So you have been put in this ship and let loose on the Galaxy. What do you do?

Looking around you find yourself in the Vulcan System and there is a distress call coming in from the local Starstation, SS Archimedes. You will accept this mission by docking with SS Archimedes. This the first in a series of missions, the Tutorial Mission Sequence (TMS) that has been designed to introduce you to the basic mechanics of the game. Whilst it is not necessary to follow the TMS, it is highly recommended that you do so. This is because the rewards that are given to you will be very useful later in the game.

Before you do anything else, though, make sure that, in the Options window, you have set Manual Grav Anchor to 'ON', Auto-open Warehouse to 'OFF' and Auto-open Autopilot to 'OFF'. Using the Manual Grav Anchor lets you toggle the Grav Anchor using the Left Alt key. Turning off the Grav Anchor allows the ship to accelerate to 'ludicrous' speed and brings the effects of local gravity into play. Turning on the Grav Anchor brings the ship to a complete stop relative to the local stars(s).The other two switches allow game play to move slightly faster.

To dock at SS Archimedes, you need to call up the Autopilot for the system and click the 'Dock' button. Your ship will automatically move to the Starstation and dock with it. More details about the Autopilot can be found here in the Space Travel[wiki.thespacegame.com] section of the Wiki,

Now you are docked at SS Archimedes, two passengers will board your ship bound for SS Andromeda in the Ceres system. Before you undock and leave this system you should do a couple of things:

• While docked you should remove the Axial Carbon Laser from your ship. This will increase your limited Cargo Space by two. When you upgrade your ship you should do the same with the new one. You should also remove the Class Armour Panels the ship comes equipped with and replace with Class 1 Armour Panels. These are easily sourced from the Galactic Market (GM) or from a Shipbuilder. For commercial operations your ship will not need any combat capability. Combat in Ascent is purely voluntary. If you choose to perform Combat Operations, you can equip a ship for combat and use that when you go in search of Combat Encounters. You use the Refit Ship option in the Starstation menu to do this. The details of this option are given in the Starstation[wiki.thespacegame.com] section of the Wiki,
  
• While docked also look at the Contracts Board. There may be a passenger who wants to go to SS Andromeda and you still have one passenger space. Also there may be contracts for Grain here. SS Andromeda supplies Grain and you will often make a better profit selling to a contract than selling to the Local Market. Bear in mind that all contracts to purchase material or deliver passengers have no time limit. Obviously, it is in your interest to transport passengers as quickly as possible because they use up your limited passenger accommodation.
  
• The Vulcan system has an Asteroid Field. Instead of purchasing Iron at the Local Market of the Starstation, why not harvest minerals from the Asteroid Field? It costs a bit of your time, but makes the sale more profitable. Looking at the Local Market you will soon find which materials are worth most. However, the most vauable minerals are Niobium, Tin and Promethium. Prices Players are willing to pay for these minerals at their Stock Markets (SM) are much greater than the Prices at the Local market or, indeed, the Contracts Board. To get a list of Player SMs where your commodity is needed use the Galactic Map page and perform a Stock Market Search. Be very aware that, at this time, some purchase order results displayed will be invalid. You will click 'SELL' or 'MAX', the line will disappear and no purchase will have been made. This is because at the time of sale the purchaser either lacked the warehouse space to accommodate the purchase or lacked the funds to pay for it. Please try not to be frustrated by this
  
  The point of all this is to maximise profit from trading and mining in these early stages of the game. The early game is about making credits to get a ship with more cargo space, buy a better Mining Beam and Ram Scoop, so that you can make more credits. There are lots of things to spend your credits on, mostly Blueprints for Colony/Settlement buildings and Starbase modules. Even if you do not intend to build Colonies or have Outer Starbases(OSB), you will need a few for your Settlements on Ceres and Vulcan and your Starbase at Apollo Deep Space. There are three ways to obtain money: Trading, Asteroid Mining and Gas Giant Skimming. Trading is the easiest as Mining and Skimming do require some Player skill to get the best results.
  
  You will see from the Inner systems map on the Getting Started[wiki.thespacegame.com] page of the Wiki, that each of the NPC Stations sells the one specific product that is produced on the Planet in the System, but they will buy all the other products, but at prices that vary slightly from Station to Station and from time to time. The Local Market is insatiable and, within the slight variation already mentioned, the prices are stable.
  
  The contents of the Contract Board and Shipyard and the prices at the Local Market of each NPC Station are refreshed on the hour and at 15 and 45 minutes after the hour. So what is a good place to sell now may not be the next time.
  
  So, you have accepted the first of the Tutorial Missions. You have reconfigured your ship for maximum cargo. You may have acquired another passenger bound for Ceres. and may have filled up you cargo hold with material. Now you are on your way...
  
  The TMS is not a 'let me hold your hand' type tutorial. It is more of a 'this is what you need to do, go find out how to do it' type of tutorial. This is where the In-game Help is invaluable. If you cannot find what you need in the In-game Help or the associated Wiki, you can always use the Help chat channel to get the information from another player. When using the Help chat channel, please be aware that you are asking another player and not a member of a dedicated Help Team. The Help chat channel is usually monitored by players with some experience of the game. These players are also involved in playing the game, so it can be a minute or so before you get a response. If you do not get a response from the Help chat channel, do not be afraid to interrupt chat in the Global channel to ask for help.

Bear in mind that, unlike many games you may have played, Ascent - The Space Game is, essentially non-combative. Therefore there is no external pressure to rush at things. Some reviewers have called the game "grindy". This implies to me that they found the game more of a chore than fun to play. This is not and never was the intention of the designer. He has said on many occasions that he wanted this game to be fun. I believe that these Reviewers have found it "grindy" because they are setting themselves goals that require a lot of repetitive play to achieve. You can take your time and enjoy the experience of playing in a friendly environment. The idea is to have fun. So, do not get bogged down doing the same thing for too long, change things around and keep it interesting. This also applies to the Tutorial Mission Sequence. If you get stuck or just get a bit fed up following orders, go and do something else for a bit:

There are two economies at work in the game: the NPC Economy and the Player Economy.

NPC Economy
Each of the NPC Stations, except the Cabal Trade Station in Janus A sells a specific product and buys the other products in the Local Market. The Cabal Trade Station only buys products. You can sell any amount of the products at any time.

In addition, NPCs will issue contracts for the basic products and rare products; Magnesium, Uranium, Tin, Niobium, Mining and Farming Robots. NPC contracts must be filled in one go, no multiple deliveries, but there is no time limit within which the contract must be fulfilled. So, it is a good idea to look at the Contracts Board every time you visit a NPC Station and collect any profitable contracts you come across. NOTE: At the time of writing, Tin and Niobium are best sold to Players at their Stock Markets. The Contracts Board offers prices up to 25,000 credits per unit while players regularly offer 100,000 credits per unit.

NPC Star Station Contract Boards also list any passengers that are looking for a ride to other NPC Star Stations. They do not pay very much, but if you are going their way...

Player Economy
The Player economy uses two, slightly different market places: The Galactic Market (GM) and the Stock Market (SM).
The Galactic Market
The GM can be accessed from any NPC Station and your own Inner Star Base (ISB). It operates by you Placing a Sell Order for a specified amount of a specified product at a specified price. This offer will then appear on a list of offers when another Player searches for the product you are selling. This means that the sale is not, necessarily, a quick sale. Your product will be listed indefinitely until someone buys it, or you take it down. Only then will you get the credits from the offer. The Buyer must buy the whole consignment, s/he cannot buy part of a consignment. Both these elements should be borne in mind when you specify the quantity to be sold and the price to sell at. There are lots of offers on the GM to sell product where either the quantity, or the sales price, or both are overly "optimistic".

Before you buy anything from the GM, you will be given some details about the Sales Offer, including who the Seller is and where the product is located. You should make a note of where the product is located as it is not necessarily at the place from which you are accessing the GM. If you forget, it will be listed in your Assets list accessible through the Character icon.

The Galactic Market is the only place where sales of Player-made Ships and Ship Modules can take place. If you purchase a Player-made Ship or Ship Module, it may be located at the Seller's ISB. Once you have accepted the Sales Offer, a link to the Seller's ISB will be put in your Auto Pilot (AP) so that you can warp there and retrieve the item. If your purchase is a ship, then you will have to leave a ship behind. It is usual to buy a cheap ship from the local NPC Shipyard, SS Plato, for this purpose. All Seller's Starbases are located in the Apollo system.

If you are buying a ship it is highly recommended that you scroll down to the bottom of the detail window and see if the ship is spaceworthy for a Player. Ships built to be flown by NPC Pilots are not spaceworthy for Player Pilots. A note in red will indicate if the ship is not flyable by a Player Pilot.

The Stock Market
Although you can sell materials on the Galactic Market, selling materials to a Player Stock Market has two advantages: you can sell up to the quantity the Player has a demand for and you get paid instantaneously. Presently there is one great drawback: the Stock Markets owned by inactive Players can sometimes be problematic. This can be because the Player has either run out of cash to pay for the sale, or the Player's warehouse has run out of space to store the materials. This will cause the offer to disappear from the Stock Market list even if you do not supply the total quantity demanded. It is possible, in this situation though, for a fraction of your materials to be bought; for which you will be paid.

Player Stock Markets will, also, sell materials to you. There should be no problems with this type of transaction. Some Players sell Carbon at a very low price indeed from their Stock Markets. There is a very good trading opportunity if you buy this carbon and sell at an NPC Star Station. Menzel 3 to Ceres, Prime to Veritas and New Dawn to Vestra are good routes.

Obviously, there are many opportunities for buying items from one Stock Market and selling at, either, another Stock Market or a nearby NPC Star Station Local Market.

There are many asteroid fields that have been discovered. The Asteroid Search Chart[charts.dataus.net] provides a method of searching for a specific type(s) of asteroid in the "public" asteroid fields. All named asteroids in a field can be mined. The Maximum Yield of a particular asteroid depends on three factors: the age of the asteroid, the Class of the Mining Beam used and your Mining Skill. This Maximum Yield will be obtained when you have heated the asteroid to a temperature between 2137 and 2245. At this point the beam will just turn completely blue. Be aware that if the temperature reaches 2250 the asteroid will be destroyed and you will not get any material.

Materials obtained by asteroid mining can be sold either at NPC Star Stations, on the Galactic Market, or to Player Stock Markets. Promethium, Tin and Niobium are the highest valued of the more regularly found minerals and should be sold to Player Stock Markets. Uranium and Magnesium are the next most valuable and should be sold to NPC Contracts. All the rest are probably not worth keeping and should be ejected from your ship. See the Wiki/Ship Computer for instructions on how to set up aliases for computer commands to eject cargo.

There are two types of Combat Encounter. The System Janus A is infested with pirates and Commander Dixon, captain of the UNCA Ulysses stationed at the Apollo Jump Gate in the system, will always have on offer a number of Combat Missions against these pirates. In most other inhabited Outer Systems you will find Encounters with Pirates, if you have the Encounters filter on your Auto Pilot checked. Both types of encounter are graded from Level 1 up. The higher the level the more difficult the encounter will be and the higher the reward.

Although your starting ship is equipped with an Axial Laser, it is highly recommended that you supplement this with auto-firing Broadside and/or Turret Lasers, This will require an initial investment as these modules must be purchased from a Player.

There are two points at which some Players have had difficulty with the Tutorial Missions. The first is the Delivery of Mining Robots and the second is the Wreck Salvage.

For the Mining Robot Delivery Missions special contracts have been put on the Contract Boards of the following NPC Star Stations:
SS Archimedes in Vulcan system
SS Mica in the Vestra System and
SS Elysium in the Veritas system

You should look for a green coloured line for "Rare components" which will be Mining Robots at 950cr each. If you cannot find these special contracts for some reason, you can search the player Stock Market for players who are Selling Mining Robots. There are bound to be some, though the price may not be advantageous.

The difficulty with this mission seems to be that the players cannot see the ship's wrreckage on the radar. To maximise your chance of seeing the wreckage, you should expand your radar image and turn on night-vision. Bear in mind that Warp Points are not accurate and you can be still some distance from the ship's wreckage. It is most likely that the wreckage is in front of you initially. So, procede forward at moderate speed, ready to turn on the Grav Anchor at the first sign of the wreckage. The wreckage shows up as very small, blue dots on the radar, even when the radar is expanded.

Some players find it difficult to determine if the wreckage is ahead of or behind them. The solution to this is to yaw the ship slightly (A key to yaw left, D key to yaw right). If you yaw to the left and the wreckage moves to the right it is in front of you. If the wreckage moves to the left then it is behind you.

The Wiki contains a detailed walk through of the Tutorial Missions and has pictures of some of the salient points.

This Mission is best undertaken using a small ship Class 1 to Class 4. Players seem to have had a problem with this Mission when using larger ships.

The real answer to this question is: whatever you decide to do.

However, that is not very helpful, so here is my advice...

The following assumes that you have not claimed the bundled Premium Access for the game. By the time you have finished the initial portion of the Tutorial and returned from Deep Six, you will have received and probably bought several items that may be very useful to you later in the game. The main ones are: a deed for a plot of land on Ceres and a Starbase (ISB) in the Apollo system. You, also, have permission to purchase a deed to a plot of land on Vulcan.

On the plots of land on Ceres and Vulcan you can create a Settlement. This is a small group of buildings linked by a Transport Grid that will perform one task. This Settlement should not be confused with a Colony which is a large, multi-functional community that you can build on any Rocky Planet or Moon in an Outer System.

The plot of land you will be assigned is a 6 x 5 grid of squares. Each square will be rated for its potential yield of whatever food or mineral is produced on the planet the plot of land is located upon. This is the base yield. This base is modified by the presence of the following buildings in the settlement: Power Plant, Water Tower, Residence Tower and Entertainment Complex. The Power Plant gives the least bonus. On Farm Worlds, Water Towers give a better bonus than Residence Towers. On Mining worlds, the reverse is true. An Entertainment Complex boosts the bonus from Residence Towers. On Farm Worlds, the presence of Fertilizer in the Warehouse will boost the bonus from Water Towers.To benefit from bonuses and to have the output from the Farms/Mines automatically transferred to the Warehouse, each building must be placed orthogonally adjacent to a Transport Grid node.

NOTE: A Settlement does not need any Power Plants or Water Towers to function. These utilities can be provided by the planetary grid. You will need Residence Towers so house Workers locally.

Your Settlement on Ceres will produce Grain, the one on Vulcan will produce Iron. Typical yields are between 8,000 and 10,000 units per day.

If you bought the blueprint for a Private Starbase, you will have a link to Apollo Deep Space in your Autopilot when you enter the Apollo system.

Warping to Apollo Deep Space will place you at your Inner Starbase (ISB). There will be an octogon-shaped structure floating in Deep Space. This is the first ring of your Private Starbase. If you claim your Premium Access, you will be able to expand this Starbase to a total of 100 rings in a tube-like structure. The first module you should build is your Research Laboratory and start research on your Shipyard. Then build a Warehouse, Mechanical Parts Factory and Electronics Factory. This leaves two slots for Modules. The other two slots must remain empty as they are the points at which further rings will be attached. I recommend leaving one slot for your Shipyard and build a Residence Module in the other slot. This will provide a production boost to your Factories. When you expand your ISB, you can remove the Residence Module and replace it with a Power Plant; as you will then need to provide Power to the modules on this ring.

So you should now have:

• Two fully operational Settlements in the Inner Systems. One producing grain and one producing Iron.
  
• An ISB consisting of one ring with a Research Laboratory, Warehouse and Factories producing Mechanical Parts and Electronics
  
• At least one spaceship, probably with a Class 5 Mining Beam and Class 5 Ram Scoop available to install.
  
  You are now at the limit of what you can build without claiming your Premium Access. You could carry on using these assets to obtain bigger and better ships, but you will be limited to Class 5 for the Mining Beam, Ram Scoop and Weapons you can use. Having completed the Starting Tutorial you should be aware of most of the things that are possible within the game. Now is the time to make the big decision: "What is my character's role in the game going to be?"
  
  How your character is going to act after this point will determine what you need to do. You should think long and hard on this. Then start planning the steps that you will need to take to achieve success. In this game patience is a virtue: thinking and planning will save you not only in-game credits but, just possibly, real cash. Colonies and Outer Starbases (OSB) need Stellar Credits (SC) to establish and support them. Stellar Credits cost real money. Finding that you have established a colony on a planet that does not have the resources you need is costly in SC and your game time.
  
  Remember, you are playing in a sandbox game. You can do whatever the code allows as long as it is respectful of other players feelings and not obviously a loophole in the code. The developer has made sure that nothing you have worked for will be destroyed unless you destroy it. There is no pressure to do anything unless you apply that pressure to yourself. You can build a huge number of colonies and produce millions of tons of product, or you can strap a Hyperdrive on your ship, install a Ram Scoop, fill the cargo hold up with hydrogen and head off into the 270 billion star systems and see what sights there are to see: unexplored star systems are randomly generated when the first player enters the system, so who knows what is out there?
  

At some point you will want to relocate a ship. This can be for one of several reasons, The difficulty lies in that there is no passenger service you, as a player, can use. You must always be in a ship of some sort that you own: you cannot hitch a ride with another player or NPC. Therefore you somehow have to get a ship to the destination that you can fly back in once you have delivered the ship you wish to transfer. There are two methods of doing this:

The Hawk is quite a useful little ship. It is the same size as your Starter Ship (Turtle or Hornet), but it has the ability to dock with any other ship. To move a ship to another hangar, simply

• dock the Hawk with the ship to be moved. Using the Refit Ship button and the Store Ship.Module tab, click on the ADD button next to the Hawk in the list of ships and modules.
  
• fly the ship to the destimation then release the Hawk. Using the Refit Ship button and the Fit Module tab, click on the REMOVE button next to the Hawk in the list
  
• change the flown ship to the Hawk and fly the Hawk back to where it is needed.

This method requires that you:

• fly your ship to the destination
  
• buy a Class 1 or other cheap ship
  
• fly it to the hangar where the ship to be moved is located
  
• swap to the ship to be moved
  
• fly to the final destination
  
• swap back to your original ship

The problem with this method is that you will eventually accumulate a few Class 1 ships at various hangars.