Emphatically disagree. It is way way too early to be calling for buffs/nerfs. It took quite a while to learn how to play scientific. Now its my favorite.

IMO scientific really really good.

The scientific boost allows you to completely ignore the underlying resource level, which is great because of the building bonuses. A cluster of a low gets a free mining buff as you attach the same building to one another. Not having to waste claims mining stuff is great.

Fuel. although the buildings are built away from, if you pay attention to where you found your colony, you can get some of the buildings attached to your colony, and have the other resources be close enough. You use less fuel because you do not pay for shipping the inputs, only the final product. Don't sell the first shipment. You'll accumulate a bit of debt, but the resource panel tells you if your production is positive or negative. You burn so much less fuel than expansive or scavenger.

Use the research boost. You should be able to research anything you want first. You don't have to worry about sabotage as much. This is huge, but I didn't see much in the few public games last night.

Also, The science tutorial isn't very good. The map is terrible for scientific because there are very few clusters of iron and no clusters of water. It's winnable, but its not exactly easy.

Yea, could be the tutorial map giving issues. There's hardly any iron, and no good place to put HQ near resources.

I'll give it a whirl on a different map and see what happens. I still think they need something, although maybe it's just a matter of only picking them when you've got a map with a ton of resources jammed together where you can drop your HQ right by them.

That's interesting actually. I didn't realise that it always produced resources the 1x rate regardless of the source. I assumed if you built on a 2x source then it would produce twice as much of the converted resource. That probably explains why I keep losing at the tutorial. 

Finally beat the scientific tutorial, after about 8 tries.  Notice that the map is always the same, so you can kind of figure out where you want to go.  It seems like you're always behind in claims, so I went all in with three steel mills grouped to produce steel fast to get the first HQ upgrade quickly.  Then some glass, aluminum, and life support, although I switched to using water pumps with separate farms and reactors because it gave me some flexibility when the water shortages came, which they always seem to on that map.  Dang, water was so short, I hardly got much use out of the offworld rocket.

If you're lucky you can nab the one geothermal vent with a claim drone on the second upgrade until you have the steel to build it, before the AI gets there.  Sometimes they hit that first, but then again, power was $1 for most of my game anyway.

Scientific is hands down probably the strongest of them all, even if no as easy to play.

The bonus makes it the most resilient to enemy blackmarket actions.

In a customized game where there's no blackmarket action, scientists lose their big resilience bonus, they aren't the best race in that particular scenario.

But in a normal FFA game they are, since enemyy blackmarket actions are the biggest threat to your economy.


People don't know how to play scientists properly because they play expansive first and foremost I'd assume. You just need a hella lot of steel, that's the main secret.

Hella lot like 5-6 steel tiles. It's the main resource, that, glass and fuel and you're set most games.

I only played like the first two tutorials, then started MP.

There are 4 good spots on the map for a base, when creating a base for scientists, you want to border directly onto iron.

I won the game on the first try, I made my base in the top right corner, not directly on the top right, but the one more towards the middle.

What you want to be looking for is an initial triangle of iron, if you can get a trapezoid, that would be ideal. I only discovered later in the non scouted part in the top left that - the top left would have been an ideal base. You got enough iron bunched up there.

You want to get 3 steel tiles, 1 alu tile. Make sure to let the AI build first, so you get the extra tile. Then sell your base resources and buy anoher steel mine or 2nd alu tile, i dont remember which order I do it in. You need 2 alus, the rest into steel. The AI will snatch the only geo on the map.

Next HQ tier you want the glass in the top left corner, and you want fuel in the top middle where the 5 waters are. If you get all those. I had the AI snatch one water, so i took the other 4 with only 50% bonus to each side, no triangles. It was good enough though.