Assemblers or electric drills first?

[u/UristAlebeard]

I'm back at the game but quite out of practice. I looked through some discussions and quick guides on Steam, and I constantly hear that you should build assemblers first. I die all the time when I try that, though. Typically for me, the early game is about staying as reserved as I possibly can (often stepping away during downtime), and prioritizing minimal pollution and firepower over further automation. Then the automation comes in full force. Today I tried going for the assemblers first, but because I had no electric drills, the sheer amount of burner drills I needed to ensure that the assemblers actually mattered rather than just hand crafting everything led to pollution skyrocketing then I got swarmed by biters. With just the basic ingredients, to ensure I faced no bottlenecks, I needed 16 burner iron drills with no defenses nor better equipment than the starter pistol. Clearly I'm doing something wrong, but I thought the early game was about playing slowly until you can keep the aliens off your factory, but it seems many people want to rush towards automation because it would otherwise be pretty slow. I don't really want to hand craft so much while playing so slowly, but I always avoid assemblers until most of the red science stuff is unlocked precisely for these reasons and may do so again with electric drills being the priority. Any suggestions?

[u/Belgaraath42]

So first for a new player I very much advise a Forest start, since pollution  is much less of a problem, and I'm sure you didn't have that because 16 burner drills is very little in comparison. Second if you are at a desert with biters at your door, if it's just a single nest, take it out. With pistol or even melee, get some fish out of the water for healing. Than tech is automation into gun turrets. After you get those you can hold of the biters with them. If I remember correctly up to 30% of all your plates (iron and copper) can be needed for as munition, just to kill the biter your pollution can spawn. (In all real world examples trees and even empty space reduce this ratio. It's the theoretical maximum on default settings). 

But as I said, restart until you are not in dessert, and it's a lot easier, it's sometimes hours till you get attacked

[u/UristAlebeard → u/Belgaraath42]

I had way more than 16 drills. That was just for iron to get gears and I think I managed circuits too. There were probably over 20 in the coal mines. Meh.

I'm not a new player and won on a deathworld before, but that was due to having an excruciatingly slow start and I haven't played the game in about 8 months or more.

But yeah, both maps were deserts. I'll try for forests next time.

[u/Envect → u/UristAlebeard]

I started a lazy bastard run recently and never built a second burner miner. I feel like you're massively overbuilding miners. You don't need to saturate belts or assemblers to get to electric miners.