I misspelled Bugface, d'oh.

If you rely on RNG for an artifact planet in your starting few planets, technically, the Klacky boi's are faster. During the course of around 300 runs, getting an artifact planet that gives tech and is useful only happened 4 times though. Might be able to make it work with the Meklar, but it seems like the bugs have superior bonuses.

I was looking to get factory tech, a high level weapon, pollution control, or terraforming and ended up doing it with terra. It's possible to get fuel cells as well, but it's not as useful as you'd think - got it in one run and without a decent production bonus, the 1-2 turn head start is useless. Fighter spam also might be faster, but you really need factory tech to push it to the 20s and 30s per turn to make it wholesale better than anything else. Didn't get that here.

Ah well, thus concludes 4x February.