Trailblazer Lander

The Trailblazer Lander is an orbital deployment building that drops a single Duplicant onto the surface of a planetoid from an orbiting Trailblazer Module. It is used when landing on worlds that do not yet have a Rocket Platform, giving the player a way to place a colonist on the surface before a proper landing site exists.

The lander provides no life support and does not serve as a return route to the Rocket that deployed it. Once a Duplicant has been delivered, they are stranded until a Rocket Platform is built and the Rocket can land. Because of this, the first moments after deployment can be dangerous: the landed Duplicant must either reach safety quickly or be supported by a prepared surface setup before suffocation becomes a risk. This is especially important on starts where early suit materials are unavailable and the colony cannot yet establish a protected surface presence.

A useful property of the Trailblazer Lander is that it is deconstructible. Deconstructing it returns the 400 kg of Refined Metal used to build it, allowing that material to be recovered after landing. If two Trailblazer Landers are sent to the same planetoid, their combined recovered metal can total 800 kg of Refined Metal, which is enough to construct a Rocket Platform so the Rocket can land. This makes it possible to bootstrap a landing sequence by sacrificing the landers, then immediately converting their material into the infrastructure needed for the next stage of expansion.

• The Trailblazer Lander only delivers a Duplicant; it does not maintain their oxygen, food, or other life support needs.
• It cannot be used to send a Duplicant back to the Rocket that launched it.
• Its deconstruction refund is a practical way to recover refined metal and accelerate the first Rocket Platform on a new world.
• It can be used on planetoids the player has not yet explored, making it a standard tool for first contact with unknown terrain.

One notable edge case is that deconstructing the lander while it is still en route deletes the Duplicant and can crash the game shortly afterward, so it should never be removed before it has completed its delivery.