Expedition Success

I was wondering what is the best way to have success in expeditions. I have sent a few small fleets out and have been afraid to send out any larger ships. Is it completely random what you encounter and what the outcome is i.e. if you happen to encounter pirates do you always lose your fleet or can you beat them? If so, what and how many ships did it take?

i beat pirates with my expo crew i send out 50 HF, 1 des. , 80 LC and 1 probe the thing i don't like is going up against aliens in my uni fornax account i send 1 des 1 probe and 190 LC and i do not loose many ships unless i go agains aliens and i only loose about 6 LC unless it is a big alien group

This is the link for the ogame Expeditions Calculation:
http://bontchev.my.contact.bg/ogame/expeditions.html



OGame Expeditions Calculator
Old Design (v0.84)
New Design (v1.x)
The strongest player has more than 5.000.000 points
Combat Technologies:
Weapons: Shields: Armor:
Ship Type: Number: Can a ship of this
type be found?
Small Medium Large
Discoverable number
of ships (max):

Small Medium Large
Worst possible Pirate
fleet (max):

Small Medium Large
Worst possible Alien
fleet (max):
Small Cargo No 0 0 0
Large Cargo No 0 0 0
Light Fighter No 0 0 0
Heavy Fighter No 0 0 0
Cruiser No 0 0 0
Battleship No 0 0 0
Colony Ship No 0 0 0
Recycler No 0 0 0
Espionage Probe No 0 0 0
Bomber No 0 0 0
Destroyer No 0 0 0
Death Star No 0 0 0
Battlecruiser No 0 0 0
Storage Capacity: 0 Max. SI of found ships: 0
Structural Integrity (SI): 0
Small Medium Large
Resource find (max):
Metal: 0 Crystal: 0 Deuterium: 0
Holding Time:
Small Medium Large
Possible delay / Speed-up:
02:00 / 00:40 hours
Small Medium Large
Dark Matter find (max):
100-200

usually when i send them i either die out right, get a few resources or get nothing at all. one time i got dark matter and i peed my pants =P (hypothetically of course, im not one to pee his pants )

Lol