Yea, could be the tutorial map giving issues. There's hardly any iron, and no good place to put HQ near resources. I'll give it a whirl on a different map and see what happens. I still think they need something, although maybe it's just a matter of only picking them when you've got a map with a ton of resources jammed together where you can drop your HQ right by them.
Played Scientific tutorial last night. Took me a couple of tries but I finally got the win. Gave me strange resource trading dreams all night. [e digicons]:D[/e] Seems like they're underpowered right now because of their special power to build converters directly on resources: Don't get underlying elements from the converter, even if not used in the conversion Can't build on thicker deposits because the extra isn't used and is wasted</li
Oh, or you can also get claims at auction or the black market.
Scrapping a building frees up that hex. Once you build on a hex, you "claim" it. You can scrap the building and build something else on the same hex, but you can't build on a different hex unless you upgrade your HQ to get more claims. I'm sure it's this way to add a scarcity dynamic, but it's rather frustrating to build on the wrong spot, see an open spot right next to it, and not be able to scrap the old building and build on the new location.