Gate Builders Origin

Inspired by the Vaulters of Endless Space 2, this origin mod starts the player with one science ship, one reusable colony ship, and the ability to build cheaper gateways right from the start. All other ships however travel through FTL at a very slow speed, making you dependent on those gateways for fast travel. The mod aims to offer an alternative early game colonization experience, and a different way to tackle military expansion and defense well into the later game. "A decade ago, archeologists discovered three pieces of precursor technology buried underground on our homeworld. One was a dormant gateway. The other two were crashed spaceships which however still had a functional FTL drive. While our scientists were able to reverse-engineer the secrets of gateway technology, they could not figure out how to replicate FTL drives. Despite this, our unified government has devised a plan to allow interstellar colonization: the FTL ships have been retrofitted into a huge science ship and a colonization ship, christened respectively the Odyssey and the Colossy. The Odyssey will explore the galaxy for habitable planets. When found, the Colossy will establish a colony on that world. The colony will then construct a gateway, connecting the system to our burgeoning interstellar empire." That's the intro blurb. The mod is quite heavy in new mechanics, so I'll take the time to explain everything here in a bit more detail. You start the game with one colony ship and one science ship which can travel through FTL at normal speed. All other ships take 3000 days to travel to another system. This makes you mostly reliant on the Colossy and Odyssey for expansion. The Colossy can colonize habitable worlds without even owning the system. You don't even need to survey the entire system - only the habitable planet must be surveyed. That's what the Odyssey is for. When you settle on a planet, the whole system will be automatically surveyed, revealing its resources. No anomalies will be rev