Tips for new beginner?

[TT]

Terraforming with terraforming buildings is not the best way to do it.  Not only does it put a strain on your frieghter fleet, it takes population to perform. Using terraforming modules on ships is a much more efficient approach. I set up a dock to start building a terraforming ship and just keep building it until I get maybe thirty of them. The ships don't use population to operate and they can travel around terraforming my empire.

[MarcAFK]

Unless you do a conventional start, then theres so many important things to research that by the time I have terraforming modules mars is usually done by ground based facilities alone.
Shortly after finishing my conversion of conventional facilities I'm building 2 terraforming buildings a year which go straight to mars, by then it usually only takes about 15-20 years to get mars finished, taking into account a good terraforming administrator, and at least the first level of increased terraforming gas production.

[TT]

If you don't start with them Then Sol based terraforming buildings work. Their proximity to earth means you can easily ramp up the infrastructure transfer, get colonists in those colonies and then the pop requirements are easily addressed. Plus you can transfer the facilities around. Once you get out of Sol though, I find the colonist requirements really hurts.  I find that getting colonists to the colonies outside sol to be the biggest limiting factor in growing my empire.  So I try to substitute ship components for population whenever I can.