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[LordBlade]

What sort of system do I want?
What planetary bonuses should I be looking for?
How far away is a good idea?

[Brainwright]

A lot of your questions are best addressed by what exotic tech you have available.

Some tech can only be used on specific planets, and that can decide what planet is good for you.

That said, I always find a barren planet near the core systems to place my orbital works so I don't get penalized for pollution.  I don't want it cold or hot, but just right.  Refining would be a good addition to that planet's industry, but fleet command or mining can be hard to decide between.

Another example is a piece of tech that can make certain planets produce a lot of food.  The tech is finnicky, so you might not actually find a good planet to use it on... but water planets produce lots of food without extra addition.  This is all important, because food is one of the largest markets in the game, and getting a large piece of market share will get you a good chunk of money.

But... there are certain situations where you can get bonuses for placing your colony in a particular area of the map.  So you might want to keep an eye out for any situation that might convince you to relocate your facilities.

Nothing is going to stop pirates and Pathers, though.  You'll get disruption on occasion no matter what you do, so keeping the colony close at hand can make it convenient to address problems.

[Megas]

Ideally, the system should have
* A gate (very convenient once you have Janus Device)
* Habitable planet (for farmland and organics)
* Planet with no atmosphere (for fuel production with synchrotron, at least)
* More planets to get missing resources (e.g., gas giant or cryovolcanic for volatiles)
* Close to core worlds (at least close enough to avoid isolation penalty)

The lower the hazard, the better.  Avoid planets with more than 200% hazard.

Ideally, you want all planets in one system for maximum defense against invading forces, but if that is not possible or optimal with the current game, then colonize two systems, one with three colonies and another with two.

The only colony items you really need are synchrotron and a nanoforge, ideally pristine.  That is because Military Base and High Command have demand that is impossible to meet with Industrial Planning and colony improvements alone, and items, whether colony items or Alpha cores, are needed to meet them.

Those special areas are either sleeper ship or hypershunt.  Sleeper ship enable building revival structure that boosts population growth.  Hypershunt requires a tap to use and other items to get the required transplutonic ore to feed the tap, and your reward is +1 to maximum industry slots.

Pather cells will appear on size 4+ planets with 7 or more interest.  Mining adds 1, Refinery adds 2, most colony items add 4, hypershunt tap adds 8, AI cores in various buildings vary by type, and Alpha core administrator adds 10.

Using any AI cores at all on a colony will eventually trigger inspections from Hegemony.

[DirectionsToL3Please]

One other tip not given yet: don't waste the whole game looking for the perfect system.  Settle for good enough. One planet with no atmosphere, one planet with extreme heat, one planet with organics, and one planet with ores adds up to a very nice system. Doesn't have to be four planets, either; often enough, no atmosphere, extreme heat, and ores all come together.

The colony system you have up and running is better than the colony system you're still looking for.

[Daynen]

It also should be emphasized that if you find a class V planet, it's probably a good system.  If you find a terran world, it's probably only 100% hazard rating, possibly even 75% if the climate's mild; it probably has farmland too so you can feed your people and grow the colony without attracting TOO much pather attention early on.  Unless it's literally the only planet in the system, a terran world is usually an excellent place to start your faction.  Do bear in mind all the other noted factors above but any class V planet, especially terran, is a heavily weighted factor in my decision of where to colonize.  Terran planet+not terrible system conditions=probably want to colonize.

[Megas]

One other tip not given yet: don't waste the whole game looking for the perfect system.  Settle for good enough. One planet with no atmosphere, one planet with extreme heat, one planet with organics, and one planet with ores adds up to a very nice system. Doesn't have to be four planets, either; often enough, no atmosphere, extreme heat, and ores all come together.

The colony system you have up and running is better than the colony system you're still looking for.

For that, I pick Apogee start, skip tutorial, buy as much supplies and fuel with the 50k credits then explore the entire sector for promising systems, which takes several reloads.  (Explore a sector, then when I run out of supplies and fuel, reload and explore another section, and repeat until I have a good idea what the sector has for colony options.)  If I like what I see, I keep the game.  If not, I abandon the seed and try another.  Beats playing for hours until to find that the seed is a dud.  Better to find that there is a good system in a given seed now that later.

Aside from colonies, I also want to make sure the seed has a red Ordos system, ideally one with a gate too.  I found few seeds with only one red system, and at an inconvenient location, and one seed with no red systems at all, and thus, no way to farm double Ordos fleets for alpha cores and high +xp%, or to fight a full-powered Nexus station.

Bottom line, the first thing to do for a new game is find a good enough system to colonize and a red Ordos system in a seed before doing anything else.

It also should be emphasized that if you find a class V planet, it's probably a good system.  If you find a terran world, it's probably only 100% hazard rating, possibly even 75% if the climate's mild; it probably has farmland too so you can feed your people and grow the colony without attracting TOO much pather attention early on.  Unless it's literally the only planet in the system, a terran world is usually an excellent place to start your faction.  Do bear in mind all the other noted factors above but any class V planet, especially terran, is a heavily weighted factor in my decision of where to colonize.  Terran planet+not terrible system conditions=probably want to colonize.

One pitfall is the colony will grow, and if the player does not know whether to keep it, he has to keep an eye on it.  If it grows to size 4, it becomes vulnerable to expeditions from major factions.  If it grows to size 5, it cannot be abandoned.

If player wants a size 3 colony that stays that way, a non-habitable with low-ish to medium hazard is good enough.

[Null Ganymede]

Are you looking to spend untold millions of credits and many, many cycles building a set of colonies that will generate infinite money afterwards? Do you want it to be easily defensible or are you okay with scattered assets?

Are you just setting up a fuel and supply dump on some tech-mined world in the outer reaches?

Maybe a forward base in an enemy system to farm invasion fleets for hulls and weapons with a battlestation as bait?

A safe and centrally-located ultra-industrial super-exporter moneymaker in <2 cycles, all under cover of the faction you're commissioned with?

Scattered techminer colonies that get heartlessly abandoned once exhausted leaving the crew to their own devices?

There's a bunch of roles colonies can fill and you don't need to pick one.

[LordBlade]

Basically I would like to have a system with a bunch of colonies just... cause. I don't really need it. But I'd like to see the mechanic.
I found a system with decent planets (a couple that can make food, and others with resources). But it's far away from the core worlds.

[LinWasTaken]

Basically I would like to have a system with a bunch of colonies just... cause. I don't really need it. But I'd like to see the mechanic.
I found a system with decent planets (a couple that can make food, and others with resources). But it's far away from the core worlds.

does it have a gate? if so then distance no longer matters that much.
the only problem i can see is you will have an accessibility penalty for being far away from the core but even that can be fixed.
if it doesn't then its just going to be a bit of a pain to go from core back to your colonies sometimes.

[Null Ganymede]

Any system's viable tbh, it's a question of how much time and investment it needs to be monthly net positive / how long until it pays for itself.

For ambitious multi-planet goals the answer is "long time" / "aaaaages". Specialized single-purpose industrial worlds can come online real quick though.