Excursions
Excursions
An excursion sends a fleet to explore empty space, the void or an unclaimed planet. If the trip succeeds, the fleet comes home with Void Experience and, sometimes, Xenogen, Artifacts, resources and even a relic. Excursions need no target colony and no battle, so they are a way to earn the currencies behind Biolab research and relic creation without attacking anyone.
Send an excursion
- Open Galaxy and pick a target that nobody owns: empty space, a void location or an unclaimed planet. Enter the coordinate in Fleet if you prefer.
- Select the ships to send. Any fleet can go; stronger fleets succeed more often and bring back more. Leave cargo room if you want to carry resources, Xenogen or Artifacts home.
- Choose the Excursion mission and set the Excursion risk slider (see below). Check the SEM fuel cost and travel time, and launch. Excursion is a separate mission from Extract, which recovers visible debris.
- The fleet explores on arrival and then flies home on its own. Carried rewards become available when it returns. See Fleet Operations for recall and return rules.
Success
Not every excursion succeeds. The base success chance is 15%, and three things can raise it:
- Fleet strength: a stronger fleet improves the chance, up to double.
- Travel time: a longer trip improves the chance, up to 1.5 times.
- Time since the last excursion to the same location: the longer a location has rested, the better, up to double. A failed trip only partly resets that rest time.
A failed excursion pays nothing, and its report says the fleet found nothing useful. Try a longer trip, a stronger fleet, a different location or a higher risk.
Risk
The Excursion risk slider appears next to Engine speed when you choose the Excursion mission. It runs from 0% to 50% in steps of 5%. The higher the risk, the more often the fleet finds something and the more it brings home, but it may lose ships on the way:
| Risk | Chance to lose ships | Ships and cargo lost | Success chance | Rewards | Relic chance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0% | none | none | ×1 | ×1 | ×1 |
| 10% | 10% | up to 10% | ×1.3 | ×1.8 | ×1.2 |
| 25% | 25% | up to 25% | ×1.75 | ×3 | ×1.5 |
| 50% | 50% | up to 50% | ×2.5 | ×5 | ×2 |
- At 50% the 15% base success chance becomes about 37%, before the other bonuses.
- The loss is rolled whether the excursion succeeds or not. When it hits, a random share up to the risk is lost from every ship type and from the cargo. Fractions of ships are rounded up or down at random in proportion, so even a fleet of one ship can be lost.
- If an excursion costs the fleet its last ship, the fleet does not come back. Void Experience found on the way is still credited, but resources, Xenogen and Artifacts need cargo space and are lost.
- The slider shows the loss chance, the maximum loss and all three bonuses before you launch. At 0% an excursion works exactly as before.
Rewards
A successful excursion always pays at least 1 VXP. It then rolls separately for each extra reward:
| Reward | Chance on success |
|---|---|
| Void Experience | Always |
| Xenogen | 40% |
| Artifacts | 40% |
| Resources (Aslit, Crlit, Iopla, SEM; one to four kinds) | 30% |
| Relic | 10% of full excursions (up to 20% with risk), see below |
| Rare or epic relic | From about 500,000 fleet power, see below |
Amounts grow with the strength of your fleet and with flight time. Fleet strength counts up to a ceiling that depends on the world's strongest active players, so a fleet far above that ceiling gains nothing extra. Xenogen, Artifacts and resources must fit in the fleet's cargo, and they are filled in that order: Xenogen, then Artifacts, then resources. Anything that does not fit is lost. VXP and relics need no cargo space.
Full excursions and the daily quota
Only your first 3 successful excursions within any 24 hours pay in full. These are called full excursions. Later successes in the same window still succeed but pay only 2–6% of the normal amounts, and they cannot find Common or Uncommon relics. The risk bonus still multiplies these reduced rewards.
- Galaxy shows a Full excursions tile with your used slots, for example 1/3. Fleet shows how many full excursions you have left, and when the next slot frees up.
- The window is rolling: a used slot returns 24 hours after the excursion that used it arrived.
- Only successful trips use a slot. A failed trip does not.
Plan around this by saving strong fleets for your full slots rather than sending many small ones.
Finding relics
On a full excursion that succeeds, there is a 10% chance to find a relic, doubled to 20% at 50% risk. Of those finds, 99% are Common and 1% are Uncommon. The relic goes straight into your collection at no cost.
Rare and epic relics from strong fleets
Every successful excursion, including those after your three full ones, can also find a Rare relic. The chance depends on the fleet's power when it set out and grows tenfold with every doubling:
| Fleet power | Chance on success |
|---|---|
| 250,000 | 0.001% |
| 500,000 | 0.01% |
| 1,000,000 | 0.1% |
| about 2,000,000 and more | 1% (maximum), Epic relic |
These values are for a one-hour flight to a location that rested for a day. Longer flights and longer-rested locations raise the chance (up to 1.5 and 2 times, as for the success chance), and so does risk (up to 2 times at 50%), but it never exceeds 1%. Once fleet power alone reaches the 1% cap, the find is an Epic relic instead of a Rare one. You find nothing if Archeotech is not yet researched or your collection has no free slot, so unlock Archeotech first and delete relics you no longer need. Other relic sources are the Ancient dig site in Planet Events and creating them yourself in Archeotech.
Reports
Each arrival creates an excursion report in Reports, and an arrival message in Inbox tells you the fleet has completed its excursion and is returning. The report says whether the trip succeeded and lists what was found. For risky excursions it also shows the risk and the number of ships lost, and a found Rare or Epic relic is marked with its tier.
Tips
- Check the quota tile before launching, and send your strongest fleet on a full slot.
- A longer flight helps both success chance and reward size.
- Bring cargo capacity if you want the Xenogen, Artifacts and resources, not just VXP.
- Spread trips across different locations to avoid short rest times.
- Risk pays best with fleets you can afford to lose part of. A small risk such as 10% already raises the rewards by 80%.
- Strong fleets on long flights to rested locations have the best chance of a Rare or Epic relic.
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