[Tomgs]

Well for me exploration ships are a must to find the best colonizable worlds. The colony ships are slow and have a much shorter range so they can't find good planets as easily expecially if you are worried that they will run out of supplies after the first 2 or 3 moves. I also build many colonizer ships but by the time they are built they can go directly to a colonizable world because I already know where they are. I usually build the colonizer ships at my homeworld and build exploration ships after the first couple of ships on those first few non-breathable worlds that you need to colonize at the begining of the game. In the early game there are not many turns that I am not building colonization ships on my homeworlds but I usually end up with many exploration ships anyway. Especially if I meet another race early.