Seeding options - best spacecraft

Following up from the best colonist poll - although I don't expect this to be anywhere near as one-sided.

TBH, I'm really interested to see what you guys think as I find all the options a bit meh.

I usually go with Tectonic Scanner:
-> Being able to see ressources instantly is a huge boon to decide the direction of your expansion.
-> Having Titanium nearby and getting that +5 prod right of the bat (I am always using Machinery) is a significant early game boost.
-> It also allows you to delay the techs for the other ressources so you may spam cities without the fear of destroying anything useful.

Apart from that I'd say that the Coastal Scanner can be quite good on water maps, since it allows early water trade routes and helps with scouting and expansion planning.

Fusion Reactor can be good if you have an energy rich start - with some luck you can buy the Trade Depot in your second city right away. Too much of a gamble for me, though. Might be better in MP games.

Retrograde Thrusters are actually much less useful than I expected, since terrain is mostly pointless. It's nice if it allows you to get a coastal starting location or to place your capital in a way to squeeze another city on your landmass, but that's about it.

Lifeform Scanners seem pointless. You can easily guess the location of nests via the forests from wildlands and the interaction with nests is only useful for abusing the Scavenging virtue.

Retrograde Thrusters although I would like to take the other options. I find the normal settling area is just too small for my taste. Even retrograde is barely big enough. Although, I'm someone who nearly always moved my turn 0 settler. I admire anyone who can live with the limited starts BE offers.

Retrograde thrusters is usually the option I choose. Though on an archipelago or continents map I would imagine that the continental surveyor might be a better choice.

I picked continental surveyor. Knowing the shape of the land is an advantage that is hard to quantify. And of course it being easier to connect external trade routes early is a plus. It's a lot closer than the colonist poll though. I often pick a different spacecraft option as opposed to picking the same colonists every time.

The techtonic scanner is definitely a strong choice as well as it leads to better city placement. I don't find city placement as important as in Civ V as I place cities closer together and end up with fewer missed tiles, but accidentally settling on top of 7 titanium you didn't see is not good.

I used to love retrograde thrusters but it is quite rare that a placement in the second ring is much stronger than the other options. The increased view is nice too but not enough to compete.

Lifeform sensor is probably underrated, there's certainly been times it would've saved me from losing an explorer or two early on. Early explorer loss wastes several turns of build time and you end up behind on exploration even more as your explorer makes his way back to where he was. Still, I think it is a weaker choice because it is useful less often than the other options.

100 energy is disappointing not just because of how weak it is but it is the least interesting option as well. All the other options were much more creative than "here, have a bunch of this yield."

I'm also a fan of the Continental Surveyor. I think all of them are strong, and this is much more of worthy choice than the Colonist "choice."

The only one that I feel is meh is the free 100 energy. What are you even supposed to do with that? What conceivable use does it have?

The snowballing trade routes advantage from continental surveyor just seems too good. Even if you don't start on coast, any of your expos will be able to trade with foreign caps for science, plus bonus from coastal TRs. If your cap ends up on coast, and you go pioneering, you can build a depot and get trading before your first colo is even out.

Honestly I don't even take CS that much any more, it makes the game far too easy. With geo scanner you at least have to explore a little and think about where your second city will go to get that titanium.

Bandobras Took said:

do[/i] with that? What conceivable use does it have?

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Alien nests also seems pretty meh. Aliens aren't aggressive enough to really have an impact on the game.

Another nice benefit of the Continental Survey is that it allows you to see where all the smaller islands are on the map, which can often contain resource pods or excavation sites that go unnoticed by the AI for a while.

Retrograde Thrusters, having a better capital is always important but the real benefit is the additional visibility around where you start, so you can effectively pick out better city locations and routes for your Explorers to go to not get trapped and grab Resource Pods.

I pick between tectonic scanner and continental surveyor depending on the map.

Generally, one or two continents = tectonic while islands = surveyor.

Even with continental surveyor, you won't be sending the long sea trade routes until the ultrasonic fence quest, and you can only send the trade routes if the other capitals and stations are on the coast. I find that this is only worth doing in island maps, which mean more sea scouted and almost all capitals and stations are coastal.

Tectonic scanner is nice to locate strategic resources early, and early titanium mines. This can give you a nice jump start, and help you claim and not settle on strategic resources earlier.

For retrograde thruster, the extra land seen would generally be scouted early anyway, and the second ring city placement is usually no big deal.

Lifeform scanner may be nice for finding xenomass as harmony and being able to avoid aliens, however I generally don't have too much trouble scouting nests.

IMHO, the strength of these choices depends on specifics of the map, however you don't know the map until after you picked. Also, these choices usually don't have as huge consequences as colonist or cargo choice.

If you enable "strategic balance" then Scanner is the best, period. Under other conditions it's probably 50/50 between Scanner and Surveyor.

I got used to retrograde thrusters until I figured out tectonic thrusters rock.

omniclast3 said:

Alien nests also seems pretty meh. Aliens aren't aggressive enough to really have an impact on the game.

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If you're planning Harmony, it can be useful to know where the Xenomass is ahead of time. You also get a good idea of the map layout, though not to the Surveyor level.

Seems I'm the only person who voted for Lifeform Sensor.
It's really good for a "no S/L" game or just for saving time on "S/L".

The explorers only get attacked when they moved in 2 hexes from an alien nest. So with the sensor, my explorer can have a safe time to find and dig the ruins.
With the help of 3 extra mods from prosperity tree, it's easy for me to get more than 6 ruins in early game, which can be rocky boost.

Surveyor + Pioneering is almost OP.
Then research Ecology for the Fence.

You get water trade routes from turn 1, they are safe soon after.
Plus it makes finding the shortest path to the other continent easy, and you can mop up the islands for mid-game pods and ruin.

Tectonic scanner makes the technologies which reveal strategic resources less of a priority and helps with early city placement. I like it.

I think Fusion Reactor is the only really lame option. I haven't gotten much mileage out of the lifeform sensor myself. Mostly because it's possible to kind of guestimate where the nests are. Lots of aliens around? Gee, I wonder what's in that fog of war.

s0nny80y said:

I got used to retrograde thrusters until I figured out tectonic thrusters rock.

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I liked the idea of Retrograde Thrusters until I found the "Restart Game" button. Sad but true.

This one is a lot more close call IMO and is probbaly the most balanced of all of them. I plumbed for reveal coastline. It is slightly map dependent of course. But i find with the reveal coastline option you can get your explorers to more efficiently cover the map. This means that you can do more expeditions and find more pods. Which ultimately means more science and more culture.

A note on the energy - i guess if you were to use this WITH the pioneering free tech, then by the time you have built a few initial builds (worker and something else), you might have a station up and running, then can get an earlier trade route up by rush buying either the trade depot or trade convoy or both. It probably needs a buff though. I would say doubling it might make it viable. Its not like you can rush very well in this game with anything other than affinity units.

Tectonic scanners beats all the rest handily if strategic balance resources are turned on, since it is basically a guaranteed +5 production in your capital very early on. Even without strat balance, it is probably a bit better than the others.