I haven't done Plymouth Starship I (yes, I, not II) on hard, but I think this goes for all difficulties:
When you start out, you'll be in a small map on an area where a huge volcano northeast of you will mercilessly burn your base to a crisp. To the west, you have a safe haven with almost no distasters, but there's no ore there at all, and to the east, you have ore heaven, but it has earthquakes everywhere. You have to relocate your base really fast before the volcano erupts. Since every time I located my single base to the east, it got destroyed by earthquakes, I would try having 2 bases: one to the east for mining, and the other to the west so you can just survive. And no, I'm not sure where the rare ore mines are, because the damn volcano and the earthquakes kill me too quickly.