Habits to build a Successful Initiative

How to build an efficient base and remain solvent while exploring the galaxy.

Starting off

Note: Given that the devs already updated the economics of the game some of this may not be necessary, but its all still useful.
This may contain some small spoilers related to progression or unlocks, do not proceed if you want to avoid all spoilers.
I've done 7 playthroughs, 6 ended in failure and this guide is all stuff I did on my 7th.

Running an efficient successful base comes down to understanding:

In the early game, be patient. Be Patient. No seriously... be patient don't over purchase, don't over buy, be small, efficient, be patient, and save money.

Always, Always, hire as cheap as possible. Your gaters will be able to be trained and will learn their primary skills quickly. The salaries of a Gater never increase, so you are immensely rewarded for paying as little in salary as possible. It is better even to pay $20000 upfront with 10 days than to increase the salary above $4,000. Never run a team that costs more than $10,000/month. Gaters gain experience through daily actions, using the training room, and missions. This experience translates into increases in their skills. You will need to save money to get past the mid game and if you don't do this you set yourself up for unrecoverable scenarios (* note, this may no longer be true due to balance changes made by the devs).

When you start only run one science team. The game tells you to run more than one... don't. Get three scientists and use them where you can. My most successful playthrough so far only ever had 3 scientists and most of the time they were always on the same team. This is for several reasons:
1. Mission risk is level locked, meaning the higher level the scientists, the more things they can do, which rewards sending the same team of 3 scientists on every mission.
2. Gathering missions like science missions or ore missions have a limitation where only the appropriate class brings back the gathered material. So if you send a soldier on your science team, you can only bring back 2 theories (even though you used a full node). If you send three scientists, you can bring back 3 theories. The most efficient means to get ahead is running 3 scientists with the highest skills and level (via doing lower level missions) for every science mission you do.
3. Science missions are not infinite. Particularly at certain parts of the game, this is most important around the start of the mid game when the game's required costs explode due to hiring medics, soldiers, and engineers. You may only have 15 total science missions you can do before you have to expand and if you don't have the science level or suits then you can easily put yourself in a bad situation that cannot be recovered from (* note this was before game balance changes and may no longer be the case).
Don't ever stop sending this team of scientists on science missions until you have <500k in the bank (then I would send them on the occasional artifact mission). If they are busy researching theories or building a patent then be patient and wait.

*A note about patents, ONLY EVER do 5 theory patents unless you absolutely have to do less than 5. Ignore rarity and month bonuses and every time you get 5 theories in a genre make a patent.

Early Game

Unlock the medbay first, training room second, recreation room third, Security fourth, then dump everything into the workshop until its 12/12 unlocked.

You want to have a barracks going into the midgame with 14-17 beds and lockers (if you build this correctly by placing lockers first, then beds next to them, you can cheese the space that beds require). It can be important to place the lockers next to beds with space as Gaters use them before and after sleeping, so efficient placement can save you headache. I split the way the barracks is set into 2-3 areas. 1. Scientists, scholars, and engineers. 2. Medics. 3. Soldiers. If done correctly you can do 2 & 3 as part of the same barracks zone. I run a small rec room for each barracks with a few arcades. Your training room should be adjacent to the solider barracks. Your medbay should be adjacent to your medic barracks. Your workshop, science lab, and library should be adjacent to each side of your scientist/scholar/engineer barracks.

You want your power room connected by a 1x1 side hallway connected to your soldier barracks, weapons should be at the front outside the hallway, you want to have the first 5x5 in the power room to be open and set with guard stations (unlocked with security) pointing at the killbox hallway entrance, with your generators behind the guards. This creates a chokehold for invaders seeking to destroy your power supply where once they enter the room, all 6 guard stations open concentrated fire to reduce losses.

This is ALL setup to be able to survive two things.
1. When the committee funding ends
2. When the invasions start.

You are going to get 600k from the committee in total and I would recommend having $200-$400k in the bank for when invasions start. Things will go wrong and you need to have money to deal with it when they do.
Example of the Soldier room
Example of Endgame Medic Room

Early -> Mid

During the Midgame you are going to want 5 medics (if you unlock the intensive care unit and build two of them its possible to just run 3 medics, this method is more efficient but has a high price tag of 600 tech points). This is because your soldiers are going to constantly need care and because if one medic goes down with severe mental illness it will take 2 to get them back up on their feet (running only 2 medics killed my 4th playthrough). However, right now just start off with 3 and scale as needed when you have the money.

When you unlock soldiers, hire 3 of them, make a team, and start sending them on story missions. It doesn't matter if you fail, you just want a couple levels on them before invasions start. Now comes the hard part.

The midgame effectively starts when you run into a specific mission, you will know the one because every 10 days after you will have base invasions. This is what wipes a lot of players out and is why there was such a response in feedback that resulted in game balance changes by the devs. Your 50k funding/month and the invasions generally start closely around each other, so its a double whammy where you have to manage less income AND constant invasions that will destroy the power in your base (which makes it even harder to generate income).

Midgame

The combination of invasions costing you money, the need to speed money to hire soldiers+build rooms, and the ending of the free 50k/month, means that if you are not prepared you will enter a spiral state that cannot be recovered from (*note this may no longer be true due to dev balance changes)

After invasions start you want 3 Scientists (sent out as often as possible if they have nothing to research at base), 6 soldiers, & 3-5 medics. During the midgame you will unlock engineers and scholars. Your third team will be a scholar, engineer, and a soldier. Send this team on missions to discover ores as much as you can. Its okay to take a small loss month to month after invasions start, thats why you build up 200-400k as a bank and you will make up the difference selling metal Asteril ingots in the midgame. It will feel stressful and you will see your bank dwindle until after the you finish implementing the next paragraph.

AS SOON AS you find a level 1-3 Asteril ore planet, build a workshop with ore storage, a foundry, connect the foundry to Asteril storage with foundry connectors, and hire 3 engineers (again as cheaply as possible on salary) Teams 4, 5, & 6 will all end up being engineers. Put them in a team together and send them on 4 days interval missions (manually stop their missions if someone comes back wounded and remember to send them out again once they are fixed up).
You will want to find 3 Asteril ore planets around levels 1-3 and 3 full teams of engineers rotating constantly on 4 day intervals to these 3 planets (as teams level up using ore planets level 4-8 is fine but beware that engineers can die working on those planets). This is largely because ONLY Asteril ore can be sold. Once you feel comfortable with your bank, occasionally send these engineer teams to gather the other ores, but be aware they can only be used for suits and you cannot sell them for money. Expand to have another foundry as needed.

* A note about selling ore. Don't believe its going to go up. Don't have hope the price will increase. Assume its only ever going to drop until it gets to $450-$500 where it will taper off. This means if its above $500, sell the ore. Even if its only 1, yes, sell it.

Example endgame workshop:

This setup will push you into the endgame, your primary goal should be remaining solvent on income and as long as you keep managing the scientists for patents. Eventually things will get better, then things will get easy, then boring, then you will have all the artifacts.

* A note on Artifacts. You find the type of artifact on missions of the people you send. So if you want to focus on all 4 science, send your science team. If you want all 4 engineer, send one of your engineering teams. Scholars need not apply and are not required.

In my endgame I retired 4 soldiers and 2 medics, then expanded to an extra team of engineers. So I had 3 scientists, 3 medics, 12 engineers, 1 scholar, and 2 soldiers; sometimes mixing 1 slot in teams to focus on gathering specific artifacts.

[cs96385]

Nice guide.
1: I would argue the best way to do patents is to, yes, always use 5 theories, but if possible use 2 of level X and 3 of level X+1. Ex: 2 common and 3 uncommon -> uncommon patent. Also use your scientist with the highest knowledge skill to write the patent.
2: Don't have an open room layout. Gaters will get tired faster in an unenclosed room. At least that is what the tutorial text in the Escape-menu says.
3: There are technologies that allow gaters to carry things for other classes. That way mixed teams can still get maximum loot and you can use the soldiers to reduce risk. So you can have a team with one scientist bring back three samples or have a mining team with only engineer.
4: As level 10 is max level and you need a level up to increase skills, it seems useful to hire better gaters from the start, as, I think, they get more skill points in total. There is a change-request for this here: https://feedback.exogateinitiative.com/suggestions/460286/higher-max-level

[Dragon of Desire]

This guide's tip about using bottom-of-barrel scientists isn't relevant anymore, it's best to max out the salary bar so you get the best scientists early. It's better to have 1 scientist with massive stats that you pay 6000 than 2 scientists that you pay 3000 each.

I'm relatively sure that the scientist stats give more science items at the end of the mission, as well as giving you better chances of the scientist not failing horribly in events which would damage or even kill them. There's also a lot of event things that can happen, like the second meeting of the Squarbs which can result in your base being attacked within a few days after if they don't have stats to grab the remote.

[Xenokan]

Going slow might not be a great idea now that factions are out. There was a certain point I had to fight or liberate a whole bunch of red sectors to reach certain ores

[Doctor Gaius Baltar the X]

Great guide! I agree on the income, but would go even further:
1) The most I ever paid for a guy was $3300, and that was because he was the first scientist. Most people I have are on $2400-$2700 salaries. I guess we are roleplaying cheapo patron, but this helped SO MUCH - the lowest I got was $70K and I wasn't even trying to max income. Then I hit $1.2M and it was going up A LOT every month.
2) My patent income was consistently super high, guess I got lucky with science planets; got to $300K with ~$75K in expenses near the end game.
3) Just a suggestion: Your endgame workshop could be optimized a lot more- you can have all the refined storage facing inwards and snaking around so that you have all the storage in half the space; you don't need the 4 connectors for the foundries, they just have to be adjacent to other foundries I think or refined storage.
4) Thanks for this guide! Helped me get started!!!

[Bismar7]

There is a multiplier effect on the patients the more theories you combine at once, and the maximum you can combine is 5.

So if you do a blue and 4 grey, you get more money than if you did a blue alone, then 4 grey combined.

This means you should wait until you have 5 theories of a specific type before researching it because the total amount you gain is dramatically increased. While Ironically the rarity of the patient doesn't ever matter (because you are always going to combine it with whatever else you have on hand) and the timing doesn't matter because it goes up or down in real time (instead of when a patient is completed).

[CrazyJayBe]

Hey thanks! This is helpful.

Could you elaborate on the theories? You say "ONLY EVER do 5 theory patents". Do you mean total or at the least or even 5 grey ones? Thanks.

[Bismar7]

Frankly I enjoyed the challenge!

[hsenna]

Good points raised. I'll take some into consideration for my next game.