Confused about construction, geosurvey and xenoarchaeology equipment.

[Panpiper (OP)]

I'm confused about the role of ground forces and their use of construction equipment, geosurvey equipment and xenoarchaeology equipment.

I assume construction equipment is just a matter piling as many as you care to build and move into one large unit and moving it to where you want 'portable factories', like for building PDFs.

Geosurvey equipment has me completely stumped. Is not the geosurvey already done by your survey scout? What is the point of having it on ground gear? And if there is a point, is there any extra value in any sort of quantity of it.

Xenoarceaology equipment is 'somewhat' mysterious. Do I gain anything other than speed by having more vehicles equipped? Is there any reason I should ship around a full transport with nothing but xenoarcaeology vehicles and supply trucks (and one HQ)?

[tobijon]

some planets have ground survey potential, in those cases the geosurvey ground troops can uncover additional minerals, on top of those the ships discovered. You can see these places under survey sites.
More Xenoarcheology just speeds up the process of uncovering ruins/dormant artifacts.
Construction equipment works as a factory but can also excavate ruins.

[nuclearslurpee]

Construction equipment serves three uses:

• As you note it can function as a factory that requires no population.
• It can fortify other ground units more than they can self-fortify, making it important to have at key defensive positions.
• It is used to exploit alien ruins after the Xenoarcheology formations have studied them.

Geosurvey Equipment is used to conduct an additional ground survey on particular bodies already surveyed by your survey ships, which are relatively uncommon. The body will be marked as having ground survey potential, and a ground survey can reveal the presence of additional mineral deposits and/or raise accessibilities of existing mineral deposits. As these are fairly uncommon you don't need too many of these formations.

Xenoarcheology Equipment is used to study alien ruins, once this process is completed the ruins can be exploited by construction equipment.

All of these gain additional speed from having more units with the capability in a formation, strictly speaking you could play the entire game with just one CON, GEO, and XEN element apiece but they would do their jobs very slowly so a few dedicated formations are preferable to get work done in a timely manner. Note that none of these units need supplies as these are only drawn by combat elements, so formations of only CON/GEO/XEN plus an HQ if you want to assign a commander are all that you need.