Any sort of buffer zone increase yor chances of survival manifold.
What kind of engine does a "survival manifold" come off of? I think I might have found one in some ruins in Junkyard Wars 2, but I can't colonize Gassy planets, so you'll have to come take a look at it yourself...
[ August 12, 2002, 08:13: Message edited by: dumbluck ]
Heres the doc on design creation that I did, I haven't updated it for a long time but it may help some. I also posted a revised Version of the AI spreadsheet I put together that fixed a few miss-spellings in the original.