This is guide is written with the intent of helping new players understand some of the basics of this game as they come up and answering some of the frequent questions and problems usually faced.

To begin with you be selecting your Empire's name and Description.  Can change your Empire's name in the game using the Capital Building.

Next you will be faced with selecting the affinities for your species.  Read the wiki description for affinities carefuly.  It will describe rather well the effects that each of the 13 affinities has on the game.  If however you find out that you do not like your selection later you can either destroy your empire and restart or pay 100e to be able to change them.

Once you've completed this you'll be thrown into the game.  This is a real-time strategy MMO game.  So 1 hour of game time is 1 hour of real time. 

Once your in the game you'll have full access to the entire client.  You will be presented with the planet side view of your first colony with only 1 building on it your Planetary Control Center.  This building is the center of every colony and cannot be destroyed.  It produces a small amount of resources and has a small amount of storage.

At this point the question is comonly asked what do I do.  And the answer is check your mail box.  There you will find a message regarding the tutorial  and that will explain most of the basics about building up your new colony.  The tutorial will have you build certain buildings at times, raise your hourly resource production first to 100 resources per hour, and later to 200.  It will show you how to use Essentia to boost your resource output, have you train spies, and how to assign them to defense.  Towards the end it will take you to the star map and have you launch your first probe.  The Tutorial Mission Guide can also help you work your way through the tutorial. 

At the end of the tutorial you will be given the Subspace Supply Depot.  You will only get it once per game and it only lasts for a limited time.  It is best if you can use it up all in one sitting as every action you take reduces the time on the counter, but also letting it sit idle also reduces the time on the counter.  The Subspace Supply Depot can either give you resources or complete your build queue.  You can use it as much as you want until the clock runs out. 

After that the final gift you will be given is a ship called "The Gift" it is a Short Range Colony Ship which you can use to found your second colony.  However keep in mind doing so will cost you your Isolationist status.

For some additional tips:

During the early days of your empire it is recomended to have 3-4 of each of the basic resource producing buildings and 2 of each resource storage building.  As your empire develops you'll be adjusting this as new buildings become available.  Eventually all the basic resource producers will likely no longer be used by your empire.

It is very important to try to have 4 different kinds of food producers.  This becomes an especially great challenge in orbits 1, 7, and 8 as only 2 base food types are available there.  Not having at least 3 different kinds of food causes your citizens to become upset and then start to generate unhappiness.

Be sure to plan for Waste Storage.  This is sometimes overlooked and upon building an upgrade you'll find that you've lost happiness due to no place for the trash to go.

Buy a set of glyph buildings with your remaining Essentia.  Glyph buildings produce far more resources per hour than any other building level 1 resource glyph buildings will produce about 3000 or more resources per hour depending on affinities.  A set can be purchased generally very cheaply form advanced players who are likely to have stacks of them that they can't use.  Just ask in the chat or check the Trade Ministry of the Sub Space Transporter.  Most glyph buildings you can buy are level 1 or level 1+1-4.  The higher the +level the more resources the building will produce and the more you'll have to pay for it.