Hello,
I would like to leave some tips for new players, as I constantly see that they lose drones or parts of their ships due to lack of knowledge of how the game works.

What I see most is that they care about coloring their ships or using accessories to make them more attractive. There is nothing wrong with this, but if you want to have a ship that is not destroyed when passing through a large mine or making many points in the races, then it is necessary to invest in other demands.

The key to this game is the crew and the upgrade of the parts of your ship.

I don't want to say that this setup is ideal for everyone, but it can serve as a basis for improving your game and not be so frustrating to see other players being able to play better than you.

My suggestion is that you have:

27 drone bays with 9 Lava, 9 Aqua and 9 Spark
20 crew cabins
The rest leave for cargo Hold 
5 Captains - (sum of the crew in 30% At least)
3 Engineers - (sum of the crew in 50% At least)
3 Gunners - (sum of the crew in 50% At least)
3 Cargo Hand - (sum of the crew in 50% At least)
1 Mechanical - 4 to 6% At least
5 Prospectors - (sum of the crew in 30% At least)

Of course you will not get this crew quickly, this suggestion is a minimum goal to be followed with the time and resources you have.

The % of your crew can be seen by using the "C" keys and clicking on Crew, or click on the circle in the lower left corner and then on Crew. Below is an example of % for Legendary, Ultrarare, Rare and Common Crewman. you can see that the better the rarity of the crew, the more he has performance, but he costs more and his take when selling crystals is higher (5%, 4%, 3% and 2%)


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(From Exocraft Guide)

• Captain: The Captain oversees the operations of the entire crew and thus Works to increase the effectiveness everyone else on board

• Gunner: The Gunner is your weapons specialist in charge of drones and tactical command. They will work hard to increase your overall offense.

• Engineer: The Engineer is vital for increasing the defense of your exocraft as they work to improve all systems during and after mining operations.

• Cargo Hand: The Cargo Hand amplifies your exocraft's cargo capacity capabilities by effectively handling and organizing valuable resources and parts.

• Prospector: The Prospector is an expert in extracting every last crystal from each mining operation and will work to increase your crystal yield.

• Mechanic: Mechanic is able to lower your exocraft and drone repair costs by keeping all components in tip-top condition. 

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Accessories are not necessary in this configuration. Sell them all and use the gems to upgrade your ship.

In the hangar, upgrade at least level 3 on ALL parts of your ship, including the Pilot Pod.

The Pilot Pod is more expensive to upgrade, but remember that it has a drone bay, a Crew cabin and a Cargo Hold.
It is possible to place up to 11 Pilot Pods on your ship, and it is a great deal to have more items than the 50 allowed. But as this is very expensive, go slow with this option.

Guardians tend to attack the weakest part of your ship, so try to level the upgrade to the same level and keep an eye out for any parts below 5% health. Change it before it gets lost, especially if it's a drone bay.

These are basic tips only, but very important for those who have not yet mastered the functioning of the game.

I encourage other experienced players to give more useful tips and help keep the Exocraft community active.

what about drones? is it really necessary to find rare or legend drones? i am really disappointed cuz i have evolved more than 100 drones but there are only 5 rare and 1 legend. any advices to get more rare drones?

@Spreadshot Legendary drones generally have more than double those common in life and attack and although they are better and make the game much easier, they are not essential to achieve good results. Ordinary drones with life above 450 are enough. You can use the weakest drones to merge with the strongest ones and upgrading the drone bays also helps a lot.
This difficulty in obtaining legendary drones applies to everyone. You can ask older players. Certainly most of them still don't have all the legendary drones.

@OldBigLion Nice tips there :)

thanks. I hope people enjoy it, as it took me a long time to learn on my own and I'm trying to make life easier for new players and even those who know a little more, just read carefully.
Many of these tips I was able to take advantage of posts made by @Pennybags and @Lisimba with great content.

i think there is a problem that new players wont read this

It would be interesting for other experienced players to post more tips and make this post a source of knowledge and discussion about game strategies.
If I see that there is interest from the players, I intend to post more tips, even if simple things can help.

I really like what you're doing here, and I learned a couple of things. I'll post some tips that I have later when I have more time.

During a race, keep an eye on booster in the upper right corner. They make all the difference for the race. Especially if your points are frozen or if you have double points.
And if it is with double points, do not open another box, it is the main booster in the race!

How about help on getting fast gems? I always need them but I don't have enough most of the time.

Also misc parts are only used for design and defense

Sounds a bit necessary and not useless -_-. At least they give you small protection.

And why not use a useful piece like a drone box instead of a decorative piece that offers the same protection and still has a drone that increases its attack power? With a drone I destroy a guardian in 4 seconds or less and he stops attacking me. Your decoration piece is shot for a long time and degrades quickly. Maybe when you don't have a lot of upgrades and don't have a good crew, the decor can be useful, but over time you will notice that they take the place of other important pieces. After all, you only have 50 positions to compose your ship.

----------------correction: the drone bay does not offer protection, but the crew cabin does, it increases your defense and according to the crew of captains and engineers, this defense is multiplied.

There is no magic recipe for earning gems quickly, but as you upgrade parts of your ship and acquire a good crew it becomes faster to destroy mines and shipwrecks and naturally you can get more gems in less time.

Defense in particular should never be underestimated !!!!!

they serve as defense while you don't have useful parts

I don't claim to know more than OldBigLion, who has been very successful at this game, but I want to say that there isn't a clear consensus on the usefulness of misc. parts. A lot of high level players have roughly 10 tiles of misc. parts, but a similar amount of high level players have none. Drone bays and pilot pods and cargo holds don't provide defense. Defense is only provided by crew cabins and misc. parts. You can use misc. parts in 2 ways. By having them at a lower level than other parts, guardians will fire at them instead of firing at more valuable parts that are more expensive to replace and upgrade. This won't deflect all fire but might make a difference. By having them at a higher level than other parts, they will boost defense points more cheaply than upgrading crew cabins. It's not smart to level up non-pilot pods to extremely high levels, because you will be spending more gems per damage taken at higher levels. It is a trade off between performance and gems/damage taken. If this doesn't make sense, read some about permanent durability, which is the mechanic that parts lose total health as they take damage, and this isn't restored by repairing. Since misc. parts are cheaper to upgrade, they can be at a higher level and provide more defense per tile than a crew cabin while still costing the same gems/damage taken. Misc. parts are also important, especially to new players, because they help your ship to look nice, and if you aren't proud enough of your ship to keep playing, you won't do well at all. But it's also not good if you go overboard with them so that you only have 3 drone bays. Then you will likely do so badly at the game that you quit. Try to use non-misc. parts as part of your design as much as possible. I use 12 tiles of misc. parts for design on my main ship, and I'd use less if I could without significantly affecting the design. I also have 10 tiles of pilot pods instead of 11. I suppose I care more about just having fun than being the very top player, but having fun does entail doing quite well for me personally. At a higher level, maybe misc. parts are not worth the space of a crew cabin or drone bay, so some of my points might not be very relevant.

@C92643 You are correct from your point of view where the defense, the beauty of the ship and the fun are important and you managed to understand that according to the style of play it makes sense to have the concern of having a greater defense than the attack.
But when it comes to performance, it is necessary to invest in your ship in order to take advantage of each of the 50 positions with the most suitable part.
Of course, eventually you will have to replace one or the other part that was damaged, but the cost for this is so low for those who earn many gems or many parts daily that it becomes irrelevant.
I would say that the player who just wants to play without much concern and does not have many ambitions to break records and score high in races does not have to follow my advice.
Now, if you want to be competitive and stand out in the game, I believe that I can humbly help with my experience.

@C92643 you have a really good point

@CaptainTundra Thanks, and I don't mean to disagree with OldBigLion's very good advice, but rather just point out the diversity of opinions about one subject. You asked about getting gems more quickly, which is a good question and common concern of this game. A lot of new players don't realize how valuable gems are. You get some gems from leveling up, but you level up less often at a higher level, and the gems you earn from leveling up is capped at 100. How valuable are gems exactly? An hour of mining will earn you maybe a little over 100 gems. It doesn't matter so much whether you attack big groups or shipwrecks. It also doesn't matter whether you mine something every 5 minutes or twice a minute. The gems build up for several minutes as long as you are not afk, and you win a random portion of them when you finally mine. Crystals are different than this of course. Make sure you mine something every few minutes you are not afk to take advantage of this. If you fight larger groups of guardians, I think you will win better parts, which takes your gem earning rate to maybe 200 gems/hour or more. If you are clever and trade the parts like I do, you can earn more gems from them.

Ways to earn gems:
1. Mining gems: as I said earlier, this can't be increased beyond a certain level besides the occasional powerup crates with increased gem rate.
2. Creating an account and leveling: This gives you a false sense of abundance then decreases quickly. Use these gems wisely.
3. Buying from the gem store: Gems are expensive enough that this isn't a substitute for earning them in game, unless you're willing to spend a ton of money. I'm glad people are supporting this game financially. You can also trade in game things for people to buy you gems if you're lucky, just don't beg people to do so.
4. Mining parts: You can sell single-tile misc. parts for 10 gems each. Non-misc. parts are 20 gems per tile. You can probably trade any part better than a single-tile misc. part for parts that are worth more gems together. I have a warehouse ship full of over 200 parts to trade, and some other people might as well.
5. Bounty: You can win 25 gems for completing the bounty, which increases to up to 38 gems if you do it every day. The bonus bounty will give you a free supply drop which can earn you more gems.
6. The offering well: If you take full advantage of everything the offering well gives you, including leviathan rewards, I think you will make more gems than you spend. I think this is true for every offering size. I do offerings as much as I can.

Ways to save gems (including ways not to earn gems):
A penny saved is a penny earned, as people often say. Know what is wasteful and what is fruitful so you don't waste unnecessary gems.
1. Don't buy parts more than you have to: You can mine parts, win them, or trade for them, all of which are cheaper than buying them. You might have to buy your very first parts if you are a new player, and you might need to buy double pilot pods if you aren't lucky and want those, but try to get parts elsewhere as much as possible. I haven't bought parts from the hangar shop in a month maybe.
2. Don't buy excessive supply drops: You get a free one from the bonus bounty, and be careful if you want more than that. They are a major sink of gems.
3. Don't sell really nice parts: If you are lucky enough to have a nice part in cargo, trade it for better things to sell. If it's in storage, don't sell it unless it is really low on health or you are out of room. Especially pilot pods, exclusive parts, and double or larger non-misc. parts.
4. Don't take too much damage or lose parts or drones: Play carefully enough that you don't lose things. If things start smoking before you've mined for a half hour, you're playing too dangerously.
5. Don't buy excessive drones: You can win lots of drones which will be quite a chore to train by themselves. Also, don't fuse drones until you have a good starter drone to fuse to. This will save you drones and possibly gems in the long run.
6. Don't sell drones: Not worth it! Better ways to earn gems.
7. Don't instant evolve drones: Also not worth it. Have patience, the drones earn you gems by saving you gems by evolving themselves. Let them help you this way.
8. Don't sell crew contracts for crew less than 5 stars: Let them level up and sell them for more gems.
9. Don't excessively upgrade parts: You can't upgrade a pilot pod too much, but with other parts, there's a tradeoff between performance and gems per damage taken. What is excessive will depend on your play style.
10. Don't train crew early: Training crew is best done in the late game when you want to improve your already perfect or nearly perfect crew.
11. Don't buy credits with gems: It's a very bad deal! I could give you a much better deal than 20 credits per gem.

Good ways to spend gems:
1. Making reasonable purchases: You'll need to buy some starter parts and starter drones and maybe some rare parts you don't win often.
2. Leveling up parts reasonably: Don't get too carried away with this early on.
3. Offering well: Do the largest that you can afford to do sustainably with credits. I do medium but I want to do large when I'm richer.
4. Searching for crew and hiring good ones: If you level them up, which can be done from the offering well's xp, they can be sold for 100% of the gems and 125% of the credits you hired them with. Getting good crew is worth it.
5. Multiple ships: Don't do this until you have a strong main ship, but it can be helpful to have multiple specialized ships.

I hope this helps some people. Let us know if you have anything to add or questions or different ideas.

Very good @C92643. Valuable tips, I hope the people enjoy it.

the offering well
is only for money / gems which is not needed

Offering Well also serves to gain experience for the crew and the ship. I've already won many legendary items there.

i also need help with well I wanna see how rare is a pilot pod

@CaptainTundra A few calculations based on my own experience suggest that you can get a pilot pod on the order of about once per thousand offers. Several times rarer than leviathans, but still my top source of pilot pods. Offer 25 times/hour every hour you're online for best results. I got a double pilot pod from the well once, but that's incredibly rare I think.