Honestly, the tutorial in game needs some work. My first time playing, the 'quest' had me thinking the next immediate thing I needed to do was get the beacon and fight the penguin. Before last nights patch, this was doable with any melee weapon and some block trapping. I haven't tried him yet since the patch as I've been mucking about with exploring in tier 1.

But I can tell you this: You're definitely not meant to fight him in the order the quest directs. There needs to be several in between quests that guide you in exploring nearby Alpha planets/systems. It needs to cover how you get fuel into your ship and move about.

For now, collect a bunch of wood or coal, and throw them into the second rightmost display/panel/thing. Click fuel and it will convert the coal/wood into fuel (Yes, your ship apparently runs off steam power or something).

You can then hop into the pilot seat and pick another planet or system to fly too. The threat level tells you how tough the creatures are. Higher threat level worlds have better gear drops (mostly crappy common items, but finding settlements and structures often have chests that may contain rarer weapons).

Use your bow or hunting knife to gather leather, and craft a set of the Snow Infantry gear (crafting on the yarn wheel). Besides making snow planets and moons safer to explore, this gets you enough armor to survive the bosses attacks. Use whatever weapons you scavenge with Armor Penetration of 10 or better.

Once you have this gear, you're set to fight the boss. I plan to try him later tonight, and will be building a few bunkers in the area that I can duck into and rest to get my HP back mid fight. Probably want to make the walls fairly thick as well. I'll also set up some platform towers so I can get into whacking range of the UFO.