FIELD NOTE 08 / All players
Scientist, Survivalist, Space Hell or Engineer?
Compare the four modes by survival pressure, permanent death and the rules you can customize.
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THE SHORT ANSWER
Choose Scientist for a balanced first run. Survivalist increases vital-stat pressure; Space Hell adds permanent death to that challenge. Choose Engineer when you want direct control over building costs, survival drains and environmental behaviour.
Before you begin
- Decide whether this is a learning or challenge run
- Choose the consequences you want before starting
The differences that change your decisions
| Mode | What changes | Choose it when |
|---|---|---|
| Scientist | Recommended balanced adventure and exploration | You are learning research, building and survival together |
| Survivalist | Vital stats, including immunity, drain faster | You already understand how to keep a field trip supplied |
| Space Hell | Survivalist pressure plus permanent death | You want the whole run to depend on surviving each decision |
| Engineer | Custom world and survival parameters | You want to practise or emphasize specific systems |
Difficulty is more than how uncomfortable a fight feels. Faster immunity drain changes the distance you can travel and how much you need from your base. Permanent death changes whether a risky collection attempt is worth making at all.
For a first run, learn the connected systems
Scientist is the clearest starting point if you want to learn the intended balance. Complete a supplied expedition, build an operational lab and grow a useful crop before adding more survival pressure. Those habits transfer more readily than a fixed collection route copied from someone else's settings.
Watch which need forces you home. If it is food, improve the food loop. If it is immunity, prepare the pump and appropriate supplies. If it is a tool, activate and maintain the equipment. Solving the actual limiting system makes a future harder run more manageable.
Use Engineer to practise a specific task
Engineer lets you disable building costs, adjust stamina and immunity drains, disable animal aggression, change river force and alter material occurrence multipliers. Use the setting that matches the task you want to practise.
- Base-layout session: remove building costs and practise water/power coverage, room centers and working-station storage.
- Observation session: adjust aggression to study wildlife without the same encounter pressure.
- Survival practice: change a drain setting deliberately and watch how it changes your supply and return decisions.
Keep the settings with your own notes when comparing routes or production. A plentiful-resource world and a faster-drain world create different bottlenecks. Advice from one should not become a universal timer for the other.
Before choosing permanent death
Space Hell uses the harsher survival mechanics and ends the game when you die. Build a routine around returning early, maintaining equipment and keeping supplies ready before testing it there. Do not rely on older tutorial descriptions of knockouts as a promise that a mistake is recoverable.
Know how to get back from the route you choose. A rare sample is not useful if obtaining it ends the run. Start with immunity and supply management and use regional expedition planning to set a realistic target.