Ok, unless i read things wrong. Is this starting scenario supposed to be a hard loss where you eject your colonists on the planet using the cryptosleep caskets as escape pods and must crawl back from nothing to the stars again? If so, maybe just sneak a line about abandonning ship somewhere maybe?

Pretty much both Derelict station and Derelict Ships are meant to be loss, which is a shame. The only time you might be lucky enough is with some ship spawns having salvage bay AND catching some good salvages with enough food and materials to keep going. This one took me about 12 restarts or so because of how bad random is (and how SoS is meant as endgame content, not a separate gameplay layer, which leads to absurd needs even on start).

I've used all of the ships before and you can survive with all of them.

If you are struggling in orbit, you can always land the ship of the planet to repair it and gather resources. Use the basic sensor (present on every ship) to pick a spot you like on the planet. The small ship weapons act like mortars but very accurate. and if you can't beat a raid just launch your ship back into space and land somewhere else.

If you struggle with ship combat I would suggest you go the SoS2 mod settings and reduce the combat difficulty factor. This reduces the strength of the ships attacking you.

Have you even read the comment? This is the orbital station start, nothing to do with actually usable ships starts, you get a station wreck, barely working, no thrusters to land nor sensors most of the time. Moreover, this was a lots of versions ago and i do not know if anything has been changed.

Station Starts range from exceedingly difficult to fairly easy. They are balanced for several methods to survive and either escape the station (and later return to it) or simply stay on the station and try to hold out against the threats. If you want an easier time, reduce attack frequency in mod settings.

All of the stations are heavily damaged, and power is running out. You need to get out of cryo and immediately start looking for EVA gear to start repairing what can be repaired, and cut off power to systems that are wasting your reserves and fuel.

The main challenge of the stations is to escape, OR, capture an enemy ship and take off on that ship.

Staying on the station is a much more "good luck" scenario, but it too can be achieved through great luck and grind, and will require traveling between the RimWorld and the Station using shuttles early on. You can use the Scenario Editor to add/remove research into ship tech, which obviously has impacts on your survival.

By default it assumes you don't have the tech to rebuild the station, only use Hull Foam and basic power lines to last long enough to gather the remaining shuttles, and either board an enemy ship for supplies/escape, or shuttle to the planet. You can leave the station open as a separate map and come back when you're ready to loot it, or loot it and then land on the planet, and close the station map.

I've always salvaged parts of the station, cutting off sources of power drain, heat build up, and life support, to get rudimentary hydroponics going, and some beds and food. Then reach the shuttles, loot as much stuff as possible, and bail out to the planet below. Occasionally I've boarded attacking ships and captured those, and landed that on the planet, and looted the station.

Ultimately, this is RimWold with mods. There is no "right way" to play.

It's totally up to you to decide what is fun and try to do that. If it's not working, adapt, improvise, and try something else. Let failure on the station be part of the story to keep playing on the planet, eventually building a ship, and launching that.

If you want, you can also author station starts that are in prefect condition and save those to upload as a mod, too, using the SOS2 Creation Kit.

Very well said and put.

Originally however, when i first posted, i never found any shuttles on my station and it took me roughly 15-20 days to actually explore the whole station while save-scumming ship battles.

But that was quite a few versions ago so original comment is probably no longer relevant.

I'm trying out the derelict station start, and I got started in a ruined moonbase that seemed like a really neat idea. However, something's a bit glitchy about this scenario. The moonbase is actually a "ship", as far as SoS's code is concerned, and after a little while another ship attacked my base in what looks like regular ship-to-ship combat. This isn't working very well. I have no way to shoot back or flee, obviously - I'm a ruined moonbase that only just barely managed to get a greenhouse dome sealed against the vacuum. But the ship-to-ship weapons come in at the edge of the map and immediately impact the terrain, getting nowhere near my structures. I think all I can do is sit here being shot at for hours until the terrain is sufficiently flattened that the weapons reach my base, at which point I die.

I think a moonbase start like this should have regular ship-to-ship combat disabled.

You can change ship attack frequency, but the moonbase does have a lot of weapons to fight back, and can bring down ships. Just gotta connect them with power before they get hit.