Just bought this via the "First Colony" package, and I'm a little confused about the installation process with regard to order and necessity.

So the first part seems straightforward - d/l and install the base game from it's 3 components.
All of these are marked as "Evans 249143".

Where it gets confusing is the patches.
There are 4 each marked:
"Cernan"
"Tereshkova RC3"
"Kuiper"
"Gagarin Patch v3"
Okay, so normally you'd apply patches in version order. But there's no obvious order here as they're names not numbers. (Which is an irritating convention.)
And there's also the question of necessity given the below.

There's 6 DLC packs. Simple, just install them alongside the base game, order shouldn't matter as they're independant of each other.
But.... They're all version marked as "Evans 249143" the same as 3-part installer.
Which makes me suspicious that the patches above may not be required.

Could someone with greater knowledge than I clarify the process please?

[e]
Already covered www.gog.com/forum/surviving_mars/patches
Install game. Install DLC. Ignore patches.

You don*t need to install any of the patches, those are only for people with an installed older version.
The main download files are always the newest version.

The installation order of the DLCs is irrelevant.