First things first, This is an image of mods you will want to start with. Dont worry these mods come with your game.
You will want to ensure contracts and Natural Disasters. This is a bit of a more difficult start because the default is to have a start on the Moon but I want to show players how to get started from nothing and make the Moon your own.

Now that we have our Mods selected lets get started.
We are going to play on experienced, I have played and have several saves of a Master play through but its really unnecessary for beginners and the challenge it adds to the game is far more than what you want to deal with at the start of your Solargene career.

Master difficulty removes shuttles from the game. Meaning you will be forced to move all cargo and personnel by your own ships.

But I will leave that experience to yall. For now, experienced is the difficulty we want.

This section of the guide has been updated for 0.14 Version

Ok, so we just started our new game, new solar system, and we've got nothin!

No money, no problems! Navigate to the Earth to get started. You can simply click the Earth in the View panel on your left side of the screen.

We cant launch a new station yet because of no money, so contracts is what you are looking for.

Contracts can be found in the same menu as your money, clicking on a country's flag symbol will bring up a new menu showing all contracts that country offers at the moment, a red flashing dot underneath the flag means they have new contracts for review.

Lets go find one, Now this part is entirely preferential, but I recommend starting with Euro country and colonists. The Euro diet is the easiest to maintain, in my opinion. Definitely avoid America, China, and Japan, as these countries require the meats and fish which is hard to sustain at the start if you are unfamiliar with the game.

So we click the Euro flag to find the contracts page for Euro Country. Contracts can vary so the screenshot here will most likely show something different then what you have on your screen when you navigate to the contracts page.

We need a nice and easy Ship contract to get started. 5 man ship for $53 mil is perfect. Since this part will vary because of the random selection of contracts available you will have different contracts than I, just look for any Ship contract over $50 mil in reward with an crew count less than 7.

Dont worry about the Minimum thrust or reserve deltaV, just be sure they are less than 50 for the thrust and less than 10 for the deltaV.

DeltaV
Minimum Thrust

Full Contract

This page has been updated for 0.14 version

Your first ship is pretty bare-bones, we are just going to be giving it away anyway.

So lets get started.

At this point you have started a new game, navigated to the Earth planet, accepted a Euro ship contract and are now ready to launch a ship into orbit of the Earth.


Keep in mind this first ship is to give away for the contract and not for us to use long term, so there is some building short cuts and things we will leave out that would otherwise be a requirement. We will cover those things in detail later.

For now, a ship for 5 Euro colonists....lets get started.

So, you've accepted the contract, have a few millions in the bank and am now ready to launch a station to orbit of the Earth. What latitude you choose is entirely up to you and does not affect your station in any game changing way. However, it is worth noting, once you get familiar with Solargene you can start to manipulate these latitude across several planetoids. The benefits, however, are only temporary. For example, each planet will have a latitude that puts your station in an orbit so it will never be outside of LOS of the sun, but due to the various orbits this Solar-synchronized orbit does not last forever. So choose the Euro Latitude for our Euro Ship.


Rename your new ship if you like, I have a name scheme for all my stations and ships that is universal, so I will name it `Euro Ship 1`


BUILDING THE FIRST SHIP

Ok so we have our ship, its in orbit, and we have nothing on it, so lets make our first purchase. This is going to be VERY specific on what to purchase and the amounts, because if you order too much before you add more storage you will have goods held up in space unavailable for use.

So be sure to only order what you can store.

With the ship we just launched to orbit selected you will now have a new HUD menu titled "warehouse"


Click on the shopping cart to pull up the purchase menu and add the following to your cart

Who you purchase from is up to you and can be decided upon by the cheapest offer available for what you are purchasing. I always choose the country I'm contracting for. Keep in mind this first purchase is just so we have enough resources to add more storage because the starting storage is woefully insufficient.


It is definitely worth noting at this point, all contracts have an expiration date. For ship contracts its usually pretty short. So because of that time limit we need to control our game as much as we can...

Luckily the game has a speed control function

Be sure to pause the game so you are not wasting time when you are making decisions or gathering information on your stations. PAUSING IS OK!

So we made our first purchase and now have to wait for the shipment to arrive. Go ahead and unpause the game until you have a stocked warehouse with the full order we made and feel free to pause immediately after receiving the shipment.

This portion of the guide has been updated for 0.14 version

At this point in the guide you have

• started a new game
  
• accepted your first ship contract
  
• launched a ship in orbit of earth
  
• made your first purchase

Now we will cover what to do with those resources in your warehouse and how to complete the first contract.

If you are in the solar system view screen still go ahead and navigate to your ship, and Switch to Station.

This part will be very specific as to build with the utmost efficiency.

Position your camera so that the shuttle dock is facing your camera, like so

Before we begin building, there is only 1 single block type you will build with and it will benefit you until you get high tech resources. This is your golden goose, your money cow, your holy grail of all building blocks, Every room you build is built with this block!
ok now I will begin building the ship -

• on the left side of the station begin building storage blocks 1 tall 2 long
  
• Remove the door inside the new storage room
  
• In our new storage room build the storage racks that give +1.5 storage you should be able to place 6 no problem
  
  
• Purchase more resources
  
• Pause immediately after receiving the full shipment
  
• Fill the rest of the room with the storage racks
  
• you should have 9 all together now and a little bit of space between the last rack and the smaller edge of the room
  
• In that gap place a 20 heater
  
• your room will look like so now -
  
• Navigate to the other storage room you started with and vacate it -
  
• Navigate to the Defense Building Tab (has a shield)
  
• we are building diffusers to negate heat inside the station
  
• Remove the remaining door on the opposite side of the storage room we built earlier.
  
• Add 6 diffusers in a line starting from where you removed that door
  
• Add 2 batteries 1 on each side of the existing battery
  
• Remove the empty storage room
  
• Remove the door that just exposed
  
• add a solar panel in the empty slot
  
• Match your diffuser line with solar panels, adding to the same line already in place
  
• your ship should look like this at this point -

At this point in the building stage you probably have a big red alert at the bottom of your screen that looks like asteroids flying, we will handle this later, for now, as long as you have days on that alert you are ok, IF this alert appears and you have very little time then you cant wait to add defense but I wont cover where to place those right now because they may be in the way. For now, ensure you stay paused unless absolutely necessary.

Lets continue building

• Find `Space Station Modules` in the construction menu
  
• Add 3 Axis Connection Segments
  
• Add Habitable Section with minimum settings
  
• On any of the new 3 sections build add 3 hallways in a line extruding from the center door
  
• place a single apartment building on any of the 2 empty wings of the habitat section (hint not the one that has the hallway) **Doesn't matter where, or what block, this will be removed later
  
• Go back to the hallway section we built earlier
  
• 1x2 Toilet starting at the exterior door
  
• 1x2 Shower next to the Toilet room
  
• Go to the opposite side of the hallway that you just filled up.
  
• Using the exterior door as your start build a canteen 2x2
  
• At the end of the hallway place a SINGLE hospital block (We will use this later so make it count)
  
• Next to your canteen build a 2x2 recreation room
  
• Go to the Only empty wing of your habitat section and build a 2x2 spacious living room (use one of the side doors)
  
• Remove the Apartment building we built earlier
  
• Your habitable section should look like this now -

Now we have to build interiors... and im going to just shortline this rather than walkthrough every step. Read carefully because interiors right now all depend on your contract's crew count requirement. At the time of updating this and for the save game I am including with the guide I had a contract crew requirement of 8. So every room had to support 8 colonists, but the method is still the same bare minimum for this ship so you save the most resources. we are giving it away.

• 3 small heaters per room with the exception of the storage room which we put a large
  
• your bathroom and shower only need 2 wash units each
  
• the canteen only needs 1 of the biggest tables available
  
• the recreation room 1 hamster ball and seats to cover the contract crew requirement
  
• Spacious living room build like a barracks and just line with as many of the small beds that you need to fulfill contract crew requirement
  
• place a large heater in the single block hospital room

Now lets build our hospital. I isolated this room because the way we are building it for this ship IS NOT how you should build it for a ship or station you plan to keep. This design is ONLY to quickly fulfill a contract and give the ship away. Long term this hospital design will not work.

So using the single block we have already built as a center piece, make a 2x3 hospital room
Place 8 beds and a single large heater, my hospital looks like so...

Now again my contract has 8 crew requirement so for give away ships I do all crew as Doctors. So i needed 8 Doctor slots to fulfill jobs.

The last things to do are doors, stock for personnel, purge all non essential resources, engines, hire the crew, and fuel up.

This page has been updated for 0.14 version

At this point in the guide you have completed the following:

• Started a new game
  
• accepted your first contract
  
• Launched your first ship to Earth orbit
  
• Made your first resource purchase
  
• Built your first ship to support a crew

At this point you have everything you need on this station to support colonists EXCEPT for rations.
Go ahead and unpause and repause the game so it updates the station with the new buildings.

Now we need to add the defenses to the station to combat asteroids we discussed briefly earlier.
on the end of your diffuser line add a gun, it is most likely going to be the only one you need to add, and if you have plenty of time before the asteroids arrive go ahead and stop building,

If the asteroids are due to arrive before you will finish the contract then add one more on the end of the your storage room the opposite side of the first gun you placed.

At this point we need to add engines, stock rations for the colonists and add the crew.

You will need to purchase the resources for two engines, for a shortcut just click the small shopping cart twice within the icon of the engine This is a shortcut to add all the required resources to the shopping cart.
Confirm they were added by hovering over the purchase button in the warehouse menu.
Before purchasing lets also purchase 200 rations This is PLENTY for giving away contract ships and top off your oxygen levels to 1000 from where ever they are now.

once the resources arrive in full, pause the game and add your engines wherever you like, you can only place this on the bottom most part of the ship so your limited but other than that placement does not matter one bit. My contract required 3 engines, just ensure you cover the thrust requriements.

If your contract requires less thrust then the one i chose for this guide then you can use only 1 engine if it covers the thrust requirements of your contract

The final touches are pretty simple to all ship contracts, the process is pretty much hire crew, purge the warehouse of all non-essentials, and gas up.

Hiring and Gassing up is pretty straight forward.

Purging your warehouse can be tricky. So this section will extensively cover that step.

First for the continuity of this guide, lets hire our crew.
For this guide our contract required 8 crew members. For ship contracts with less than 10 crew members its easiest just to have all Doctors in the house to limit the rooms required for building and they can all care for each other so you know no one is getting sick.

Be sure the crew is from the country your contract is with!!!!!!!!!!!!

With the crew hired, navigate your self to the solar system view and launch another ship into orbit of the Earth. This one will be yours, so name it appropriately and make some room in your heart for a new love.

Again latitude of the launch doesnt matter.
You now have 2 ships in orbit of Earth. From the contract ship send EVERYTHING except the rations and Oxygen to your newest ship. Allow time to pass so that the crew is on board the contract ship and all non-essential resources are gone then be sure to pause because there is one final step before completing the contract.

With the crew on board and assigned to quarters. You can start gassing up.
But Nicholiae, how much fuel do i need?
With the contract ship selected and you in the solar system view, the top right menu has an option titled "DeltaV Calculator" - In the calculator screen enter the required DeltaV and hit enter to see how much fuel is required.

For this guide, 5 units of DeltaV requires 1468 units of liquid fuel. So we purchase, wait for it to arrive, wait for all shuttles to clear the station and then COMPLETE THE CONTRACT!

You may need to add more fuel storage, depending on how much fuel is needed. Go ahead and buy 140 steel if this occurs and add 2 more liquid storage tanks to the fixed end of the station (the one with the engines) This will unfortunately force you to have to buy more fuel so do your DeltaV calculator again and purchase the missing fuel. This is a part of Solargene and building ships so dont let it frustrate you.

But at this point you have completed your first Ship contract and have your very own ship to work out of. To get a inside look at that navigate to the next section of the guide.

If you feel you have the basics and can colonize the cosmos on your own at this point, be sure to give the guide a like, a thumbs up, a good review, what ever it takes to help others like you find this helpful guide =D

This page has been updated for 0.14 version

Well at this point you have a good start, roughly $20 million in capital to work with and a ship stocked with basic resources left over from our ship contract building.

My recommendation for this ship is to set it up with the intention of leaving it in orbit of the Earth. Because you will find out first hand as you expand across our solar system that you require checkpoints to shuttle resources, meaning if i want to move resources from earth to the moon i need something in orbit of the earth and the moon to move anything down to the surface of the moon.

If i wanted to move things off the moon and send them to mars, You will need an orbiter around mars and the moon as well as the stations on the surfaces of those planets.

But that is later down the line. Dont let it intimidate you, ships and stations are pretty self sufficient once set up correctly and when they are its just a matter of stockpiling resources so there is always an ample supply in storage to cover the station over a long period of time without any assistance.

So for your personal ship that is now in orbit of Earth. Set it up much like the contract ship, only changes to be made is the crew and hospital. You will also NOT need ANY engines at all.

Your goal for this ship is to get research up and running. A highly skilled 3 man research team is more than enough to get research contracts started that will pay the way for you to go to the Moon, but when you start your first research contract, watch your research per day and scale up the research crew to make sure you hit your deadlines. Your goal is about 2 or 3 points of research per day which will be obtainable with about 2 researchers OF EACH SKILL (6 total). After the researchers skill up about half way or more in their respective categories you will find it fairly easy to complete 216 points of research in less than 30 days, but they need time to skill up.

Research at the start is now very much a thing to be managed. Ensure you are meeting deadlines by either hiring specialists (these are crew members with high skill ratings in 1 category) or assign your whole research team to the research type at hand (with this method you must ensure there is a work bench of each type for each researcher, you cannot complete engineering research at a biology station)

A few points to note after the 0.14 update...
1. Skills play a big role in everything that the colonist works on now, but you can do so much more with much fewer personnel after this update. With that said, hire within your budget and, especially for researchers, focus their skills. Meaning each researcher only does 1 skill, this will keep their reoccurring cost down.
The checked box indicates the colonist can use this skill. They will NOT occupy stations that utilize the skills that are NOT checked.
This is also how I hire most crew members, I look for singular skill progress so I can have specialists.
NOTE: this changes late game but for now and until you get your money flow going aim for singular skilled colonists in all areas.
2. You can tell the difference in research type by the color of the research in the research menu (yellow is engineering, teal is medical, blue is physics)
3. Just because your bottom indicator bar shows a red research or server indicator doesnt mean you are not doing research, unless you have 0 research and server power. This just means for the collective skill level of your station they are operating at xx% capacity. If you are completing researches like you are baking muffins then you do NOT need to scale your research team.

For those of you looking for a No-Contract game, this guide isn't for you, although you can still use the same building styles as I do, you will have to find other means to get started, however.

How you build this ship is up to you but I 1000% recommend finding your style and build that way EVERY TIME, you will thank your self later for creating good building habits early on. My building style is very compact and functional but also leaves ample room for expansion and scaling. If you like your self some cosmetics and making each room look realistic and pretty, I admire your attention to detail, that is all. lol

This is what my research Station above Earth looks like, with a stocked warehouse and a full crew.


Here is about the minimums you will need for a research orbiter in terms of crew
2 Doctors (It is stupid to have less than 2 doctors anywhere, if one doctor gets sick the other can cure him, but doctors do not cure themselves)
1 Biotechnician for recycling waste water
3 Repair Industrial Crew
1 Industrial Worker Industrial Crew (he needs to maintain oxygen and Carbon from CO2 so bio can continue to scrub water with no cost to player)
3 research crew (1 of each type and yes the type matters now so when making your research room ensure you have 1 of each bench or which ever bench you leave out will not be able to obtain research for that tree)

One last thing about industrial rooms on stations, do NOT use the CO2 scrubbers for oxygen. You need the CO2 passively created by the crew to create Carbon so you do not have to buy it to cycle water. To ensure a proper Oxygen level at all times just build a Water Electrolysis machine in the industrial room and set your warehouse production limit for oxygen to 1000 and a usage limit of 500. You will also need to set an extremely low hydrogen production limit like 10, so you do not consume all your water.

This page has been updated for 0.14 version

If you follow this Discord link it will take you to the official Solargene discord
https://discord.gg/M2qsMQ3Db2

I am waiting for the devs permission to add links and a save to this guide, until then please skip this page. you can get to the Solargene discord through your game's main menu
Inside that Discord I have posted the Save File for this guide. The save picks up right where the guide left off, you have a ship in orbit of Earth with a stocked crew ready to do research, if you wish to get to the Moon then follow the guide back through without a ship contract in play, use the research contracts to get resources or money to purchase resources and build another ship like the ship contract one to get to the Moon.

Save File link:
https://discord.com/channels/853948385516847116/989654880115376138/1258819416360226846


This page has been updated for 0.14 version

This section will focus extensively on what is required for interplanetary travel, it will NOT have many screenshots, nor How-To's on what to build. I will leave that entirely up to the player and the previous sections of the guide to help you along.

So there are a few learning curves I hit when starting my Solargene career and trying out traveling for the first time. Believe me EVERYONE kills their first crew in-flight, everyone has had an entire colony starve to death or die from loss of power. IT HAPPENS!

This guide should hopefully prevent you or at the very least prepare you for such eventualities.
So what happens when you traverse the open space between?

First and foremost, Temperature of the ship! You are constantly exposed to the sun when traveling between planetoids. The temperature in the station WILL rise significantly. Ensure you have enough diffusers in place to counter it. The amount I have you build in the start of this guide should do just fine for traveling from the Earth to the Moon, HOWEVER, if the Moon is closer to the Sun then the Earth you may need a couple extra diffusers.

DISTANCE TO THE SUN PLAYS A ROLE IN EVERYTHING from temperature, to radiation, to power from solar!

So first, check your temperatures and diffusers before launching into the darkness

Secondly, maintenance and warehouse levels. Everything requires maintenance in this game, mostly. So when you travel between this is very important to keep in mind because it will adjust your weight and more weight means more fuel and a longer trip.

I keep all maintenance settings for each station to be maintained at 90%. This means repair crew will begin working in maintenance when a block is below 90% maintenance. This value is adjusted in each station at the top right menu when a station is selected. You can also find the daily consumption of maintenance in the bottom left portion of your screen when selecting a station and these are the values you want to pay attention to.

You need to ensure you have enough resources in the warehouse to last the entire trip and then some. Since 0.14 its pretty easy to tell if you just click the wrench icon in the bottom left with any station selected. The menu that appears tells you how many days of repairs is left with current supply.

So if you consume X resources per day in maintenance and you have a N day(s) of travel time your equation for warehouse stock when traveling becomes this
X * N = stock required for travel
I recommend this
X * (N*1.1) = Stock required for travel with a 10% buffer
where x is the resource amount consumed per day in maintenance, and N is the number of days to travel.

Simpler than the above method you can now just look at the maintenance menu and ensure you have at the very least 10 days of supply plus the trip time for repairs.

Thus concludes your stockpile for maintenance. However, it is worth noting, if you are traveling with a ship that has industry or farming, or any sort of production that consumes basic resources, you will need to adjust your stockpile as necessary for the amount of production you have aboard your ship.

Personally, I do not produce anything outside the bare essentials (oxygen and carbon) on a ship until much later in the game. This will keep it simple to stockpile a ship for travel and know that the resources are not being consumed for any other purpose then intended.

How do you pay for all this? Well the previous stages of this guide walk you through your first ship contract and leave you with a ship of your own to begin research. perform research contracts WITHOUT completing the farming research.

If you complete farming before arriving on the moon you multiply your difficulty and expenses because Rigolith or dirt is VERY expensive and heavy and it sucks to travel with it!

Try to stack the contracts so that you are getting paid by multiple countries to do 1 research. This will multiply your profits. If you notice you are finishing a research with a contract due date far out, pick another research to start and allow other countries time to pay you for the research you are about to complete, just be sure you find your way back to that research to complete it before the contract times are expired.

Rinse and repeat as necessary. If you get resources from a contract I recommend stockpiling them in Earth orbit and sending them to the Moon after your arrival, less weight less fuel consumption.

A few more tips and hints for contract choices...
If you can get recombination fuel as a reward early on, go for it, it sucks to store on your station in orbit of the earth until you can use it but it is SOOO much better than liquid fuel and SHOULD be used to get to the moon in my opinion. You can also keep it stored as a reward until you are ready to use it in efforts to get to the Moon. Either is perfectly doable by game mechanics in the early stages.

Last thing to remember when you are traveling, When you get there, you still have to move resources from a colonized planet or another station, so it will take time to move those goods. Ensure you have enough resources and RATIONS for your crew to survive at its destination for long enough to get more resources there. Shuttles travel much faster than ships so it wont take nearly as much time to shuttle resources as it takes your ship to make first contact with a new rock.

Your final destination WILL always be a new environment, meaning new temperatures due to sun exposure duration changes, which leads into power charge changes in both amplitude and duration this is especially true for solar. As you move away from the sun you will get lower average temperatures, and lower solar power generation. Be sure you take this into consideration when you pick your destination and prepare the ship accordingly.

The other part of getting to the moon that is not covered in the previous stages of this guide is research. Before you go to the Moon you will need to complete everything leading up to and including "Recombination Engine" These will be the engines you want to use to get to the Moon. It is quite easy to get the required resources to build the engine by doing contracts that give high tech resources as a reward. You can as a last resort also build them on your earth orbiter but I highly recommend minimal mind set for this early on. You really do not want to be producing anything in an orbiter until you have your first station on a planet 150% autonomous.

• 60 nano-materials - you cannot get this from a contract so your only option is to research the production for this and start making these with purchased resources. Not really hard honestly just make sure you keep your money up with paying contracts
  
• 210 High Temperature Structural Materials - very common reward for contracts
  
• 50 Carbon Electronics - not so common as a reward, grab em as you can but you may end up making these your self as well as the nano-materials

These 3 are the high tech materials you cannot purchase and must produce or get from contracts to build the Recombination Engine which is the method I suggest to use in getting to the Moon
This is my trip to the moon for 2 reasons... i take minimal resources and I am using engines that are 1 tier above the intended tier for the trip.
The next stage of this guide will start assuming you have successfully arrived at the Moon with your first interplanetary ship and crew.

This page has been updated for 0.14 version

At this point you have followed this guide to complete the following :

• Chosen and fulfilled your first ship contract
  
• Made your first purchase of resources
  
• Made your first orbital ship for research orbiting the earth
  
• Completed the research line leading up to recombination engines
  
• Made your first interplanetary ship and launched to the moon
  
• arrived at the moon successfully

With a ship in orbit of the Earth and another having just arrived at the moon you are now ready to begin your journey of colonizing the Moon!

Im sure you have some questions... Such as:

"Where do I build my first settlement?"

"What country should my crew be from?"

"What can the Moon and its resources do for me?"

Lets first analyze the resources available, ignore the stores and levels of each resource, levels really only affect the rate at which you scale the settlement.



in order Resource/ Use :
Helium-3 - Money Maker, later game ship fuel, mid game power fuel
Ice - Water Source
Regolith / dirt - Needed for a lot of starter production resources
Iron - used in production
non-ferrous metals - mostly used in production and building materials
refractory metals - mostly used in production and diffusers / heaters
rare metals - mostly used in production and battery systems
noble metals - mostly used in production
transuranium elements - Early game fuel, but insignificant amounts here for processing

Your main focus here is simply ice and water. The others will scale with you on their own because of the mining equipment. Helium-3 is an after thought and should really be considered as your long-term investment. You will not get very much H3 from the basic miner machine so i highly recommend expanding to H3 after you have unlocked the second tiered mining machines. The yields at that point are enough to pad your wallet for the rest of the game, given you scale as you go. In the next stage we will cover placing your colony, building and research needed to get to your first 20 colonists on the moon.

This page has been updated for 0.14 version

At this point in the guide you have arrived at the moon successfully and have 2 orbiters in place, one for the earth and the other just landed at the moon.

It is intentional that this guide does not extensively cover the process that takes place to prepare for interplanetary travel and skips over the journey entirely. Thus far the guide has taught you how to build your first ship to fulfill a contract. Which is very much similar to building a ship for interplanetary travel, the guides brief coverage of this part of your game play will tell you what to prepare for and the most common mistakes made and how you can prepare your self for them.

It is recommended that you save your game and ultimately create a back up before you launch your first ship to the moon from earth. It is also my intention to brush over this area because there are some mistakes you should make and discover for your self to ultimately teach you the eventualities you will face later in the game.

If you know the game a bit and have some experience this guide can ultimately help you skip those early mistakes entirely and if you can do that early on with the limited information in this guide then you will avoid those mistakes entirely in the late game, if this guide did not help you in that way, then you will be happy you made these mistakes early on with the helpful tips provided, because like children there are certain lessons you must learn by simply making the mistakes.

Save your game and make a back up to go back to at key points of your game play. This way you dont lose any entire game because one mistake, which i did, 9 times, before i got a game that laster beyond my first colony on the moon. No kidding. 9 different games, started over before i learned how to get to the moon properly and survive on it.

Back to the guide

So you want to settle on the moon? Where do we do that? Well, your best option for a long term Hub that will supply the rest of your game and all future settlements is a polar settlement. For everyone of my settlements that I make for long term use and not given away by contract is made on a pole of the planet it is occupying. The benefits are endless.

So two things to remember when picking a spot on the Moon for your colony
1. Prioritize Ice
2. Stay close to the Pole, either Pole will do

Last thing, make sure you choose one that is not day yet but sunrise within 36 hours. I say this because some time will be wasted during shipping of resources and setting up the power grid. You will also want all the time you can have to charge your first batteries. Night time on the Moon lasts a while so its about power storage here not necessarily generation.

This page has been updated for 0.14 version

At this point you have chosen a spot for your moon colony and are ready to send resources to the Moon for building.

First some pointers, DO NOT SEND RESOURCES FROM THE ORBITER. You want those in there as EMERGENCY ONLY and remember you have maintenance for each station.

When I mention acquiring resources in the colony for this section of the guide it is ALWAYS meant that you PURCHASE these resources... if you are low on funds, sell high tech resources that are high value obtained from contracts or perform research contracts for profit.

Here we will begin our opening build order.

• Obtain opening resources
• While you wait for the resources to ship to you from Earth lets go down to the settlement
  
• Place 3 landing pads somewhat spread out in a triangle formation
• Now you will hurry up and wait for the resources to be shipped to you :P
  
• As much as it sucks building with no power storage. Lets set up our storage with the resources we have first purchased. turn on x3 speed and build the following IN ORDER
  
• 1 solar panel
  
• 1 battery
  
• 1 pillar
  
• an airlock ontop of the pillars
  
• 1 liquid storage tank
  
• 1 standard drill that yields ice and earth as well as the other basic resources
  
• build a hallway 3 x 1 extruding from the opposite side of the airlock as to your drill
  
• your settlement so far

At this point you may have power from your solar, if you do pause the game and continue building until it tells you to wait for bots to recharge.

• In front of your airlock closest to the drill place another pillar
  
• On top of your pillar place a path for exterior use
  
• place stairs leading to your path so that colonists can reach the airlock
• place your doors for the airlock
• ontop of your hallway build 3 more stories in a 3x1. add your stairs in the middle and make your floors
  
• place another airlock on the small end of the hallway ground floor opposite of the other airlock.
  
• add a single apartment anywhere (will be removed later)
  
• Pick a side of your colony and on the second floor of the hallway build a 2x1 bathroom
  
• on the same side next to the bathroom build a 2x1 shower
  
• same side of the hallway next to the shower build a 2x2 canteen.
  
• On the top floor, same side, build a 2x3x2 hospital
  
• Pick an end of your settlement and on the 2nd floor build a 2x3 rec room.
  
• Opposite side of your bathroom/shower but on the same floor build a 2x3 spacious living room
  
• Opposite end of your rec room build a 2x3x2 bio room (start on the second floor and go up its ok to cover the 3rd floor)

At this point you may run into resource blocks, buy more if you need more.

• now we need more power. place until you have 5 solar panels in total, obtain more resources if necessary, purchasing what you need as you go is perfectly OK!
  
• Place until you have 10 batteries, this combo should get your bottom left notification bar clear of power warnings for the setup of your 20 man colony. IF it does not and your power indicator turns red, indicating an insufficient power supply, Increase solar panels to a total of 10.
  
• Lets turn to the base buildings which are now empty. your colony probably looks something like this now
  
• in each room including the hallway you want a large heater (bathrooms can get 3 small heaters)
  
• place beds in the spacious living
  
• For your hospital I recommend 1 of each equipment minus the decompression chamber
  
• The canteen gets 2 - 6 seat tables
  
• The recreation room will get a hamster ball and 10 - 2 seat couches
  
• Remove the apartment building now
  
• outside build 3 lines of 5 basic mines that yield ice and earth and various other basic resources for a total of 15
  
• bathroom gets 3 stalls / shower gets 3 stalls. (you may be wondering where your door goes for the shower because the stairs are in the way in the hallway... just make em go through the bathroom
  
• The colony thus far... ish:
  
• You probably need to acquire some more resources at this point so stockup but remember we havent built our storage room or maintenance and industry. So only get what your low on. 1500 steel and about 500 of the other basic resources is all you really need to finish whats left.
  
• While we are purchasing these resources lets also put 4 laser guns worth in our cart as well
  
• When those resources arrive place 1 laser gun per side of the base on the outskirts of the colony. Think of these as your boundary posts. They will take care of asteroid threats.

The last building types we have to construct are Industry, maintenance, and storage. For your storage because of pathing issues and because you want to beable to scale later... your storage room will be split into 2. Put 1 storage block above each airlock put 3 storage racks and a single small heater in each storage room.

• industry build a 3x3x2 (Length,Width,Height) block on that open side of your settlement so far
  
• 
  
• Inside industry build the following
  
• Glass Furnace
  
• Lithographic Equipment
  
• Ice Melter
  
• water Electrolysis
  
• the small electric arc furnace - produces steel, cannot be placed until after we hire our crew and miners begins their yeilds. we will circle back to it.
  
• Next room is the maintenance as a 2x3 on the only side we have left on the top floor you can place 5 maintenance benches and a large heater in here.

At the very end you may need some more steel or other resources go ahead and purchase these resources and also 5 more solar panels for a total of 15 panels if that still leaves you with a power problem indicator add batteries until it turns from red. You may also notice your industrial zone lacking heat so add the resources for a large heater as well. But while we are awaiting those resources we can now hire our crew and purchase rations for them.

I suggest about 500 rations and the following crew types and quantities
3 doctors
12 miners
2 repair crew
2 industrial crew
1 bio technician

At this point you are just waiting for the crew to arrive and once they do assign them to work and there you go, your first industrial settlement on the Moon with a research orbiter. Scale slowly and always scale your crew LAST, the station and all its components should be able to accommodate the crew before they arrive, that is true even after it is populated.
Dont forget to go back into your industry room and add the Small electric furnace to begin making steel as the last step after your miners begin work. You are simply waiting on iron and not a lot of it.

On a previous stage of this guide there was a part where you may have built some high tech equipment and hired high tech staff in an orbiter.. go ahead and transfer them and the equipment to the colony. It is best at this stage to keep production down on the colony as it is easier to maintain power down there.

This page has been updated for 0.14 version

I hope by now this guide has helped you through some of the more frustrating parts of the opening gambit to Solargene. It really is a game full of fun and lots of potential. If you are a spacebuff like me and love colony management then you will be hooked the moment you land on the moon.

Some leaving tips for scaling your station beyond 20 crew.

• Always scale the colonists last, infrastructure must come first and be stable.
  
• Over estimate your needs when traveling, anticipate the need for more guns to combat asteroids when you land on a new rock
  
• when it comes to power, doubling the storage required to maintain a settlement is never the wrong choice. Any extra power you give a settlement if more reaction time you give your self in the face of diversity.
  
• Once you get the research for farms you will need to build them quick so your colonies dont hate you and shut down
  
• For orbiters and farms, build only what is needed to cook them food. I hope you chose euro because they only require farms and not biotech
  
• for settlements build the largest farms as soon as you can and until you can get the specialty farms you'll want 1 farm per ingredient needed.
  
• Settlements need to be your seed makers so you need to keep the yields open on your farms for all types, for orbiters / ships you can turn off what ingredients you dont need to cook with. but be sure each farm yields all the types of ingredients needed for your colony.
  
• Send seeds from settlements to ships until you advance far enough to create full farms on orbiters and ships.
  
• Dont move to mars until you have tourism on the moon in lots of 50 tourists, buy the CO2 and carbon as you need it. I know it sucks but you'll thank me later.
  
• Dont move to mars until you have the Moon 100% populated with a self sustaining hub of your own and all 6 countries on it.

The save file for this walkthrough where you have reached the moon is located here...
https://discord.com/channels/853948385516847116/989654880115376138/1258899984233795584

At this point you are ready to colonize the solar system. I hope this guide has been helpful for you, if it helped you please share and like so it may help others! Safe colonizing traveler!

This page has been updated for 0.14 version

First things first, you need to find your save folder for solargene... if you bought it through steam you can usually find it here

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Solargene\solar\Saved

download my save files from the steam links
pre moon fiile:https://discord.com/channels/853948385516847116/989654880115376138/1258819416360226846

post moon file: https://discord.com/channels/853948385516847116/989654880115376138/1258899984233795584

once downloaded move them into the solargene save folder and open Solargene... you should now see the save inside the main menu of solargene.