The derelict ship anomaly. (2024)

I always recall getting bad rolls for this so I still ignore it.

How it works nowadays? How many outcomes there are?

This is all just my experiences and might just be bias...

If you use a leader with the carefree trait, which reduces anomaly research time, you are guaranteed to fail...
If you use nearly any other leader you have a fair chance of not failing.
If you use a leader with the meticulous (the one that also reduces archeology speed seems to work) trait you succeed.

I've heard that leader level can also help, but I've not paid that much attention to levels to see if that fits with my experiences.

Rewards... some research is common with a rare chance that the ship crew isn't dead and you get a first contact event.
Risks... your ship will explode and unless you remove the leader they will die as well.

Anomaly events of this sort, which provide (at best) a modest upside and a high chance of a significantly punishing downside could really use some taking a step back to ask what the intent of adding/keeping that event is.

Experienced players will recognize the event and likely just avoid it (or maybe hire a L1 dummy scientist to sacrifice to it, if they really want to take the gamble).

New players will (typically) get an unpleasant mousetrapped-by-the-game experience where you have to learn there's an event the game gives you that you really just want to ignore (punishing the new player for not having memorized all these things that they have yet to encounter).

I'm not sure what the intent of adding that particular event is, but it doesn't seem like one that really improves on the game experience either way.

Edit: The (relatively recently added) first contact event is mostly downside, too, if you think about it. First, you don't get the influence from completing the first contact, and if I'm remembering correctly (maybe I'm conflating this with a different event?), the way that particular first contact works, you don't even get to declare a first contact disposition (friendly/cautious/hostile), so you also lose out on other beneficial parts of a first contact event.

Starfire Breeze said:

Edit: The (relatively recently added) first contact event is mostly downside, too, if you think about it. First, you don't get the influence from completing the first contact, and if I'm remembering correctly (maybe I'm conflating this with a different event?), the way that particular first contact works, you don't even get to declare a first contact disposition (friendly/cautious/hostile), so you also lose out on other beneficial parts of a first contact event.

Click to expand...

Yeah it's a lot like the equally-old Sublight Probes chain, where the "bonus" for finding one is that you lose out on all possible anomalies in that system.

Some things get updated, other things get left behind.

HFY said:

Yeah it's a lot like the equally-old Sublight Probes chain, where the "bonus" for finding one is that you lose out on all possible anomalies in that system.

Some things get updated, other things get left behind.

Click to expand...

The worst part of that one is that the event chain doesn't spawn in the first system your science ship jumps to. I've had it spawn in like five years in, and the satellites are in systems I've already surveyed...which makes it doubly pointless, if not infuriating (as the satellites spawn in systems without development, which means if the satellite spawns a hostile entity you can get screwed by it (usually the entity is no big deal but if it's one of the void clouds...it will kill at least one or two ships before going down which is a lot for early game alloys and expansion).

If you actually read the first anomaly event text, you can tell the outcome, and if it's going to be the bad one (doesn't mention the parasites/no reward), unassign the scientist from the ship. Ship still goes boom, but the scientist lives.

Also looking at the script for the project, no modifiers for scientist traits, just a 50 weight to get the "good" outcome, 30 weight to get the bad outcome, and 20 weight to establish comms with an unknown empire (must be at least one unknown empire).

20% chance to establish contact with another empire and gain +25 Opinion with them
50% chance to get some society research
30% chance for the science ship to be destroyed

If you get the bad outcome, you can still save the scientist by moving them off the ship the moment you get the first notification, since there's a delay of 10 days before the ship is destroyed.

Ryika said:

20% chance to lose influence on first contact becasue you establish contact with another empire (and gain +25 Opinion with them)

Click to expand...

(added italics)
So, basically 50% bad, 50% useless.

Franton said:

(added italics)
So, basically 50% bad, 50% useless.

Click to expand...

Not necessarily. The empire you establish contact with is scripted to be relatively far away from you, so if you get any influence from them, then probably relatively late, and there's a good chance you'd get automatic contact with them anyway.

And if you're open to abusing favors, there's a good chance you'll get a huge amount of resources from an empire that you would likely not have met for a long time.

Ryika said:

Not necessarily. The empire you establish contact with is scripted to be relatively far away from you, so if you get any influence from them, then probably relatively late, and there's a good chance you'd get automatic contact with them anyway.

And if you're open to abusing favors, there's a good chance you'll get a huge amount of resources from an empire that you would likely not have met for a long time.

Click to expand...

Yes, that is a fair point. especially after the foundation of the Galactic Community, the chances of successfully going through a first contact process is near zero.