What to do with your first hero?

[OldScout]

I'm still playing UE for the first couple of games, (seems like a good one to learn on), and so far I've just been using the hero as a govenor on the home system.

A few things I've read talk about how the hero's ship is good for hunting down pirates early. Should I remove the hero as govenor, send him out to battle pirates, and then bring him back and install as govenor again?

So far i've been putting all of the first hero's skill points into administrative areas. It' isn't until later hero's that I assign them as a military type and start putting points into those skills.

Is that the wrong way to look at things for UE?

Thanks.

[CursedPanther]

Depends on the faction you're playing, some can't expand fast enough through classic economy/industrial might fast enough so you may need the hero to help exploring the best surrounding systems and start keeping the opponents from sticking their fingers in your pie.

UE however is pretty balanced in this matter, so you don't particularly have to assign your first hero for either role. They're usually adaptive enough for the situation they encounter. On the other hand the random start-out roll for Vodyani or Unfallen is a critical issue for them.

[SenecaAthena]

Usually I assign the starting hero to an explorer, downgrade its ship to engines and probes only and unlink it to become a single ship scouting fleet. Together with my stating explorer I use my hero to discover the surrondings and to unearth anomalies. For example: my hero to dig anomalies on close by systems (all anomalies except atmospheric until the academy quest is triggered) and the explorer for lifting the fog on the map. As such he/she can collect XP pretty fast to be effective on my 1st or 2nd colony (after the acadamy is located and/or pirates become pesky).

As CursedPanther said it is also dependant on faction. If you play Vodyani your hero ship could be retrofitted to help eradicate those two pirate fleets in the vod quest. Their starting hero is best suited for being an admiral anyways.

[CyPunk]

Generally just concurring with the other's opinions:
for UE I use the starter hero for intitially exploring after modifying his ship. I put his points into the planet/system/empire admin buffs though.
I usually move him back to planetside duty pretty quick though. A good benchmark is to move him planetside when you run into your first other faction, but this will depend of course. Bottom line though do not keep him out in space too long.
And as said, Vodyani totally different: I always upgrade his ship and use him and the Wheel to beat the pirate fleet mission and do heave scouting for Essence targets (and speed the "ruins" mission after the pirate mission if I choose that route).

[peddroelm]

goes from faction to faction : sophons is a great explorer (16 move speed top of my head), vodyani needs to govern first for the influence generation, craver is incredibly slow - probably start as governor, UE gets decent speed after +3 engine is researched, unfallen +15 dust per turn is hard to pass up from turn 1 (gov) , riftborn I start exploring but bring back as soon as I start sigularity in the homeworld (it gives extra gov experience) , horatio has decent scouting speed but should come 'home' quick since he is a great governor, ...I think I might've made a guide for starting actions going faction by faction https://www.reddit.com/r/EndlessSpace/comments/94zqoq/early_game_exploration_miniguide_turn_15_refits/

[climbingeastofwinter]

When I play UE I also set the ship up with 4 engines right from the start, and whatever weapons you feel comfortable with (just bear in mind 1 enemy slug thrower will be able to do weapon damage to your while simultaneously countering 1 missile module through the slug thrower bonus flak defense property). I always select the hero, create fleet on my home system, and send him out solo with his 10 move; if you're lucky enough to run into a pirate or another empire's scout craft, you can kill them for about 2 levels worth of experience - it has a pretty big affect on your early game if you can get your hero to level 5 or 6 in the first 10-20 turns and drop him on a system to provide a bunch of sweet bonuses. Or assign him to a real fleet and do some real damage, but that early solo experience really helps.

Depending on how you tech, if you go deep into military in the early-mid game, Titanium Electroplating opens up Improved Reactive Plating which does wonders for your hero experience gain - pair him up with an escort ship toting some of those reactive plating modules and even if the escorts, so long as they soak a bunch of damage, it all gets converted into experience for you.

[patrick]

Check your heroes starting skills and decide based on that. Also, your systems mainly produce hero exp when they finish ships or improvements, so if you can assign your hero to a fleet and have them return just before a system upgrade finishes you get good exp value out of that. As a good rule of thumb i tend to consider sending a hero away worth it when the hero is level 3 (or close) by the time he can return to the system. That‘s roughly as much as he‘d get in that system anyways and in return for profiting less from the level 2 and base skill (a few turns) you get to explore your surroundings better.

If you want to fight pirates with your hero you can equip him with armor and slugs while building empty ships. You can then enhance the empty ships with missiles and engines, perhaps troop modules but no armor. Your hero can serve as a tank for your fleet early on. If you do that you should research 1 millitary tech early so you can equip the stronger modules.

The reason why you do things like that is because early on dust is way more expendable than industry. You need to return to building system improvements quickly, but you can afford spending some extra dust on ships. It‘s a bit as if you‘d spend dust on system improvements even without having researched the tech to do that.

[Red Star, Blood Moon]

I personally am just a fire-and-forget governor guy, but that's just me. It could also be because I don't normally play military centric campaigns and like to go wide, so having lots of administrators helps that whereas on fleet they'd just be idling and not leveling up.

It really depends on your playstyle and overarching strategy. If you're a heavily expansion and militaristic faction you may want to focus on ships. The thing is though if they're not exploring the galaxy and constantly getting into battles then they're basically just idling. It also depends on pirates too. I just turn pirates off. So in early game with lots of pirates, yeah I could see putting your first couple heroes on fleets being wise.