This is information that I wish I knew when I started playing in reloaded. It took me few weeks to figure it out. I am hoping new players can see it and get more interested and involved in the game and actually stay.

First of all this guide is exclusive to reloaded universe only. The reason for that is because in the other universes there are NO voyagers ships and they are the main reason why it is actually worth doing expeditions at all. What you do here is send voyagers on expedition and when they return they bring you back resources. The expedition technology in the early levels is very cheap. I suggest that you get to level 9 exp technology asap. It is very cost effective to rush it instead of developing colonies at early levels.

Why level 9?
The way expedition technology works is with the formula:
Expedition Slots = 1 + Rounded down(Expedition Tech / 3 )

Meaning that on level 9 the formula will look like this:
1+(9/3)=1+3=4 expedition slots.

The way the formula works is you get a new expedition slot every 3 levels (after 9 - 12,15,18 etc). So once you decide you want to get an extra exp slot go to the tech info and look how much total resources you will need for the next 3 levels.

Now the real answer to the question - why expeditions will help me grow fast? With level 4 expedition technology you can send 4h long expeditions. The result of expeditions with voyagers only is always the same - you find abandoned planet and gather resources. Here is what you get from 4h long expedition as a cap and it can be achieved by sending 24 voyagers.

The fleet has discovered an inhabited planet! Your explorers have recovered 500.000 of Metal, 250.000 of Crystal and 166.666 of Deuterium.

That being said with the suggested rush for level 9 exp technology you multiply that with 4 and at the end you get 2.000.000 metal, 1.000.000 crystal and 666.667 deuterium every 4 hours!

I wrote that guide to my ally forum at the time. I did it in early stage and it also includes the current development I had at the time - 164.800 points in buildings. The highest mines I had were 28/25/18 with daily profit of
Metal 2.349.816
Crystal 1.052.112
Deuterium 222.216

Every once in a while I find myself giving that same advice to new players. I figured a guide in the official forum is gonna be really handy for me to point them to instead of having to explain myself over and over again.