A little over two weeks after the announcement of the first eXode Planetary Challenge, the Community Managers team is back with another installment, The Baldie Challenge! Things look to be even more interesting this time around, with quite a few new options and restrictions to consider.

First up, as implied by the title of the Challenge, all contestants must launch using a Baldie Shuttle, the smallest ship currently available, which can be equipped with only 2 Crew, 1 Equipment, 4 Cargo, and 2 Passengers (plus the Officers provided by your origin).

Secondly, this challenge must be completed using the Version E launcher currently available by launching an evacuation after logging in at exodegame.com, and using the Save Deck feature. This results in two additional restrictions: only the base versions of each card can be used (since neither Elite stats nor upgrades have been implemented yet) and you can only use cards in your collection (this also means you can't participate in this challenge if you do not own a Baldie, though at the time of this writing half a dozen are available on the eXode Starbase Market for $0.40 each, and I am willing to trade you any common card for a Baldie if you don't have one and want to participate in the challenge).

The Challenge ends at 15:00 GMT on July 22nd, which is 10:00AM the same day CST. In other words, you have about three more days to enter. For the rest of the fine print, be sure to read the full post by @exodenews on PeakD.

The Challenge

The challenge itself is to colonize one of three celestial bodies and survive for 90 days using only the supplies you bring with you (i.e. no airdrops). Every 15 days (1 real life day) one or more random events will occur that your colony will have to overcome, earning you increasingly better random rewards from @exoderewardspool the longer you survive.

The Ocean World

The Ocean world seems to be almost entirely made up of water with only some tiny islands dotting the southern hemisphere. The planet seems to have a breathable nitrogen oxygen atmosphere and the average temperature seems to be at around 30°C at days, falling just below 10°C at night. With your Baldies simple scanners, you don't have any means of scanning the oceans for life but the islands seem to be uninhabited.

Breathable air and Earthlike conditions make Atmospheric Shielding and Life Support less essential to bring for this choice. There is no mention of edible food nor drinkable water, though both are possible. The biggest obvious threats seem to be tides, flooding, storms, disease, and indigenous creatures.

The Moon

The moon is devoid of any atmosphere and its surface seems to be made up of rock entirely. From your first observation, temperatures fluctuate between -150°C and +100°C, depending on whether it's day or night. It does have some gravity, but only roughly 33% to what you are used to. Something is special about the moon though. On the northern pole, there are several partly destroyed buildings of alien design. Whoever built them seems to be long gone, but it seems like this moon was once home to a small alien outpost.

No atmosphere and massive fluctuations of extreme temperatures necessitate both Atmospheric Shielding and Life Support for this choice. Bringing a source of Food and Water is a good idea as well, though it is possible these or other supplies may be found at the abandoned outpost. Potential threats include meteor showers and increased alien activity.

The Asteroid

Finally, the asteroid seems to be in a stable orbit just across the system - something tells you that it's almost too perfect to be a natural occurrence. It's too small for an atmosphere or gravity but it seems to be made up of a mixture of rare metals and earths. As with the moon, the temperature varies heavily, although the same side of the asteroid seems to be facing the sun at all times. It is perforated with tunnels that may or may not be of natural origin. Because of its dense components, your sensors are only able to scan the outer layers of the asteroid.

Like the moon, this choice requires bringing equipment with Atmospheric Shielding and Life Support as well as Food and Water. The tunnels scream Space Slugs. The stable orbit might mean increased alien activity as well...though the built-in tunnels and dense components could help you hide for longer should the aliens make an appearance.

The Choice

Given the Cargo space cost to generate and maintain Life Support, the easiest location to plan for mechanically is The Ocean World. If you don't have a Shelter Happy Five, this is especially true, and almost necessitates landing there (see the Cargo section for more information). The other details provided on each location are sparse and nonspecific, the potential challenges are unknown, and the risks and benefits of each are debatable. Thus, the choice between one or the other of the last two seems arbitrary.

Origin

Both the Stranded Trader and the Cruise Ship Captain are subpar choices, as their benefits won't apply with the Baldie and the Elected Leader has the same synergies and more besides, so pick him if you wish to run a Civilian crew.

The Repentant Pirate grants one more officer than other choices, which could prove helpful given the limited crew available on the Baldie, though on the other hand that's one additional mouth to feed and cargo capacity is minuscule.

The other three choices are the Navy Lieutenant, Secret Agent, and Ark Scientist, and all are good choices, depending on Officer and Crew selections. The best builds will maximize synergies to increase the Quality Level, though whether the Challenge factors in QL for its events is not clear.

Equipment Set

This is a short-term survival challenge, so I wouldn't bring equipment focused on production or rewards (so don't bring Rare Plants Collection, Diplomatic Gifts, Federal Database, or Narcotics Genefactory). I would suggest that every person on your ship have access to Armor with Atmospheric Shielding, and that includes any passengers you bring along. Since you can't pre-equip most passengers, Research Suits or Eisen Suits are both good choices. If you choose not to bring any Passengers for sustainability reasons, and pre-equip all your Officers and Crew with space armor, then the Medical Bay is another excellent choice. You will likely need weapons to defend your colony at some point, so if you don't have any weapon drops from Rekatron or Syndicate contracts to equip your Crew with, bringing the FMR-17 Atonis Military Rifles instead.

Ship Staff

What type or kind of challenges each event will present is unknown, so it is best to be prepared for anything. That means having crew with expertise in a wide range of areas. Including Synergy bonuses, try to have at least one person of QL 4 or better with the following skills:

• Mechanics and/or Cybernetics: if anything breaks, you need to be able to fix it
• Medical: injuries are almost a guarantee in a challenge like this
• Warfare and/or Shooting: take down threats before they pose mortal harm
• Science: understanding the problem is half the battle

This is doable even with the limited crew compliment of the Baldie and regardless of Faction choice, though some Origins will limit your choices and others will be stronger in some areas.

The first skill set, Mechanics and Cybernetics, is actually rather difficult to acquire at QL4+, as there are only a handful of cards with those skills and most of them have low quality levels. Equipping a Universal Fixer Suit on the character in question is an effective way to solve this problem. Syndicate chipping your origin to include a Syndicate Hacker is another strategy, though he would still benefit from a Fixer Suit.

There may be additional essential specialties other than the ones listed above. Having a diplomat (high Charisma, Conversation, Empathy, Diplomacy, etc.) might be useful if hostile humans make an appearance (or non-hostile aliens) or to placate any psychological issues that arise. Leaving and rendezvousing with the Columbus might require a Pilot (Piloting, Spaceships), especially if the aliens show up for the finale. Other scenarios I haven't thought of are also possible.

An important note: it may be beneficial to launch with less than a full complement of Officers, Crew, and Passengers. A fully loaded Baldie can have seven or eight total people on board (depending on Origin choice). But given its limited Cargo capacity, you might have more luck supporting three or four people instead. Or use robots.

Cargo

This is by far the most essential and difficult part of a successful run in this challenge, especially on The Moon and The Asteroid. An unupgraded Baldie only has a Cargo rating of two, meaning it only has four cargo slots. That's not a lot.

Meanwhile, the amount of cargo that you will need to survive is quite high. A colony on The Ocean World doesn't need Atmospheric Shielding and Life support, but will still require food and probably some shelter as well, and a generator to power it. But The Moon and The Asteroid require both and the former as well. Even limiting your crew to Robots doesn't solve this problem...you still need the necessities for your Officers (as there are no Robot Officers), and will likely need Robotic Parts for your Robots, which takes up precious Cargo slots.

Habitats

The only Habitat suitable for this Challenge, as previously touched on, is the Shelter Happy Five, or perhaps the Tom Custom. The other three living spaces (Octohome, Tom Starter, and Life Block) are all large prefabs, meaning they take up three (!) cargo slots, leaving only one more slot for everything else that is needed.

The Happy Five provides five living spaces and QL7 Atmospheric Shielding while only requiring three energy per day.

Two Tom Customs provide four living spaces, QL2 Atmospheric Shielding, and require four energy a day. With no passengers and a Kilbot, that leaves two open cargo spaces for everything else.

Otherwise, a single Tom Custom might be enough for emergency situations for a colony on The Ocean World, leaving the rest of the colony to sleep outside or make shelters from natural materials.

Supplies

For food and water, there are two options: the Strategic Foodie-Moodie and Soup and Cook. Neither is enough for a full complement of five people for 90 days. Soup and Cook would exhaust its supply in 40 days, while the Foodie-Moodie provides continuous food in exchange for one energy but only for three people (and "water" for only one person). One of each would provide enough for 94 days of food and 58 days of water.

For Life Support, there's the WHC Unit and TOM Beauty Air. The WHC Unit provides enough Life Support for a full ship of five, but only has enough Oxygen Crystals for 25 days. More crystals would need to be acquired to keep everyone alive for the full 90 days. As a bonus, however, it produces water and energy as well. The Beauty Air is a stockpile of 100 units of Life Support, which would last that same five people only 20 days, and then be gone.

One Foodie-Moodie, Soup and Cook, and WHC Unit together would provide plenty of Food, Water, and Life Support for the full 90 days assuming additional Oxygen Crystals can be found, but takes up three of the four cargo spots, and with only one energy a day leftover to power whatever is placed in that last slot. As you can see, deciding what to bring and what not to on a Baldie is a difficult and delicate balance.

An alternative to food and life support might be the Biodomes, which provides agriculture space and potentially oxygen as well from the conversion of carbon monoxide by the growing plants, but growing them would take time and is unlikely to generate food or life support in the short term.

On The Ocean World, it could be argued that a Scientist could convert the salt water of its oceans to drinkable water with the appropriate Lab Equipment, assuming that there isn't any drinkable water already present on the islands (either locally or ground water reachable by a well). There might be fish available for food in its abundant waters as well.

Infrastructure

Energy outside that generated by the fuel on the ship has three sources currently: the Generator TR-20, Generator TR-100, and the aforementioned WHC Unit. These generate 1 energy / day (max 50), 10 energy / day (max 250), and 2 energy / day (max 50), respectively. In addition, Energy Cells can be added for an additional 50 max energy potential for the Generators (additional Oxygen Crystals add additional max energy to the WHC Unit but have no card source, currently). Of these, only the TR-100 comes close to providing enough energy for a Happy Five for a full 90 days (it provides it for 83 days).

However, fuel can also be converted to energy at a rate of 1000 fuel for 1 energy. A fully loaded Baldie is likely to have about 260k+ fuel leftover after a standard jump and landing, thus able to provide 260 energy in total with an average output of 2.89 energy / day (or about 87 days powering a Happy Five). But that does assume a normal jump and landing, and that hasn't been guaranteed. Proceed with caution.

In summary, when loading cargo, consider how much energy each card uses and plan accordingly. Don't let your life support fail for lack of energy.

Conclusion

A few other people have already posted their builds in the comments section of the announcement post, which you can check out to get a feel for what has been done so far. If you are new to eXode, @veryanprime is offering some free cards (including a Baldie) to get you started if you act fast (see his post for details).

Otherwise, this guide should hopefully equip you with the tools you need to build your own challenge deck from the cards in your collection. I will be uploading my own deck here, utilizing the same strategies I've just detailed, once I put the finishing touches on it sometime in the next few days. I wanted to get this guide out to you as soon as possible.

As a final reminder, you have a little more than three days left to polish up your own entry, save it in the launcher, and post a link to it in the comments section to enter. Don't wait too long!