Expeditions

Expeditions

Expeditions are a depth-based exploration of nebula zones. You send a fleet, resolve a random event at each depth, then choose to Extract with what you have or Continue deeper for a larger payout at higher risk.

Unlike passive harvest, each depth is a roll: resources, recovered ships, items, a stun delay, or ship losses. Expeditions are solo — there is no rally / FCS loot share on this mission type.

You must scout the nebula system with probes before you can launch an expedition to its zones. Settings → Expedition stores default depth, default extract/continue, and one-click templates. The Explore again button on an expedition report, or on the fleet return report when the expedition fleet docks (in the report, or in the mail list by tapping the row's ⋮ button), starts a new expedition to the same zone: it opens the fleet send screen, or with One-Click Expedition on sends straight away from your active colony (long-press for the fleet send screen). In the mail list, an expedition report's row shows the resources, ships and items it brought home, and with Imperial Access a fleet icon on an expedition or return report row means one of your fleets is already heading to or exploring that zone.

Subpages: Nebula Zones · Rewards · Fleet Mechanics · Depth System · Faction Expeditions

Contents

• Core flow
• Maximum depth
• Depth timing
• How loot is calculated
• Resource mix by realm
• Items & recovered ships
• Fleet composition
• Stun
• Ship loss
• What failure does *not* do
• Research, class, and monuments
• Caps and late-game throttles
• Cargo
• FAQ

Core flow

Details: Nebula Zones

1. Scout the nebula system, then pick a nebula zone on the galaxy map.
2. Launch an expedition fleet and choose a maximum depth (and a default Extract / Continue if you miss the prompt).
3. The fleet spends time at the current depth, then a random event resolves.
4. Rewards (resources, ships, items) are applied immediately to the fleet. Penalties (stun, ship loss) are applied immediately.
5. If more depths remain, you have 30 minutes to Extract or Continue. If you do not answer, your saved default decision is used.
6. On Extract (or after the last depth), the fleet returns with accumulated cargo, recovered ships, and items.

You may only have one expedition (or gas harvest) per nebula zone at a time.

Maximum depth

Details: Depth System

Every commander can send depths 1–3. Deeper runs come from the Celestial Orrery (Explorer Core monument) on your capital:

Orrery level	Max selectable depth
Not deployed	3
1	4
2	5
3	6
…	Base 3 + Orrery level

Depths 6–10 are real earning layers once Orrery (and related research) unlocks them. They are not a separate “Realm 4 only” event table — deeper depths reuse the same outcome pool as shallower ones, with higher earning multipliers and a stricter ship-loss cap (see Ship loss).

Depth timing

Each depth has its own on-station duration. The time is multiplied by:

• Celestial Orrery — −15% at level 1, +7.5% more per level above 1 (−22.5% at L2, −30% at L3, …).
• Explorer class — −15%.
• Realm — R1 ×0.5, R2 ×0.75, R3+ ×1.0.

Orrery and class add up first, then the realm factor applies: (1 − Orrery − class) × realm. The result never goes below ×0.4 (40% of the base timer). An Explorer reaches the floor at Orrery L5 in R3+; in R1 the realm factor alone puts any Explorer at the floor. Travel to and from the nebula is sped up separately — R1 ×3, R2 ×2, R3 ×1.5, R4 base (see Realms Overview).

Depth	Base duration	Explorer + Orrery L3, R4 (×0.55)	Floor (×0.4)
1	30 min	16 min	12 min
2	45 min	24 min	18 min
3	1 h	33 min	24 min
4	2 h	1 h 6 min	48 min
5	3 h	1 h 39 min	1 h 12 min
6	6 h	3 h 18 min	2 h 24 min
7	8 h	4 h 24 min	3 h 12 min
8	10 h	5 h 30 min	4 h
9	12 h	6 h 36 min	4 h 48 min
10	15 h	8 h 15 min	6 h

Zone difficulty (Easy / Medium / Hard / Extreme) changes event weights and payout multipliers, not this timer.

How loot is calculated

Details: Rewards

Resource finds are not a flat “node base reward.” The amount scales with the catalog build cost of the ships you sent:

payout ≈ fleet catalog value × 15%

       × difficulty
       × depth earning
       × research + class loot
       × variance roll
       × (1 + Science Vessel bonus)

Then the result is capped (see Caps) and split across resource types.

Difficulty

Zone difficulty	Resource multiplier
Easy	×1.0
Medium	×1.2
Hard	×1.6
Extreme	×2.0

Depth earning

Depth	Multiplier
1	×1.0
2	×1.2
3	×1.6
4	×1.8
5	×2.0
6	×2.2
7	×2.4
8	×2.6
9	×2.8
10	×3.0

Variance roll

Every resource find also rolls:

• A base multiplier between 0.7× and 1.3×.
• A chance of a bonus, which rises with difficulty and depth:

 - Minor ~1.15–1.5×
 - Major ~1.5–2.0×
 - Jackpot ~2.5–4.0×

Science Vessels vs Explorer class

These are two different bonuses:

Source	Effect
Explorer class (Core monument)	+12% expedition loot, +10% success weight, +10% anomaly (item) weight. Warlord is −10% loot. See Player Classes.
Science Vessels in the fleet	Bigger resource and ship finds: min(100%, log₂(count + 1) × 5%). About +5% at 1 ship, +50% near 1,000, +100% near 1 million. No effect on the chance of finding items.

Science Vessel bonus also raises the per-expedition cap by the same multiplier, so a large Science Vessel stack is not immediately flattened by the score ceiling.

Resource mix by realm

The payout is a total value, then distributed:

Realm	Resources that can appear
1	Steel, Quartz, Gas
2+	+ Iridium and Silicium
3+	+ Elerium (not every find)

Steel / quartz / gas emphasis is randomized per find (steel-heavy, quartz-heavy, or gas-heavy). Advanced resources only appear when that realm’s types are in the event’s reward table.

Items & recovered ships

Successful depths can also roll:

Outcome	What you get
Resources found	Cargo as above
Ships found	Combat / cargo hull from your current realm and the previous realm, up to about one class above the strongest ship you sent (jackpots can stretch that). Colony ships, Recyclers, Advanced Recyclers, Planetary Harvesters, Support Vessels, and Science Vessels are not in the recovery pool.
Item found	Nano boosts, tech boosts, relic pieces, monument pieces, or (very rarely) cosmetics

There is no guaranteed fragment at a specific depth. Deeper / harder zones weight item outcomes more heavily; Deep Space Sensors, Monolith, Explorer class, and specialist ships bias which item family you see.

In Realms 1–3, relic-piece outcomes are weighted ×4 and monument-piece outcomes ×3 versus the Realm 4 baseline (other item types unchanged). Example: if a depth would normally put about 3% of weight on relic pieces, early-realm play puts about 12% on relics before other bonuses.

Very late game (player score above 1 trillion), nano and tech boost finds drop at 10% of their normal weight. Relics, monuments, and cosmetics are unchanged by that late-game throttle.

Fleet composition

Details: Fleet Mechanics

Probes — find chance (max +15%)

Probes raise the weight of positive outcomes (resources, ships, items). They do not change which item family you roll, and they do not boost empty / stun / damage outcomes.

bonus ≈ 15% × (probes / (probes + 175))

Examples: ~50 probes → ~3%, ~150 → ~7%, ~500 → ~11%, ~1,000 → ~13%. The bonus never exceeds +15%.

Probe-only fleets (nothing but probes) find resources, relic pieces, monument pieces and boosts at only 20% of the normal chance; the rest becomes nothing found. Ship and cosmetic finds are unchanged. Add at least one other ship to roll at the full rate.

Specialist ships — item family bias

Only one specialist type applies per expedition, in this priority:

1. Orbital Refinery → relic pieces
2. Advanced Recycler → monument pieces
3. Support Vessel → nano boosts
4. Frigate → tech boosts

The active type adds up to +3 percentage points to its item family's chance, with diminishing returns on ship count:

bonus ≈ 3 points × (ships / (ships + 175))

Examples: 1 ship → ~0.02 points, 175 → +1.5 points, 1,000 → ~+2.55 points, very large stacks → close to +3. A 4% tech boost chance becomes about 5.5% with 175 Frigates. The added chance comes out of nothing found, so resources, ships and other items keep their odds. Other rules still apply afterwards: the late-game boost throttle, the Realm 1–3 relic / monument multipliers (which also dilute the other items' share) and the decay past depth 3.

Because only one type counts, a single higher-priority specialist turns off a lower one: one Support Vessel in a Frigate fleet removes the tech boost bonus.

Science Vessels — bigger finds

See Science Vessels vs Explorer class. This is the main stack-for-payout ship: it makes resource and ship finds bigger, but it does not change which outcome you roll or how often items drop. Large stacks are not wiped by the same loss % as combat hull (see Ship loss).

Combat ships — discovery pool

The highest ship class in the fleet unlocks higher-tier recovery. Sending only low-tier hull keeps discoveries in the low-tier pool; battleships / later combat ships open the next class.

Fleet size

Larger catalog value raises resource volume and the ship-recovery budget (also ~15% of fleet value, with a steeper difficulty curve for ships). Probability caps (probe / specialist) are separate from that volume.

Stun

Stun is an event penalty, not a separate “you failed, dump the loot” roll.

• Typical durations are 15–120 minutes, depending on the event and zone difficulty (Easy ion storms ~30 min; Extreme failures can reach ~90–120 min).
• The fleet pauses. When the stun expires, you still Extract or Continue as usual.
• Cargo, items, and recovered ships from this and earlier depths are kept.
• Duration is reduced by monument stun reduction and expedition safety research (see below). Fleet Hangar Protocols does not apply here — it only shortens hangar and PvE recovery stun at your colonies. Combined stun reduction is capped at 50%. Stun never drops below 1 minute.

Stun does not force a return and does not tax accumulated loot.

Ship loss

Some events (fleet damaged, pirate ambush, some disasters) remove ships from the expedition fleet permanently. This is hull lost, not a temporary “damage %” that heals.

Configured loss rates are small (about 1–5.5% of counted ships, depending on the event). Two safeties sit on top:

Loot-relative cap

Loss value cannot exceed a fraction of the expected loot for that depth (same 15% × difficulty × depth scale used for rewards):

Depth	Max loss vs expected loot
1–3	10%
4–6	25%
7+	50%

So a huge combat stack cannot lose more hull value than a slice of what the run was expected to pay.

Science Vessel counting

Science Vessels are counted as quantity / 1,000 when applying the percentage (still at least 1 hull if any are present). A 1% event on 1,000,000 Science Vessels is on the order of 10 hull, not 10,000.

Safety research

Expedition Protocols (risk reduction) and Legendary Expeditions (insurance) add together and cut both ship-loss rate and stun duration, capped at 25%.

Realm 1 Easy zones can still lose ships from D2 onward. Stun-only is not the R1 rule.

What failure does *not* do

• It does not confiscate loot from earlier depths.
• It does not roll “keep 0–50% of cargo.”
• A stun does not cancel the extract / continue choice after it ends.
• Recovered ships are not dumped if cargo is full (only resources are scaled to remaining cargo).

Each depth is independent: a bad roll applies its penalty; a good roll adds its reward. Extract whenever you are happy with the pile.

Research, class, and monuments

Source	What it changes
Expedition Basics	+loot % per level
Expedition Mastery	+success weight (fewer empty / penalty rolls)
Deep Space Sensors	+item-found weight (anomalies)
Expedition Protocols	+success weight, −ship-loss / stun (part of the 25% safety cap)
Legendary Expeditions	+loot %, insurance (same 25% cap), higher reward ceilings
Explorer class	+12% loot, +10% success, +10% anomalies, +15% exploration speed
Warlord class	−10% expedition loot
Celestial Orrery	Extra max depth (+1 per level), shorter expedition time
Crystalline Spire	Expedition success
The Monolith	Anomaly discovery

Success-weight bonuses shift probability toward rewarding outcomes without changing the total weight of the table. They cannot delete failure events entirely.

Caps and late-game throttles

Payouts are limited by player score, realm, and daily tracking:

• A per-expedition ceiling that grows with score (linear early, slower after ~1M score) and is hard-capped by realm.
• A daily ceiling of 15× the per-expedition cap. A small floor remains so a commander who is near the daily cap can still receive a reduced find.
• Science Vessel bonus multiplies the ceiling applied to that run.
• Legendary Expeditions expeditionCapBonusPct raises both per-run and daily ceilings.

These caps exist so expedition income stays in band with the rest of the economy. Sending a larger fleet still helps until you hit the ceiling.

Cargo

When resources are found, they are added to the fleet up to remaining cargo capacity (Trade Networks and Galactic Commerce research included). If the find is larger than free space, all resource types are scaled down together — you keep a proportional slice, not a random subset.

Ships recovered on the expedition are added to the fleet without a cargo check. Bring haulers if you care about resource volume; they are not required to keep recovered hull.

Alliance resource tax, if your alliance collects it, is applied when the fleet returns, same as other mission cargo.

FAQ

Do I lose everything if I continue and fail? No. Earlier depths stay in the fleet. A later stun or ship-loss event delays you or removes some hull; it does not empty the hold.

Is there a rally multiplier? No. Expeditions are solo. Rally math belongs to pirate / FCS combat, not this mission.

Do Charged / Dormant zone labels change loot? Those states exist on nebula zones, but they currently do not change expedition payout or risk. Treat difficulty, depth, and fleet value as the live levers.

Do I need Science Vessels? They make resource and ship finds bigger; they do not raise item drop chances. Specialist Support Vessels bias nano-boost finds; they are not the payout stack.

Can recovered ships be higher class than anything I sent? Usually at most one class above your strongest ship, unless a jackpot stretches the pool.

Are pirate ambushes a full battle? No. They are an expedition event that applies a ship-loss penalty. There is no fight / bribe / negotiate menu on the expedition itself.

Where do relic and monument pieces come from? Expeditions are a primary source. See Relics and Player Classes for forging and class Core monuments (including Celestial Orrery).