Frigate Expedition

The subject of this article is from the Worlds Part I update.
The information from this article is up-to-date as of 3 September, 2024.

Frigate Expedition is a game mechanic.

Summary[]

Frigate Expedition is a feature that allows the freighter owner to send frigates on expeditions, which is one of many ways to gain money or other artifacts. When a frigate is on expedition, players can still visit and dock on the frigate, but cannot use the teleporter to return to their freighter. Decisions can also be made that have a high impact on the rewards you receive from frigates, including Quicksilver as a reward for making a decision.

Sending Frigates[]

To send a frigate on an expedition, you need a freighter. You can own a freighter either by rescuing freighters from pirates or from random freighters found in space. Once you have a freighter, you need to build a Fleet Command Room to send frigates, which you can learn from the Freighter Command mission. Once you have built it, talk to a navigator on the freighter's bridge to send frigates on an expedition. Select a mission to send your frigates on, then assign the frigates to the expedition. Once this is done, you can send it. The last step is to start the expedition and you're done.

You can only send as many expeditions as you have fleet command rooms built. The available expeditions reset on 0:00 UTC.

Expedition Difficulty/Frigate Tracking[]

You can check the status of the frigate from the fleet command room. When interacted with, the commander of the frigate will appear on the terminal as a holographic display. The commander will tell you how far the frigate has travelled and how much time is left until the frigate completes its expedition. You can also choose to inspect the frigate or cancel the expedition.

All quests have a difficulty rating, measured in stars. The more stars the mission has, the more difficult it is. The theoretical maximum difficulty rating is five stars, but in practice it only goes to three stars. Sending frigates with lower difficulty ratings may result in damage or complete destruction of the frigate. To make sure that all frigates come back undamaged, the combined fleet rating must be two stars higher than the expedition difficulty. This is why the highest expedition difficulty possible is three stars, so there is never a situation where frigates might get damaged.

Debriefing[]

Once the expedition is over, you can go back to the Fleet Command Room and start debriefing the Captain of the Frigate. An interface will briefly pop up and start generating expedition logs. The debriefing will extend from about 900 entries to about 5000 entries, depending on the total distances the frigates covered.

Corrupted Entry[]

If you send your frigate on a three-star expedition, a corrupted record may be available during debriefing. After successfully debriefing with a corrupted record, you will receive the Dream Aerial Blueprint.

Rewards[]

If you debriefed the crew, they will reward you with various items. These items are sometimes common and unessential, sometimes rare. The rewards depend on the type and difficulty of the expedition.

Combat: Awards Units and resources from pirate loots.
Exploration: Awards curiosities, resources and rare items from exploration. An artifact of random rarity can be rewarded.
Industrial: Awards all activated stellar metals and many other materials. A Lost Artifact of random rarity can be rewarded. Materials awarded from Industrial expeditions include: Storage Augmentation and Salvaged Frigate Module.
Trade: Awards Units from trade and other materials.
Balanced: Awards a random mixture of above rewards.

Upgrades[]

While speaking to the Navigator before starting a frigate expedition, you can craft and use frigate upgrades. They can be used by inserting the upgrades in the slots in the lower left corner of the screen while on the expedition preparation screen. Each upgrade enhances the expedition, giving a higher chance of successful expeditions.

You can insert these upgrades:

Fuel Oxidiser - decreases the time until the expedition is completed by 10 points.
Explosive Drones - improves the frigate combat skill by 10 points, increasing the successful chance in Combat expedition.
Holographic Analyser - improves the frigate exploration skill by 10 points, increasing the successful chance in Exploration expeditions.
Mind Control Device - improves the frigate trading skill by 10 points, increasing the successful chance in Trade expeditions.
Mineral Compressor - improves the frigate mining skill by 10 points, increasing the successful chance in Industrial expeditions.

They are best used in Balanced expeditions. However, only three upgrades can be installed for each expedition. They can be removed from the slot if wanted.

Damages[]

As stated before, if the expedition difficulty is higher than the frigate difficulty for at least two stars, the frigate will become damaged during the expedition due to bad encounters. In this case, the frigate integrity will decrease (although they does not have an integrity level or health and cannot be damaged by players, they can be damaged during expeditions. See Frigates: Integrity for more information).

If a frigate is damaged during expedition and the expedition is active, the commander of the expedition will receives a Starship communication from one of their frigate's captain, informing about frigates damage. Alternatively, it can be answered from the Fleet Command Room. Damaged frigates are marked as a yellow holographic picture of that frigate on the Fleet Command Room.

When answering the communication, the commander of the expedition have two choice: recall damaged frigates for repair or continue the expedition. When recalled, the damaged frigate will return. Debrief can be made before intitate repair, if wanted.

Damaged frigates are marked as a frigate with a small hammer icon and a red "Critically Damaged" word on the selection of the damaged frigate in "Manage Fleet". To intitate repair, land on the damaged frigate. The captain will contact you, but will not give you anything. Instead, they will tell you the location of the frigate's Damaged Components. These components, like other Damaged Components, are repairable. If repaired, the frigate will become healthy again. There are no penalties of not repairing them, that means they can be left for later. Repair are still avaliable when refuse to recall the frigate, by entering the Star system where the damaged frigate is and repair them.

However, sending a damaged frigate on an expedition without any assistances will cause that frigate to be destroyed and the frigate will be removed from the fleet. Destroyed frigate are marked as a red holographic image of that frigate on the Fleet Command Room. Addiontially, damaged (not destroyed) frigates will have a negative trait on return.

Organic Frigates[]

See: Organic Frigates for more information.

Organic Frigates are an alternative type of frigate that are introduced in the Endurance update. Unlike other frigates, they do not spawn naturally and do not have onboard captains. They can only be found though Dream Aerial for the first collection of the organic frigate and Anomaly Detector for the later collection. Organic Frigates are also very expensive, and require at least one billion for an S-Class, which is nearly impossible to achieve unless Purchases difficulty is set to minimum.

To recruit them, you need to acquire a Dream Aerial, which is obtainable from three star frigate expeditions. Once acquired, it will find Organic Frigates without need to activate the Dream Aerial. Once an Organic Frigate has been found, they will appear as a Space Encounter and will ask you some question, any answer can be inputted, but choose wisely as it will increase or decrease a stat. Once answered, they can be recruited. For later recruit, you need an Anomaly Detector, which can be obtained from destroying asteroids (the detectors are very rare, blue star systems increase the chance), and activating the detector will cause it to find Space Encounter that are not Organic Frigates, and chance of finding these using a detector is very rare, at ~3%. Later recruit does not requires questions to be answered.

Organic Frigates cannot be destroyed during expedition, no matter what. They reward the commander of the expedition a Psychonic Egg that can be hatched into Living Ship upgrades, or a Spawning Sac that can be used to add more slots into the Living Ship.

Frigates Decisions[]

As of Orbital update, the crew of the frigates that are on a current frigate expedition may contact you. If this happens, you will receive a Starship communication. Answering the communication will make the crew of the frigate report problem that persists during the expedition.

During the communication, you cannot cancel the communicator or recall the frigate. The crew will present you two choices which will change depending on the situation. Choosing an option matter; they have a high impact on rewards during debriefing. These communication cannot be triggered manually.

Some may requires a tour to your frigates to either encounter space phenomena or assist your frigate by fending off hostile Pirates.