda feature to bump up peoples Trust even further.

Have the Hull well-repaired and have people well-fed.

Make sure you dont have more than 200 Cryopods in your possession as this bothers people.

You will get a permanent -1 to trust generation for staying too long in a system. Ignore it, if you have the proper Trust stations active it wont matter. Stay as long as you need to harvest resources before leaving.

Make sure each sector is working at "Optimal". This also adds to Trust. Turn stations on and off based on when you need them. Its a little risky but this includes the steel mills, just keep an eye on your reserves if you do.

Besides those options and the proper research, you shouldn't have to worry about Trust too much unless if you keep getting your crew killed and making dumb decisions when you explore planets and such.

Running out of Food or Iron/Alloys starts the death spiral of your ship.

Without food or iron/alloys you cant feed your crew or repair your hull.

This makes people freak out and lose trust in you.

When people freak out and lose trust in you, they dont go to work.

This leads to no more food being generated or alloys to repair the hull.

Once this happens, you will no longer be able to generate anything, which causes people to not want to work even more, leading to you not being able to generate anything.

There's no way you can get out of this feedback loop once it starts.

This from my experience is what makes the first 2 levels of the game so hard.
As a newbie, you might already be in the Death Spiral long before you run out of resources because you dont have the proper infrastructure in place to support a recovery.

When you open your second sector, it might even be in your best interest to build several more ant farms before you can commit to your third sector being the food producing sector.

By focusing on Food, Alloys and Trust, and building the necessary stations to produce them in excess, you can avoid the Death Spiral thats destroyed so many early game runs.

I hope my tips have helped you stabilise in the early-game.

The rest is up to you Administrator.

- PK_Ultra