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If you don't have a fondness for 8 characters of random letters and numbers, the first thing I do is go to the "preferences screen". This is a useful screen with lots of miscellaneous options, but the first one to use is the password changing function. Please try and remember to change your password to something you remember, but that other people won't know or guess easily. Another nice option is to experiment with the "skins" that you can play Planetarion in - while you can have something fairly boring like the "clean black" skin (which is also quick to load), there's quite a few new and interesting skins for you to play with.

Exceptions

If you're playing from the same IP address, it's strongly recommended you also get an "exception". You need to apply for one of these if more than one person is (or may be) playing from your IP address. It lets us know you aren't trying to cheat, but are merely two different people. Obviously, sometimes it can be hard to tell over the internet, so this is why we introduced this system. It also automatically limits how much you can attack, defend and so on together.

What to do first?

While this is very much a "play and learn" game, there are some things that almost every player does when they start their planet.

Engineering

Firstly, hunt out the "Engineering" page, and open it up. This page allows your planet to specialise to different degrees in 3 out of a possible 5 options.
By a process of fairly simple elimation, you can guess the best 3 options to choose to start with. "Security" is useful against "Covert Operations", which is when other people try and use agents to cause damage to your planet. This is disabled in the first 72 "ticks" (turns), and so would obviously be a waste to choose at the beginning of the game. Production is also not very helpful, as you're not allowed to launch any ships in the first 72 ticks. This leaves you with "Research", "Mining" and "Construction". There's a bit of argument as to which is the most useful to put where, but I tend to take them in the order I listed them, no matter the race I take. You're welcome to choose whichever way you want to put them, though. If you want to change this option before the game starts, you have to disable any current constructions and researches.

Research

This page lets you research different things to help your planet.
The almost undisputed first choice is "Improved Resource Handling", so please click the "initate" button next to this research.
This technology branch allows you to mine more of the asteroids that you have collected around your planet. All of the more experienced players spend the first 60 or so turns "initiating" (or creating) asteroids using the "Mining" screen, but after about tick 100 it is far more cost-effective for most people to attack (this also gets you an "XP" or experience factor - see the combat section here for more information).

The first things to research after "Improved Resource Handling" are:

"Heavy Cargo Tranfers I" (The next research after "Improved Resource Handling")

"Fighter Class Hulls" (If you're going to attack other people you need ships!)

"Heavy Cargo Transfers II"

"Basic Infrastructure" (This doesn't look important, but when you realise you can't build any more constructions (see section below) you'll realise it is!)

"Advanced Core Extraction" (This gives you a bigger resource income apart from your asteroids)

The "Core Extaction" researches are important if you're not going to check your account more than once or twice a day - you can't loose these! You can then use them to get more ships (with the 3 ship researches) and not have so many asteroids. More discussion about this is found in the "Mining" section.

The things to research least, especially for a free account, are probably the "Surface Analysis" (waves that allow you to see information on other planets) and the "Underground Network Charting" (Covert op tree, the non-ship based way of causing damage to another planet). This is because, due to the research limitations on a free account, there's few (if any) worthwhile technologies for these trees.

Construction

This is the next page to visit. Arguably, the best construction to do first is the "Research lab". This increases your research speed by up to 20% (more than the difference between Research on first engineering priority and not at all), and so is important. As you have to have at least 20% of your structures research labs to get the full bonus, constructing it first means that between constructing your first and your 6th structure you have the full 20% research bonus. If you build one every 5th structure, you can therefore get quite a bonus.
This leaves you 4 structures between the research labs (at least!). You need to make sure you have factories to build ships, but you only need 1 or two of each. Without ship factories and the correct research, you cannot build ships. For information on the what other constructions, see the ingame descriptions or the manual here. I recommend you build distorters, or the refinary linked to your race type. Security centres are also helpful if you are going to try and covert op others, as they often retaliate!

Mining

Mining is one of the important screens (together with research and construction) at the beginning of the round.
When you first sign up, you have 5000 of each resource. This is enough to buy 3 of each type of asteroid in the "Mining" screen. Paid accounts have 10000 of each resource, and so can afford 6 of each roid type.
To initiate asteroids, put the numbers in the corresponding boxes beside the three different resource types and click "initiate".
Note:You want to be the biggest planet you can be. You initiate asteroids at the beginning of the game as that's the most cost effective way of gaining asteroids, and you need asteroids to give you more resources. However, as time goes on (most people feel around 200-300 asteroids) the most cost effective way to gain asteroids becomes building ships that can steal asteroids and attacking other planets (especially as you gain "XP" for doing this). Therefore, while you use this page a lot in the first 5-10 days, afterwards you don't need it unless you're exchanging resources with others.

Protection

During the first 72 ticks of the game, your planet is under "protection" as said before. During this time, get used to the game, and as often as possible visit the mining page to initiate asteroids, the research page to start new researches and the construction page to start new constructions.
However, it's advisable if possible to have ships by tick 100, as that's when people start attacking!
Once out of protection, as mentioned in the mining section, the best idea is to watch for attacking fleets, and try and attack others yourself.