Just hoping to make the game a little more accessible to new players, I welcome any additional tips you want to share in the comments.

I'll add more things as they occur to me, or as they are suggested by the community. You can expect that I'll be updating this regularly over 1H2025, longer if the game keeps my interest.

The devs recently posted an FAQ. The FAQ includes information about how the forge works, with pictures. musizlover2008 also commented with helpful information.

FAQ webpage: https://astronomicsgame.com/faq/

Roadmap webpage https://astronomicsgame.com/roadmap/

A snapshot of this guide transcribed to the official wiki:
https://astronomics.wiki.gg/wiki/Guides/Tips_for_Beginners

NOTE: There may be differences if people start updating the wiki guide version. No attempts to be made to backport changes from the wiki to here.

If you miss your destination, you do not have to fully rotate to line up with the ship or asteroid, just use the key configured for backwards (Default S) and back up.

By approaching small asteroids (the free floating ones) slowly and accelerating gently, you can push asteroids to clear a path to/from your ship. This can save you time later if you need to dash quickly back and forth to load everything.
WARNING: If you directly impact an asteroid with your shuttle you will take a little damage and have to pay cube points to repair your ship (deducted immediately). If you hit an asteroid in such a way that it scrapes the side of the shuttle or also hits one of the thrusters you can take damage multiple times in a row.

As an extension of Tip #2-- you can push asteroids if you approach them slowly to make contact. While pushing an asteroid, you can use the asteroid to ram other asteroids at max speed. You can use this to clear several asteroids out of your path to make trips to and from your ship quicker.
WARNING: If you get close to the main asteroid or the freighter the small asteroid will be pushed to the side, which may damage you when it starts to slide away.

NOTE: This may get removed from the guide later. This behavior was changed prior to public early access and then (possibly accidentally) reverted for early access launch.

Equip the upgraded tether by visiting your ship and use the expedition terminal (near where you board the shuttle to go to the asteroids.) Select Manage Command Bot. You can also do this on the asteroid surface by interacting with the charging pad in the shuttle.

Find an asteroid with high horizontal drift to the right on the map. Land on an asteroid when it's near your current station. Mine it normally. If you're lucky, it's horizontal drift might just take you in range of the next space station.

Every jump will cost you 100 fuel regardless of the distance you travel. You will be blocked from jumping anywhere that isn't a station with your last jump and you can always target any visited station by pressing Q, even if it is outside of navigation range, so you will never get stranded. If you have already visited multiple stations, pressing Q multiple times will cycle through them.

With some recipes the output will be worth more than the resources consumed, and some recipes compress the resources to a smaller weight. Not all recipes improve the value or weight of the ingredients. If you don't need the manufactured good, don't waste the time manufacturing things that don't increase final value or reduce weight.

Your bot will move slower when at 0% battery (making you less efficient) and you can't shoot your blaster or use tools. Pirates, even a minor presence of 3 pirate bots can do a lot of damage while you slow walk to recharge.

This is more of a clarification than a tip. But, it can allow you to carry more mobile turrets during the early game, reducing the amount of time you spend running to and from your shuttle.

Before loading your shuttle there are two things to consider-- (1) the direction you will be leaving-- facing the shuttle towards the ship will speed you to the ship more quickly (no need to rotate later if you do it in advance.) and (2) the direction you will be loading from-- facing the loading bay towards where your workerbots are coming from will allow them to load your shuttle more quickly.

After selecting a machine or bot to deploy, you can click and hold to rotate the bot or machine in the desired facing. [Advised previous instructions to hold E were unnecessary. Note however, pressing E rotates the plecement preview by 45 degrees. Rotation from pressing E is only clockwise. If you are instead holding a portable mining turret with the tether tool, pressing E will only rotate it a small amount each time you press.][Originally mentioned by InertFurry in official discord but they did not explain how. Corrections offered by Alikimoko in comments]

Hold R to see machine health bars, forge and crusher contents, and the resource deposit type and remaining amount a drill has tapped in to. Since all drillers produce ~60 kg/min, amount remaining in the node divided by 60 times the minutes remaining (R/(60*M)) gives you a quick calculation of the number of drillers needed to get all the resources. If in doubt, add more drillers, they just cost iron.

It is ideal to clear a pirate wave and then go unload the shuttle so as to minimize risk of damage/loss. As of 0.73.6 there appears to be a minimum duration between pirate waves dependent upon severity of piracy in the area.

When you place a Surface Crusher along the path a workerbot is likely to take (e.g., Driller to Crane), the Workerbot will be forcibly redirected to drop off the materials at the Crusher. This can be useful for non-Gem deliveries as it will Crush 'chunks' down to 'bits' for packaging in a single storage crate. (Storage crates hold up to 200kg of bits.) This will
1. Keep workerbots active in the area picking up chunks and dropping them into a crusher without the need for workerbot stations
2. Reduce the number of workerbots required to transport goods back to the ship (because you can crush chunks down into a single storage crate.)
NOTE: On-Ship Crusher crushes gems to dust, deployable Crusher crushes chunks to bits for packaging in a storage crate.

You can put Molten Iron Forges on paths between cranes or between machines so that workerbots auto refill the forge when passing by. Any crates containing iron will also fill up the forge. Workers will do likely do this on their own, but you can also drag crates to the forge to speed this up.
NOTE: If at any point you want a forge to stop collecting new iron (because there is nothing left to do there) you can disable the auto fill in its advanced settings. Here you can also take any raw iron it still has out of it more quickly.

As you begin to exit the early game, go wild with disposable deployables. Iron is plentiful.

When you place a portable or stationary mining laser, the targeting logic will prioritize targets in the direction it is facing when placed. This can be used to expedite clearing a path through rocks or other obstacles.[ Credit: musizlover2008]

When you place drills they have an output direction. When you feed ore chunks into a crusher, the will be output as a storage crate which will increase transportation efficiency (one box will be a lot more than 1 ore chunk). Building on tip #14. Instead of having workers move chunks from drills to a crusher, when you place the drills so they face the ore crusher, they will automatically be fed in and you won't need bots to feed your crusher. Your bots can spend their time doing more important hauling work that way. [Credit: Shaylix posted a spoiler pic on the official Discord showing the setup.]

Addition from Alikimoko in comments: Drills can throw their chunks over other drills, so you can fit two rows of them. This can be useful if a deposit is really big or if you can position a crusher in such a way that you can make drills on multiple deposits all drop chunks into it. I've been able to make 13 drills all dump chunks into one crusher before.

Crusher recipes are many. Unusable recipes are hidden as of 0.73.4. To use the onboard Crusher, have any gem (flawless or cracked) in your ship inventory, then check the Crusher. Credit: Akikimoko on official Discord answered the question on 12 Feb 2025.

You can press 'C' to view command bot inventory, and then press the eject button to manually eject command bot inventory to a crate. [Credit: teo4512 in official Discord server.]

You always have 1 jump in reserve to return to station. [Credit: Pobiega on the official Discord server.]

You can stand next to a crate and open your inventory to transfer recources between the command bot and the crate. You can use this to pull out some specific resources or combine your own inventory with it to reduce the number of half filled crates your workers need to move. Instead of just left clicking to transfer one resource at a time you can also right click to move an entire stack to speed things up. [Credit: JaxterSmith]

Completing a contract will increase your Earth$ share for any future sale. It is more profitable to sell just the materials needed to complete a contract, accept the reward, and then sell the rest of your materials then to seel everything in one go. If you have the materials needed to complete multiple contracts, see which one will sell for the least and complete that one first.
[Credit: ProstheticAIM in comments]

As two expansions on this tip-- (1) Check contracts before mining to focus on goals that maximize cube credit rewards. And (2) Check contracts before selling, because from the second station onwards all contracts are "deliver X resource to Y station." If you sell resources to the wrong station, it will not progress the contract.

Pirates will focus on valuable resources, so by not setting up drillers until you can get workers to the area to collect those resources, you minimize the risk that pirates will be able to steal things (and you lower the effort to defend your resources.) [Credit: musizlover2008]

Additional tip-- you can also use this tip to put a chunk or crate in a location that is not near your bots and mining lasers, so that the Pirates will tend to spawn in that location more reliably, thus lowering your effort to defend against Pirate waves. [You will have to keep the rest of the asteroid clean for this technique to be reliable.]

In the early game, you can put a mobile miner in the command bot backpack and carry another using the tether tool. This will allow players to move two miners at once. [Credit: Squid]

Additional tip-- later on the player can purchase command bot upgrades to unlock more equipment slots in the backpack, to allow carrying additional mobile miners.

As of 0.73.14, the game now progresses manufacturing machines by 60 minutes. So sleep has more benefits. [Previously it just respawned asteroids.] [Credit: Lady Chaos, Patch notes]

General tips for bug reporting:

1. Bug reports should include (a) version of game where bug occurred, (b) summary description of bug, (c) replication steps- what actions or events took place to cause the bug?, (d) expected behavior, (e) actual behavior, (f) evidence including screenshots, video and player.log or player_prev.log.

2. Finding player.log and player_prev log

How can I fetch my player.log file to help with debugging?
The file is located in C:\Users\[USERNAME]\appdata\LocalLow\Numizmatic\Astronomics\
Player.log and Player-prev.log are your last two sessions.

NOTE: As of 0.73.6 (15 Feb 2025) player.log and player_prev.log contain no player identifiable information. No privacy information should be exposed when sharing it.

3. Share in Astronomics discord.