https://youtu.be/zdb20AzqwX8

So, you've brought the game because it looks fun(it is), but you don't know where to start.
First you will need resources to unlock item for you ship and to be able to bring your ship into Expedition.

Expedition consists of 22 islands. These island have resources you can harvest like wood and aetherium to name a few. But beware, AI ships do spawn sometimes.

There are four types of AI ships:

AI cargo-won't fire upon you unless you have a bounty (amount is shown by grey dot over your ship)

AI Hunt- These are ships that ussualy you fight for your hunt contract, but sometimes spawn on islands bythemselves, these will attack you.

AI outpost- Small structures with 0-3 turrets and sometimes drone bays, these can only move up and down.

AI Fort- Big structures that are kind of like ouposts but have more weaponry and call reinforcements, sometimes have loot.


Those are the four.

You may encounter player ships they might shoot you if the captain has set the turrets to aggressive (by holding q and selecting various options.)

If you shoot a player who has no bounty, you will get a bounty of five. If you destroy a player ship that has lots of bounty, you will be able to claim that bounty upon extraction.

These are some of the basics, next we will cover Extractions, Friendly Forts, Player Forts, and everything related to that.

So you've just spawned in Expedition, you see this structure behind you. That is a friendly fort. There you can look at the boards and interact with the options. One board is everything about the ship, Repairing the whole ship, refilling scrap and tools, Extracting your ship. And after you earn reputation, Extracting cargo with out the ship.

To earn reputation you need to finish some contracts. There are several types:
= Harvest, you have to harvest resources and bring them to the fort for a reward.
= Delivery, you have to take a number of parcels at the same time to an islands tunnel, Beware of AI ships near your delivery.
= Hunt, you have to hunt down a ship of varying difficulty Rank D ships usually have 1-3 turrets, and are in the Light ship category.
=Rescue. Fly to a disabled ship marked on map. Repair it so you can drag it with harpoon, some may be sunk at bottom of sea.
=Capture. Rescue with extra step of disabling the ship without destroying engines or kiting it to fort of contract.
=Smuggling. From Den, fly to islands tunnels to collect parcels, enemy guardian will spawn, run or fight it.
Now lets talk extraction:

When you go into expedition you are charged the cost of your ship, you only get back that cost if you extract with most of your ship intact, if you lose parts you will not get the full cost back.

There are two places you can extract, Friendly Forts(NPC and your own personal fort), and Extraction streams, follow the directions of the quest for these.


Player Forts,


Player Forts, these are a bit end game you need a specific resource that you use for player fort related stuff. They have a teleportation Node that allows the fort to be teleported to all islands without friendly forts. On that node there is the teleportation option and the extract option which extracts the fort and ship. if you are close enough to a fort that is teleporting your ship will be teleported as well, even if it is not your fort.

Balloons have lots of hp and a large surface area, you can use them to reduce the need to armour parts of the ship,

Know what type of ship you want.

A ship with lots of cargo capacity, this will need enough lift to support cargo mass, or ballasts and an altitude maintainer.

A ship for fighting with lots of turrets, make sure the turrets wont shoot each other by accident, keep auto turrets 3 blocks apart.

If you are going to want to loot have some cargo capacity.

Use autohammers wisely

If you have autohammers you need wells(in most cases)

Front gunners are good but against playerships increases risk of boarding cause you have to ram

Go to the official discord for help building ships

There are only 4 max ranges in the game for ship weapons

Most weapons fall into the 275m range:
Twin
Breach
Needle
Longneck(it gets a damage hump at about 75% range(maybe))
Blast

Seeker and Barrage as well although Bronze say you will hardly hit anything at this range, you wanna get closer, also the explosion arms at 50m.

The only weapon with a max range of 600m is the Fort Cannon.

Heavy Weapons are mostly in 400m:
Lance
Flak
Flesh Gun
MagBeam
Torpedo
Heavy Cannon
Pigeon Missiles

Weapons in 100m:
Gatling
Harpoon


Volley turrets range depends on the arch but 100m is around where the arch becomes unmanageable.


Carbines 100m
Lever Action 80m
Revolvers 50m
Grapples are 30m


AI ships get 30m more range than player ships.

Quote from Bronze Johnson:
"the synth can spawn 1 ship and it will do it if there is a player ship nearby and 5 minutes or less on the timer. This ship has 50% hp on all parts and does 100% damage.

Islands can spawn 1 ship/fort. If its a fort defeating it, destroying a cargo pad, or taking a cargo parcel will spawn its reinforcement which each fort can only do once. These ships have 50% hp and do 50% damage.

AI "cargo ships" have a 5% chance of spawning in open water tiles when they go from 0 player ships nearby to 1. "Cargo ships" can be a specific fort, a mini mechalodon or a normal cargo ship. Normal cargo ships only shoot at ships with a bounty and spawn with a preset path that they will not stop following. These ships have 100% hp and do 100% damage."