It's Spoiler Season - Lets talk Colonization!

Greetings Pilots!

So far most of our spoilers were focused on the Evacuation aspect of the eXode experience. But as you know, once you have successfully made it out of the battle alive, another chapter of your journey will begin: Colonization!

Today we will reveal some cards that are focused on that part of the game and that can help you to establish a flourishing colony on the other end of the universe.

You may already know this kind of Prefab from the Tom Settler's Contract. If not, you can find a lot of information about everything Tom Settler has to offer here. The Octohome provides your colony with Habitat and Atmospheric Shielding at the cost of some Energy. Cards like this will make your early colony days a lot easier. Without Habitat your colonists will be exposed to the hazardous elements of your new world. While it always will be possible to survive without any Prefabs, life is going to be a lot harder this way.

There are two sizes to Prefabs. The normal size the Tom Settler's Prefabs feature and the Large Prefab that can be found on the Octohome. To bring any Prefabs with you, you need to reserve some room in your ships cargo hold. Each point of cargo provides you with two slots for Prefabs. The normal Prefab needs one such slot while the Large Prefab needs three slots.

Any slots used for storing Prefabs can't be used for storing cargo. Deciding what and how many Prefabs you want to bring to your Evacuation will be a very important decision you have to make. Fully load up on Prefabs and you will bring everything needed for your early colony. At the same time, you will miss out on all that juicy cargo out there which could potentially be a lot more valuable then the Prefabs you brought. Especially if you hope to find some special loot, like the Encrypted Federal Cargo, you should always have some free space in your cargo hold when you start your Evacuation.

Providing your colonists with food, water, and a place to live will be your first priority after founding a new colony. Once that is settled, you will have to make sure to protect your colony from any catastrophic event that could potentially completely wipe it out. Think of sun flares, meteor strikes, or an alien fleet raining death and destruction on your colony.

With an Orbital Shield, events like these will be a lot less likely to affect your colony. Charging it needs a lot of Energy and getting it to top power is going to take 15 days. Once it is fully charged though, it is going to withstand a lot of damage.

The Orbital Shield is a perfect example of the decisions you will have to make when you set up your new game. It won't do anything for you in the early days of your colony, because nobody cares for a planet wide energy shield when there is nothing to eat. But once your colony is growing, the protection this shield provides will be immensely valuable. Since it comes with the Droppable trait you could always burn a copy to grant it to an already established colony. But are you really prepared to burn an Epic card for a one-time supply drop?

With all these Prefabs installed your colony is really looking good. There is one thing missing though, Colonists! All surviving officers and crew are going to join your colony obviously, but that will not be enough to really get a colony going. To have more colonists, you need to rescue additional civilians during Evacuation... Or, you could have them onboard your ship already!

The Nuclear Family are a special bunch of people. If you use that card, you will bring a complete family consisting of mommy, daddy, and the two kids with you. They won't do anything for you during evacuation (other than rooting for you so they get out of this mess alive), but once you establish your colony, they will gladly join you as colonists.

Bringing the Nuclear Family is a gambit. The parents will be of bad to average quality, while the children could potentially be little geniuses...or completely useless idiots. Children will not do much for your colony initially. They first need to be educated, which is going to take an adult (or robot) some time to do. If they study enough, they could potentially become some of your colony's finest. When the colony is established, you will not immediately know their quality level. Finding out how smart (or dumb) they really are will take some time.

Once you find out that the boy is just a babbling buffoon you might feel tempted to discreetly get rid of him. That might not be the best idea though. Even if the children do not contribute much to the colony (yet), they still give all colonists a sense of purpose. Everybody is going to work a little harder to provide a future to these poor children. Also, their parents would be devastated if something was to happen to their kids.

Once the children have matured and received proper education, they can start their career in one of your colonies most entertaining businesses... mining!

No matter how many cargo crates and Prefabs you bring to your colony, one day it will be all used up. At that point you will have to either buy your resources from other players or start digging yourself. Bring some Drilling Machines with you and you can start digging right away! You will first have to look for a suitable vein and then set up your Drilling Machine. Once it starts working, you will extract mineral at an hourly rate.

The Drilling Machine also serves as a perfect example for our Dynamic Upgrade mechanic. The Drilling Machine comes with the Upgradable (4 times) trait which means you can burn a total of 4 additional copies in order to upgrade one of its stats. Each time you do an upgrade, you choose the stat you want to improve. For the Drilling machine this could either be +1 QL Drilling penetration, +1 unit / hour mining rate or -0.1 / hour Energy consumption.

The card itself is common so it should not be too hard to acquire enough cards for your upgrades. Still, the choices you make here are permanent and they will matter. Do you want a Drilling Machine that can extract the most mineral in the shortest time? Do you need to penetrate some extraordinary dense rock or are you running low and energy and need to preserve as much as you can? With the limited number of upgrades, you can't just create a jack-of-all-trades. Instead you will always have to plan ahead and pick the Drilling Machine best suited for the job.

That's all from us today but we will be back shortly with even more spoilers for you! We still have several factions, ships, prefabs and so much more to show you. Until then, make sure to present your Corporate Licence unsolicited at any time!