by frotes
He is saying that you start with +1K income printed on the board. RL gives you another. tech tile gets you the 3rd. sci track gets you the 4thBut doing this, you have invest all your opening research/tech into something that will only pay off down the road. You will have no extra income from tile/track, no nav, no terraforming. Next round you will only be able to move up 1 in these tracks, which is not enough to secure you much of a bonus
Currently the only races I look at to move up the science track are Nevlas and Fariks. Everyone else, I would look to do a Acad opening if I wanted to get 4k off the bat, using the 2nd tile for some kind of income/pw tile.