It's the Colinization ability of the Tec cap ship.  Although it seems to work on and off for me.  Anyway, after you colonize a planet, it gives you a free extractor on a resourse, sometimes 2 (if your have level 3).  But, like I said, some times it does it for me. other times I have to purchase all of the extractors.

It's too bad the Akkan doesn't get any bonuses for colonization at the first level like the other two colonizer ships. Maybe they should make it 1/2/3 free extracters instead of 0/1/2. There might be a problem if the planet does not have 3 resource asteroids (something the programmers would have to deal with)...but at least it would make the Akkan more comparable to the Jarrasul and the Progenitor when it comes to the colonize ability.

I had a game where it would not give me the free extractors if I set the Akkan's engagement range to Local Area Only, but I can't reproduce it in other games.

The TEC's ability is nowhere near on par with Advent's. It saves you 500 credits and a small amount of time (less credits with the TEC's cheaper logistics buildings research). The Advent's reduces all planet upgrade costs by 60% which is a huge deal when you queue 4 pop upgrades on a terran and 2 logistic/3 tactical.

But, the Vasari's is still "worse" for saving money, better for saving time, at least in SP. Usually in SP when you're rolling the front line you have to build up some defenses, faster build times make you spend less time twiddling your thumbs.

Also, the Akkan's ability always works provided there are enough free resource rocks when you colonize. If you don't destroy the enemy's extractors before you colonize, you can't get your free ones.

This.  That time can be crucial, and I almost always save the extractors for last as it takes quite awhile to both build the structures and to build new constructors (which in turn require you to be upgrading your planet).  That means you're not only saving the credits you would have spent on construction, but you're also getting those resources for every second you would have otherwise waited.  That said, I'd agree that the Progenitor's ability is a bit better, but not by too much.  Something else to keep in mind is that this a little bit of an apples to oranges scenario: you have to keep in mind that the ships themselves need to be balanced out a bit by such abilities:  the Death Egg/Evacuator is devastating, and therefore it makes sense if its colinization ability is a little bit weaker.  That's not to say that the Akkan & Progenitor aren't fairly useful, what with Targeting Uplink and Malice available to them, but they aren't in the same league of deadliness IMO.