Alien Market Simulator Beginner Guide: What to Upgrade First on Your Space Station
Alien Market Simulator starts as a weird little space shop and then keeps handing you more businesses until you are basically responsible for an entire roadside service station in space. You have the market, fuel, food, bathrooms, staff, cleaning and a loan hanging over your head. My first series somehow became a toilet based economy, so clearly there are several ways to run the place. This is the more sensible version.
Get the shop stable before chasing every business
The market is the easiest place to learn the basic loop. Keep products on the shelves, scan customers through, stay on top of deliveries and make sure the station is not filthy. Once that is producing reliable money, the other businesses feel like expansions instead of emergencies.
The current progression separates the shop, hotel, fuel and food into their own tracks, so you do not need to rush every system at the same time. Pick the part of the station you actually want to improve and put money there.
Cleaning and bathrooms are not optional
Dirty floors hurt the experience and the bathrooms can actually produce tips, so cleaning is doing more than making the station look nice. I would keep those areas under control before spending heavily on decorations.
A cleaner becomes valuable once you have enough space that running around with cleaning tools starts eating the whole day. The current version also gives you more control over staff areas, which makes automation much more useful than it was at launch.
Hire robots for the jobs that keep interrupting you
Restocking and cleaning are perfect jobs to automate because they never really end. If you find yourself dropping whatever you are doing every thirty seconds to refill a rack, that is the game telling you where the next hire should go.
Staff still has a cost, so I would add them gradually. One robot that removes a constant headache is better than hiring everybody and wondering why the station is broke.
Treat fuel and food as separate businesses
Fueling ships and running the food stall both add their own progression and upgrades. I would open them when I have enough cash and attention to actually support them. The fuel system can be upgraded for more capacity, while food has its own recipes and staff progression.
The mistake is thinking every unlocked service needs to be maxed immediately. It does not. Let one business fund the next one.
Keep money ready for the loan and the unexpected stuff
The loan is part of the game, not something you can pretend does not exist forever. Keep enough money around that a payment does not wipe out your ability to restock the store. The loan system has been reworked since the earlier builds, but the lesson is the same. Do not spend the entire bank account on shiny station upgrades.
You also have thieves, garbage problems and aliens who can decide violence is the answer. A cash buffer is boring right up until the exact moment it saves the day.
Expand in layers
My preferred order is simple. Make the store work, automate the repetitive jobs, get one extra service earning, then move to the next thing. Alien Market Simulator gets chaotic enough on its own. You do not need to help it by opening the market, hotel, fuel station and restaurant while you have twelve dollars left.
Want to see my Alien Market Simulator playthrough?
This guide is the sensible version. If you want to see what actually happened when I played it, start with Part 1 below and watch the whole thing go off the rails from there.