Expeditions send a fleet to position 16 of any system — deep space — to hunt for resources, ships, Dark Matter, items and permanent artifacts. On this server expeditions are a full progression system: what you send, where you send it and how long you stay all change what comes back.
Requirements: Astrophysics research (level 1+). Your Astrophysics level sets both the number of simultaneous expeditions and the maximum expedition duration in hours.
The golden rule: rewards scale with the fleet you risk
Resource and ship finds scale with the total build value of the fleet you send (its metal + crystal + deuterium cost) — a find is worth roughly 75–150% of that value. Send a cheap token fleet and you find pocket change; commit a serious fleet and a single good expedition can return more than the fleet cost to build. No hull is "more efficient" than another — the value you risk is what pays.
- Resource find — metal, crystal or deuterium worth up to the rolled share of your fleet value.
- Ship find — new ships worth a similar budget. The hull pool is limited by the best ship you brought (bring a Destroyer and you may find Reapers).
- Dark Matter find — 5,000–25,000 DM.
- Item find — a sealed loot box (bronze/silver/gold), opened from Shop → Inventory.
- Merchant, delay, speed-up, nothing — the flavor outcomes.
- Pirates / aliens — a real battle against the local faction (see bounties below).
- Black hole — the whole fleet is lost. Rare, but real. Never fly what you cannot lose.
The pace cap & the underdog boost
Two server-wide correctives sit on top of the golden rule, applied after all your find multipliers:
- Soft cap: find values beyond a moving pivot — roughly one day of a typical active player's mine income (never below 5 billion) — grow sublinearly: a find worth 8× the pivot pays out only ~2.3× the pivot. Normal-sized fleets never notice it; committing your entire endgame armada to one throw stops scaling. The black-hole risk is NOT capped — past a certain size, over-sending is pure downside. Size your expeditions, don't max them.
- Underdog boost: the further you are behind the server's #1 account, the bigger your finds — scaling up to ×1.5 for a fresh account (the leader gets exactly ×1.0). Rarity jackpots roll on top of both.
Jackpots: major & legendary discoveries
Every find rolls a hidden rarity: about 4% come back as a ✦ Major discovery (×3) and about 0.3% as a ★ LEGENDARY discovery (×10). The message arrives gold-bannered — you will know when it happens.
Expedition duration is a risk dial
The duration selector on the dispatch screen (1 hour up to your Astrophysics level) is a real decision. Every hour beyond the first:
- Finds (resources / ships / DM / items) become +15% per hour more likely,
- Hostiles (pirates / aliens / black hole) become +25% per hour more likely,
- "Found nothing" shrinks by 10% per hour.
Short trips are safe and boring; long holds are high-risk prospecting. Escort your haulers if you stay out late.
The Deep Space Scanner (⚓ top bar → Scanner)
The Scanner page (/anomalies) is the expedition hub: live anomaly feed, your star chart, explorer rank, wanted board and relic codex all live there.
Anomalies — race for the prize
Every few hours, timed anomalies appear at random systems and last 6–24 hours. The first expedition fleet to arrive at the marked system claims the anomaly for a guaranteed, boosted (at least ✦ Major) outcome — everyone else gets a normal roll. Fleet speed suddenly matters; bots hunt them too, so fly fast.
- 🛰️ Wreck Field — guaranteed ship find.
- ☁️ Resource Nebula — guaranteed rich resource haul.
- 🏚️ Derelict Station — a loot box and a Dark Matter cache, plus a much higher relic chance.
- 🏴☠️ Pirate Den — a hard fight; survive it and a resource bounty is yours. Bring warships.
Use the "Send expedition" button on a scanner row — it pre-fills the fleet screen with the anomaly's coordinates.
Star chart — first surveys
Every system you send an expedition to is recorded on your personal star chart. Your first survey of a virgin system never returns empty-handed — an empty roll is upgraded to a find (hostiles still happen: unexplored space is dangerous). Each system has a fixed, generated star name, and your profile tracks % of the universe explored.
Explorer rank
Expeditions and first surveys earn explorer XP (10 per expedition, 50 per new system). Six ranks — Recruit, Scout, Pioneer, Trailblazer, Voidfarer, Star Sovereign — each add a permanent +2% find value, +3% expedition Dark Matter and +0.1% major-discovery chance.
Relics — the permanent collection
Roughly 1 in 125 expeditions recovers a relic: a permanent account-wide artifact (derelict-station anomalies are ~5× as likely). There are 8, in three rarity tiers, each granting its bonus forever — extra expedition slots, bigger finds, more DM, half the black-hole chance, faster expedition fleets, better jackpot odds. Duplicates never drop; the Relic Codex on the Scanner shows what you still miss.
Named factions & bounties
Every system belongs to a fixed pirate captain or alien faction — fight in the same territory and you meet the same name, on the battle report too. Your win/loss tally per enemy is tracked on the Scanner's wanted board: defeat the same name 5 / 25 / 100 times and Fleet Command automatically pays a bounty of 50K / 250K / 1M Dark Matter.
Expedition debris (position 16)
Battles on expeditions leave a debris field at position 16 of the target system. It is a normal debris field open to every player, any class: send Recyclers from the galaxy view or a recycle mission to collect it.
The Reaper
The Reaper is the battle-harvester: when it survives a fight, it scoops part of the freshly created debris on the spot, capped by its cargo hold.
- Attacks: surviving Reapers auto-collect 40% of the battle's debris (both sides' Reapers roll — the attacker scoops first).
- Expeditions: surviving Reapers scoop 80% of their pirate/alien battle's debris; the remainder stays in the position-16 field for a recycle run.
Multi Expedition
The Multi expedition button on the Fleet page splits your ships evenly across several expedition slots in one click — the standard way to keep every slot busy.
Tips
- Idle fleet is wasted fleet — its value only earns while it flies expeditions.
- Watch the Scanner: an unclaimed anomaly near you is free money if you are first.
- Long durations + warship escort = the aggressive meta; long durations + naked haulers = donations to the local captain.
- Ship finds scale with your fleet too — a war fleet on expeditions grows itself (~16% of trips find ships).