It consists of getting starter tech and getting large amount of basic materials as a foundation for future automation.

Basic resources:
Get Iron - to expand your base and build the dirt house floors and a roof.
Get Copper - to build walls around your base and cables under your floors and a roof.
Get Carbon - to feed power plants till you have enough solar power.
Get Ice - to not suffocate, duh...

First target is to get the new instrument - DRILL! To pierce the skies! Totally OP right now.

Then you may build Asteroid Catcher (or two if your APM rivals Starcraft players).
Suck in one asteroid, click another one and go do other things like manual mining and building.
You may want to skip it tho, because DRILL is too OP, I felt like it's better to spend time drilling then managing catchers.

Destroy all your foundations as soon as you can and put them all into recycler to get a good early boost of mid-game resources (Iron Rods which required to make Steel Screws which required to build Automatic Catchers).
Then rush to unlock Automatic Asteroid Catcher.
Then build around 5-10 Automatic Catchers to get a steady supply of resources.

Find a planetoid with lots of gold and mine it to get lots of solar panels (better save dem coal to make graphene later).
Solar Power tech unlock requires 40 Chemistry Science (160 iron rods and 320 dirt), which made in a new building - Human Laboratory. By Humans.

Humans cost gold bars to hire (2 for 1, 10 for 3).
Humans also have to eat, so get at least 50 Quartz (from rocks on planetoids) beforehand to turn into hydrotonics.
I just fire those first 3 guys when got my science - CTRL+Right-Click them so they won't spend my food when I have no stable food production line. :3

Then expand your base (2-3 times), build a few more floors and put lots of catchers on the floor, on the roof, on the balcony... Everywhere!
20-30 catchers will provide you with enough basic resources to last till the end of the endgame.
Catchers output is not consistent, but rule of a thumb is 10 catchers per transport tube.

Remember that you can choose resources that your catcher ...ahem... catches, to build dedicated production areas.

And yes, it was all just p.1. xD

For example, if you pick up Black Floor, you can put it back down as Fence Floor (just an example, in-game names may be changed later).

So don't panic if you cannot dismantle your starter base right from the start, you may delete those pesky foundations and put down your favorite carpet after you research how to build them.

Cables, Pipes, Conveyours and Tubes can go through the floors. You can use it to make easily configurable factory.
Note that it only works with floor and wall tiles, not with foundations!

IT WAS FIXED! WALLS NOW PROPERLY KILL EM ALL! THANK YOU TEFEL!

Only the floors do!
Just put a defensive floor tiles belt around your base every 3 or so tiles. I've also put solar panels on em. :3

Before you automate stuff, build crafting machines 2/4/8/16 etc at a time.
It's very easy to quickly use shift-click to divide stacks in your inventory at halves and then hand-feed machines to maximize craft speed.

BOTS ARE FIXED!

Now you can freely transfer bots from one station to another through the dock tunnel.
Mining bots will seek free mining stations available and automatically fly there to find their place in life.
So when you mined out everything you need, just dismantle all your mining stations and put them back at base - bots will automatically move back to their nests.
Then undock planetoid, dock a new one, dismantle stations and recreate them on a new planetoid to ravage it's natural resources.
Later on you may unlock bot dock stations, in that case you may find helpful Migration tool (press P and then "Migration tool" button).
Well, there may be other methods, but I use this. :3

Any bots work only WITHIN a station/planet they were built on.
At least now.
So if you want to mine some stuff with bots, you have to put robo crafter out there, put some power to it and craft some bots. Remember to delete them when everything is mined, or they wil litter your

menu.[/strike]

Planting trees requires 4 tiles of farmland, while crops only require one.
So when your crops farms are too close to your lumber farm, crops gang gonna bully your forestry boiz and take their farmland for themselves. Be sure to leave at least 5 tiles of space between crops farm and tree farmland.

Both vertical and diagonal.
And it looks hilarious.

Always leave AT LEAST 1 tile of space between all and every thing that may be used by astronauts/bots (this includes farms, conveyors and fields).
Also, do not assign too many bots to one task - they will stuck on each other and lose the will to live.
And AI doesn't understand doors (sometimes) - better leave all their paths free.

WELL, THAT WAS FIXED, TOO!
And now pathfinding error is a bug and not a usual behavior. xD
Still better leave a tile of space between furniture pieces. :)
Especially farmland - bots tend to lose their way on a big fields.

ARE NO LONGER ISSUES!

Space travel is now absolutely smooth. :3
Feel free to turn those thrusters all the way up!
Flying with planetoids connected may produce lag. Just like in real life. xD

But don't drink and drive. Even in game. ;)

More thrust = more issues!
Do NOT use a lot of thrusters if you don't bring lots of planetoids with you, 3-5 basic ones on each direction is totally enough.
Bump it up to 10 in each direction and be ready to clip through the floor/wall after you get to the full speed, only to see your base fly away from you...
More powerful thrusters are even worse... I've put like 2 T3 thrusters in each direction and was tossed everywhere even at 1/3 of max power.
It's now better after some updates, but issue still persists.

It is better to recruit scientists in batches of 3 (per lab) - so you can maximize your science crafting speed with synchronized work cycles.
You will need to build at least 3 of each habitat and study facility tho (dining stand, hybernation chamber, school, study point) so they could fulfill their life needs at the same time.
Or maybe even together. ^_^

This should be the first one.
Before playing go to the controls settings and check attentively if you want to remap anything.
Basic layout was very uncomfortable for me. x)

But only if you have full-sized keyboard.
You can press "+" and "-" on the numpad keyboard to change the speed of the game.
Right now min and max game speeds are x0.25 and x16 respectively.

Some tables to refer to when planning your automation.
Dunno how reliable this is. x)
I've tested 10 autocatchers for like 8 hours straight and got a number 7.77843 items per minute per catcher.

PS: I have retested transport rates and here is the result:
Belt T1 = 66.6/min
Belt T2 = 100/min
Belt T3 = 133.3/min
Tube T1 = 80/min
Tube T2 = 133.3/min

Thanks for your time and have a very good game in your Astro Colony. :)

PS. Feel free to add useful stuff in the comments, I will add your suggestions there.

Peace! \(@o@)/