The Brand New Space Colonization Game eXode is just about to release version E for all you alpha players out there. That means that not only will you be able to play the evac sequence with your own deck and soon start earning special early tester rewards, but that Colonization is on it’s way as well! That’s going to be the next big step for eXode and it’s super exciting.
So in an effort to calm my furiously beating heart from upgrading to hyperdrive, (yes that’s coffee and anticipation you hear beating...) and keep my landing gear on the ground I’m going to hip you all to one of my favorite aspects of this brave new world simulation we will soon be exploring.
The Non-Starcraft Vehicles of eXode
While the Starships of eXode are friggen awesome, thats a whole nother subject and I think that for today we’re going to (mostly) keep ourselves gravity bound. It would be way too exciting to just jump into starships like that, I don’t want to make you drop your cargo ;)
What we’re here to do today is compare the specs and potential upgrades on all the air and land based vehicles that will be used for the colonization stage of eXode. They are loadable as cargo and/or can be dropped into a game by burning a copy. These stats are subject to change as alpha progresses, please correct me if I’m wrong with any of the upgrade info ;)
Check out this sexy lineup:
As you can see a few of these vehicles are only going to be accessible through the Tom Settlers Contract and not from booster packs. This means you’ll have to find them on the player market and or work a trade through the community for them if you don’t have a contract. As you’ll see, they are totally worth the effort, for instance:
The Tom Explorator x4.
This is one of my favorite rides if we’re talking about land based vehicles. It starts off with no energy cost (as several Tom’s vehicles do) which is huge and has a great carrying capacity at 4 crew and 4 cargo. It’s already one of the faster vehicles with pretty decent stealth and resist although to be fair it doesn’t have any teeth. When fully upgraded though (which would mean burning 21 of them) it becomes a really awesome card because all those stats would be doubled including crew cargo capacity and it still won’t cost you any energy to run!
Another great Tom’s option is the
Little Buddy.
This little guy only has half the speed of the Explorator but it can actually fight back a bit if attacked, is a bit more stealthy and has the same resistance to attacks. The coolest thing about this one is that it’s an unmanned vehicle with built in radar QL4 which makes it especially great for campaigns with small crews/few passengers. You can let it do your exploring for you while the full strength of the colony focus’ on building and whatnot. At full upgrade (13 copies burnt) all of its stats are doubled which makes it very stealthy indeed.
Similar to the little buddy but in the air is the
Friendly Eyes XY-6.
This is less stealthy and doesn’t have weapons, but it flies so it’s probably harder to attack from the ground anyway. The XY-6 is also unmanned with radar QL3 and all stats doubled at full upgrade (8 cards burnt).
The last Tom’s vehicle (for now)
The Buddy Pinger,
is a lot different than all the other vehicles in that it is actually a space vehicle with its own warp drive. It is also unmanned, which is good because when you send it out, it’s not coming back. The purpose of this little satellite is to be sent to an area and send out a signal to be heard by (hopefully) other friendly humans. This game is as much collaborative as it is competitive and so having friends to share resources with is definitely going to be useful. This card is upgradable but the upgrade table is not available yet.
Drop It Like It’s Hot
All of the Tom’s vehicles and a few others have the “droppable” trait which means you can drop them to your colony mid-game at the expense of losing that card. Any cards loaded as cargo during evac are bound to the game but can be used again when that game is over.
Let’s take a look at this chart I made (I’m fancy like that) that compares the stats of all the vehicles currently available: (The highlighted colors on the vehicle names denote rarity)
As you can see there are 10 more vehicles that are all available in boosters or from the player market. The column to the right of each statistic column shows the maximum value at full upgrade. The numbers in red mean all the values can be reached at once but most vehicles have a cap on the number of upgrades, which means you have to choose what statistics you upgrade and these maximums values (in green) can only be reached if no other statistic is upgraded. Each upgrade typically adds +1 to the stat of your choice.
For instance, another of my favorite rides, the
Panther Bike.
This bad boy can be upgraded 7 times and can reach levels in certain traits that are just off the charts. If you were to only upgrade the stealth trait with your 7 upgrades (7 copies burnt) you could have a 10 stealth rating which is the highest stealth rating of any vehicle. With certain origin/character/equipment combinations you might be damn near invisible on this bike.
It doesn’t have weapons of its own but if your character is packing they can use their weapon with a slight handicap. You can also take a passenger with a handicap in steering just like irl ;)
With the Panther you get special rewards if you only use bikes in your campaign which is pretty cool.
The rest of these vehicles are pretty self explanatory, you got the Security Drone which is another unmanned craft that can move around and protect locations for you. As well as a couple drop ships which presumably can be sent from your spaceship to the planet surface without having to land that huge thing and alert everything within several square miles that there’s a new kid in town.
The scrappable trait on the Zandratti (which is a pretty interesting vehicle for a colonization effort in itself since it’s only useful on flat terrain) is cool because eventually you will be able to tear it apart and build something new out of it. (Maybe a crazy mech suit and hook it up to the “Mysterious AI” who knows...)
Then there’s the Achean Racer which can be driven by anyone, but is especially suited to a character who is of Achean descent (part of the randomly generated character background).
And finally the two legendary vehicles the
Vanguard and the Velvet Storm.
One vehicle to execute a frontal attack and one perfectly suited to sneak around from the back (or above with its orbital capacity and gadgets!?!) Both beautiful cards as well as really exciting for gameplay. Gotta get one each of these for sure ;)
Interesting Fact tion
Interestingly, the Vanguard is only usable by the military faction making it the only vehicle that has a faction specified. All the rest can be used by any origin.
Alright fellow eXoders, eXodians and eXodesiacs, let me know what you think about this setup.
If you want to play and haven’t bought a starter pack yet (10$), use my ref link and we’ll both get 2 free boosters (3$ per pack) and also from what I understand we will end up evacuating to planets that are relatively close by so hopefully we can find each other and share resources, hang out with some happy soda etc...
Also, my main account is @autobodhi where I share my music and music videos and I’m in the process of writing and recording a Tesla Punk Space Opera based on eXode! It’s kind of awesome and I’m going to start sharing that in pieces pretty soon so make sure you check it out.
Peace.