The following tips come from the game's official mechanics and from the published efficiency and walkthrough guides.
Space is the most useful key in the game. Freeze time to read terrain overlays, plan conveyor routes and think. The number keys set simulation speed - 1 for slow, 2 for medium, 3 for fast. Use slow speed during delicate moments and fast speed while waiting out production or transport.
Press C to paint many resource nodes at once instead of issuing individual harvest orders one by one. U harvests, Y sends officers out to explore and investigate. Learning these three keys early saves a great deal of clicking.
One material per line, sorting junctions when you must combine. This is the number one cause of a production line that appears to have stopped.
At 100 percent the connected extraction lines shut off and need a manual reset, which loses you time in the middle of a build.
Weather, eclipses and emergency shields all draw at once. Interconnect grids so no single failure kills life support.
Do not add production capacity when something stalls. Find the missing input upstream first.
On Kourou and Neral, life support capacity is the constraint that kills you, not power. And swap Solar Arrays for Fusion Reactors on Kourou.
Empty harvesters still draw power. Clear them out and reclaim the materials.
Do not send indoor-penalty engineers into deep mines, and put research-bonus scientists in the main labs. Keep workplaces near the landing area early on, since crew quarters are on the ship and travel time is real. Do not reassign haulers mid-delivery.
Harvesting biology without replanting breaks the Prime Directive ecology mechanic and closes off your options on that world.
Vulcan Science Academy faction ships trade for credits, resources and samples. When one missing item is holding up your whole economy, that is the fastest way around it.
And do not automate too early. Get one full production chain running cleanly on Daegus before you push to a second planet - the second planet in a colony sim is where a half-working logistics network becomes unmanageable.