#2
by Cebat
Expedition tech is like the lottery. You send your ships on an expedition to "Outer Space" (slot 16 in any system) and they go around for an hour exploring it. Sometimes they find an abandoned ship in mint condition and you get a free ship (usually one that is of the same type as the ships you sent out there), or you can get resources (you can only bring back as much as your cargo capacity can hold), sometimes your crews just find a supernova and take pretty pictures... and sometimes part of your fleet gets sucked into a black hole and you some ships.
Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes you get pretty pictures (not literally), it's all luck.