I completely agree with the original poster, this is not a good game for solos unless you like a lot of pain.
But my experience has been the complete opposite of most of the responders here. The first thing I did in this game was look for company that was recruiting (just like I did in Eve), and joined one. When I joined there were some complaints that the server issues meant that other companies were ahead of ours, but that didn't stop us from finding a suitable island within a few hours. And the island that we found was already fully claimed... so we contested the claims and moved in. And a day or so later we did the same thing to the next island over. The fact that players can have multiple claims didn't really slow us down since you can contest and take over a claim in less than two hours.
Some of the companies in Atlas already have over a thousand players. It isn't likely that you are going to be able to face that sort of beast on your own or even with a small group of friends. And for me, that is exactly what I was hoping for. If anything, what I would like to see in this game are Eve style markets (maybe in freeports) where companies can sell their goods to other companies without needing to create individual trade agreements.
But for all of the solo/small-group players, maybe they could have a separate server with a ruleset that is more friendly for that style of gameplay. Adding in things like limited number of claims, and property protection. Somewhere between PvE and the company-scale PvP server.
