Fleet Expeditions — Success Odds, Fuel, and Rewards
A fleet expedition sends your frigates to another system to bring back resources and units. It runs in real time whether or not the game is open, which makes it income that accrues while you’re offline. The same fact cuts the other way: critical events also pass in real time, and if you’re not there you can’t intervene.
The frigates themselves — types, ranks, repairs — are covered on the frigates page.
The procedure
- Talk to the Navigator on your freighter bridge to see available expeditions.
- Pick one and assign up to five frigates.
- Pay the fuel and launch. Track progress from the Fleet Command Room.
Five expeditions are offered per day, refreshing at 00:00 UTC. Because some run longer than a day — and because you can claim the whole list right before a refresh — you can end up with more than five active at once. The number you can run concurrently is set by how many Fleet Command Rooms you’ve built.
A single expedition takes 1 to 28 hours of real time, though a fleet of three or fewer frigates gets much shorter runs (roughly 1–4.5 hours).
Success: aim one star above
Expeditions carry a difficulty of 1 to 5 stars, compared against your assigned fleet’s combined rating.
| Fleet rating vs. difficulty | Outcome |
|---|---|
| At least +1 above | Recommended. Clears reliably |
| Equal | Damage is possible |
| Below | Damage is very likely, and losses happen |
Watch out: the lights shown on each ship in the fleet management screen are not a star rating — they’re the count of beneficial traits. The actual check uses point totals, so picking by light count will mislead you.
Lower-class frigates tend to take damage before higher-class ones.
Why you shouldn’t specialise too hard
An expedition is a series of encounters. Most match the expedition’s type, but the game files show that at least one encounter of a different type is always mixed in.
So stacking a combat expedition with nothing but combat frigates gets you tripped up by the exploration or trade encounter buried in the middle. The rule of thumb: on the fleet selection screen, don’t leave any of the four stats badly weak.
Each encounter you pass awards items, units, and nanite clusters, and the more frigates you sent, the more each haul carries back. Each failure has a chance to damage frigates or attach a new detrimental trait. Keep sending out a frigate carrying detrimental traits and encounters fail more easily — and those traits spread to other ships. Clear them out when you notice them.
The fuel formula
Frigate fuel is crafted from Di-hydrogen + Tritium and comes in 50, 100, and 200 tonne units. The blueprints are rewards from the Freighter Command mission, and crafted fuel must be stored in the freighter inventory to be usable.
Effective distance = round(expedition distance ÷ 250) × 250
Total fuel = (effective distance ÷ 250) × combined fleet fuel cost − trait reductions
- The total rounds up to the next multiple of 50.
- Smaller units are consumed first. Spend a 200-tonne unit on a 150-tonne expedition and 50 tonnes comes back as change (if the freighter has room).
- Support-frigate fuel reduction is a flat value, not distance-scaled. That’s a gain on short expeditions and a loss on long ones, where the ship burns more than it saves.
An all-Support flotilla can sometimes clear Balanced expeditions for zero fuel.
Types and rewards
| Type | What comes back |
|---|---|
| Combat | Units, loot and salvage (Geodesite, Iridesite), Magnetised Ferrite, Nanite Clusters |
| Exploration | Discoveries (Gravitino Balls, artifacts), units, Storage Augmentation |
| Industrial | Units, refined stellar metals (Activated Copper / Cadmium / Emeril / Indium), curiosities like Carbon Crystal and Rare Metal Element |
| Trade | Units from trade deals, trade commodities (Neural Ducts, Superconducting Fibre) |
| Balanced | A mixture drawn from all four tables above |
Combat and Exploration runs can return Salvaged Frigate Modules and Storage Augmentation, so they’re worth prioritising if you’re chasing inventory expansion.
You can also fit up to three consumable upgrades per expedition. Each lasts for that one expedition only.
Things worth knowing
- The debrief narrative is disconnected from the actual universe. It will report bustling trade in dead, abandoned systems. Don’t use it to judge nearby systems.
- Frigates on expedition genuinely exist in the systems they report from. With some luck you can run into your own fleet out there.
- If you’re standing aboard a frigate when it warps to its next destination, you don’t die — you’re returned to your own starship.
FAQ
Can a destroyed frigate be recovered? No. Send a damaged frigate out and let it take damage again, and it’s gone permanently. Always repair anything flagged red first.
Is this the same “Expedition” the game advertises? No. Those are time-limited community events, covered on a separate page. This page is about dispatching your freighter’s fleet.