Colony Ship + Alien Survey Technology = should work ?

[Maxjprg]

Hello,

would like some opinions on that:

I thought I was going to do the coolest play ever on turn one by burning my Colony ship (1) to set the Alien Sentinels world (2) thanks to having Alien Survey Technology (3) out.

(1) The 2 dev you can discard from your board to set any world without paying cards
(2) The 9 military windfall alien world
(3) The 1 dev that allow you to set one alien military world as a normal one

Which did not work, it said "Colony ship can not be used to set Alien worlds".
Do you think it did not work because it's just not coded that way on BGA or would that not work either as "official rulling" ?

Fact that Colony Ship can not be used to set an Alien world is litteraly written on it so it could just be that simple of a rulling, BUT you could argue that AST overrules that limitations by allowing it as it is the cards effect to allow you to do that.
Apparently you can use Colony ship tu set a (non alien) military world if you have something like Contact Specialist (saw a thread on that on bgg) - which makes sense, not sure if that works on BGA though.

Curious to have some opinions, that would be a pretty cool combo but it's really easy to argue for both sides.

Thanks

[RicardoRix]

I've never seen the card before. but AST suggests that it just turns a alien military into an alien normal world. It does not take away the 'alien' characteristic.

side note:
The wording - 'at full costs (with any discounts)' is as about as ambiguous as it gets.

[Retired Actuary]

Apparently you can use Colony ship tu set a (non alien) military world if you have something like Contact Specialist (saw a thread on that on bgg) - which makes sense, not sure if that works on BGA though.

Don’t know the answer to your main question, but I’ve done the above on BGA and can confirm it works.

[hiei]

Hello,

would like some opinions on that:

I thought I was going to do the coolest play ever on turn one by burning my Colony ship (1) to set the Alien Sentinels world (2) thanks to having Alien Survey Technology (3) out.

(1) The 2 dev you can discard from your board to set any world without paying cards
(2) The 9 military windfall alien world
(3) The 1 dev that allow you to set one alien military world as a normal one

Which did not work, it said "Colony ship can not be used to set Alien worlds".
Do you think it did not work because it's just not coded that way on BGA or would that not work either as "official rulling" ?

Fact that Colony Ship can not be used to set an Alien world is litteraly written on it so it could just be that simple of a rulling, BUT you could argue that AST overrules that limitations by allowing it as it is the cards effect to allow you to do that.
Apparently you can use Colony ship tu set a (non alien) military world if you have something like Contact Specialist (saw a thread on that on bgg) - which makes sense, not sure if that works on BGA though.

Curious to have some opinions, that would be a pretty cool combo but it's really easy to argue for both sides.

Thanks

You cant override the Alien aspect of the world. Since Colony ship doesnt work on Alien worlds, it should never work on Alien Sentinels, unless you had, apart from AST, a card that lets you place an Alien World as a non alien world.

Contact specialist lets you, as long as you dont have enough military power, treat a military world as a non military world. Thus, you can remove the 'non military' part of colony ship and place a military world like Rebel Homeworld for free, as long as it is not Alien,

Some combos you could use with AST: Replicant Robots, Scientific cruisers, all Alien discounts.

In the first expansion arc you can:
- Place non military worlds as military worlds by having enough military and discarding the card with the respective power (this works always with Alien worlds, but you cant chain it with pay for military)
- Use Terraforiming Engineers to place big non military Alien worlds by replacing cheaper ones.

There seem not to be a way to place easily Alien military worlds for free in any expansion, except by conquering them.