Freighters & Fleet Guides

Every player gets a free freighter, and a surprising number of them do not know it. Warp between systems enough times and you will drop into a space battle where a capital ship is under pirate attack; clear it, board the freighter, and the captain hands it over at no cost. The catch is that the class and type of that first free ship are effectively random, and rerolling it is a slow process most players would rather do early than late.

What a freighter is for changes as a save matures. Early it is storage — the fastest large increase in carrying capacity available. In the mid-game it becomes a mobile base you can summon in any system, which quietly solves the biggest problem in the game: you are always somewhere else. Late it is a fleet manager. Frigates run expeditions in the background for units, resources and salvaged frigate modules, and a well-tuned fleet earns while you do something else entirely.

The guides here cover getting the free freighter and upgrading to S-class, freighter types and capital classes, frigate fleet composition and expedition success rates, derelict freighter runs, salvaged frigate modules, and freighter base building — which follows different rules from planetary building and has a different parts list.