One of the loading screen tips remarks that it might take a few attempts to beat a mission, though you may significantly improve your odds by having a good initial setup - that is, re-rolling the map by "restarting" the mission. If you do it too many times in a row, the game will briefly poke fun at you with an achievement, but still - if you don't have a whole lot of experience with the game yet, that's better than an early demise or misery of a highly unfriendly map layout.
Generally you want to see the following in the area where you land the ship:
- A water tile with at least 4 tiles of accessible (not blocked off, not in shadow) soil around it.
(4 greenhouses being the minimum to support 30 colonists)
The more the better - with some luck you might find 6, 7, or even 8 accessible tiles, and that's 1-2 early-game terraforms that can be used on something else. - An ore deposit, ideally with ≥2 adjacent soil tiles
- A glass deposit close by (e.g. behind one line of canyons/mountains)
With enough luck you might even have it directly accessible, but don't count on it - An additional ore deposit(s) not too far away (e.g. behind 1-2 lines of canyons/mountains)
- Additional water tile(s) not too far away
The following aren't obligatory but will help:
- A geothermal source not too far away
(remember that it takes a reinforced wire) - A relatively flat area for a city block not too far away
You can save some space and resources by placing the ship within the range of a (future) factory (that's a 3-block-radius circle) at the side of nearest water tile that you'll use for a future pump.
- If you take 10 colonists at a time, you don't have to build any greenhouses until you hit population of 30 (or even a turn after) - level up bonuses will cover the expenses.
- Remember that if a building requires a wire/pipe/tunnel, placing it over the existing ones will be cheaper - you can connect infrastructure first and then add buildings on top of that.
- Once you're past population of 30, you can trade resources, and the first offers are usually default-or-cheaper, which is a great option for speeding things up a little
- Colony Size bonus will fall under 2 after population of 60, so be prepared to research Efficient Housing and place a Community Center if you want to keep up the momentum. This is also a good point to start building your first city block.
- As far as I can tell, every mission can be completed while not accepting more than 15 new colonists at a time - so long as you can maintain the momentum and accept smaller batches whenever the game offers.