Colony Resource Types?

Is there some unwritten rule somewhere about which type of resource islands the explorer finds? When I first tried this out the explorers seemed to bring back a nice variety of islands, and of course I started off picking titanium since I'm not a high level player and can't produce that on my own island. When titanium wasn't an option, I would pick gold ore, because it's always nice to have a little extra. But after a while, those islands seem to have become scarcer and scarcer, so I started to pick iron and granite. Now it seems the only resources my explorers ever find are marble, coal, and hardwood—which aren't too exciting because I can produce plenty of those on my own island.

Is there a rule somewhere that if you claim islands of a certain resource, then your explorers will no longer find that resource? I've looked around and can't find this explained anywhere. Does anyone have a link to where it is explained how this works? My main interest in doing this at all is upgrading the water castle, but getting a flow of resources that aren't easy to come by otherwise is a nice perk. I wish I had a better understanding of how this worked.

See: [ http://settlersonlinewiki.eu/en/expe.../colony-types/ ] 'Expedition Colony Types'

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Originally Posted by Pteris

See: [ http://settlersonlinewiki.eu/en/expe.../colony-types/ ] 'Expedition Colony Types'

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Thank you. I frequently do refer to that page. It is a very helpful reference. It doesn't really address why my explorers no longer find colonies of certain types, though.

I feel your pain as the same thing happened to me when I was running expeditions. Sometimes I'd go thru 10 explorers and still not get anything besides marble, wood and coal. After a while it just wore me down and I'd go for the coal. After I did the junk ones a few times, I'd get iron or titanium again. Of course, those probably would have come up even if I'd passed on the coal, but I wanted the XP for the castle. Good luck!

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Is there some unwritten rule somewhere

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There are so many unwritten things in regards to Expedtions, I'd call it fraud if I had paid for it. There are so many things wrong with Expditions which made me quit them entirely, the problem as you described above is one of the major reasons as well. I'm sticking to my "phase"-hypothesis, which I couldn't pinpoint to anything reasonable as far as patterns are concerned in terms of time(s) (be it actual time, times you sent explorers to find colonies, times you won/lost a colony, w/e). Whenever triggered, you'd either find an abundance of good colonies/resources or you simply wouldn't for the life of yours and just wasting Explorers left and right.

Be there done that, raged hard.

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Originally Posted by Perwyn

I feel your pain as the same thing happened to me when I was running expeditions. Sometimes I'd go thru 10 explorers and still not get anything besides marble, wood and coal. After a while it just wore me down and I'd go for the coal. After I did the junk ones a few times, I'd get iron or titanium again. Of course, those probably would have come up even if I'd passed on the coal, but I wanted the XP for the castle. Good luck!

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Originally Posted by Ceruhe

There are so many unwritten things in regards to Expedtions, I'd call it fraud if I had paid for it. There are so many things wrong with Expditions which made me quit them entirely, the problem as you described above is one of the major reasons as well. I'm sticking to my "phase"-hypothesis, which I couldn't pinpoint to anything reasonable as far as patterns are concerned in terms of time(s) (be it actual time, times you sent explorers to find colonies, times you won/lost a colony, w/e). Whenever triggered, you'd either find an abundance of good colonies/resources or you simply wouldn't for the life of yours and just wasting Explorers left and right.

Be there done that, raged hard.

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It sounds like my experience is not atypical. Maybe it's just the good and bad luck of the rng. Thanks for your replies. I'll keep plugging along. Leveling up that castle is worth it for its own sake, in my opinion.

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I'll keep plugging along. Leveling up that castle is worth it for its own sake, in my opinion.

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If leveling is your priority, I'd kinda throw out my focus on the colony resource typ itself but just take any and all (as to not completely waste the explorer) and glance at the island and guesstimate time/troop:XP ratio and go from there. I'd do a forum search (or two...) and try to find the math breakdown somewhere as far as efficiency goes as well as reverse clearing is concerned, meaning to say, if clearing the Map Boss requires you to take out 12 extra camps while you could reverse clear 4 sectors for shadow XP, I'd do those and cancel the Expedition without taking it over.
If you keep at wanting to get the titanium colonies etc, be prepared for some hard disappointment phases.

Again that's just me atm with all the rage and dumb explanations BB has give to fuel that hate.

Since you cant attack your frends and guildies colonies and all the best resources get picked by players maybe having a large frends list has got something to do with only poor resources showing up?

There was some info on how the colony islands and resources get created/picked sadly I have forgotten it as I have no interest in colonies..

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Originally Posted by SSSecretSquirrel

Since you cant attack your frends and guildies colonies and all the best resources get picked by players maybe having a large frends list has got something to do with only poor resources showing up?

There was some info on how the colony islands and resources get created/picked sadly I have forgotten it as I have no interest in colonies..

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I feel like I've got everyone on the server on my friend list. Where did you find this information about not being able to attack friends' and guildmates' colonies? I haven't seen this before.

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I feel like I've got everyone on the server on my friend list. Where did you find this information about not being able to attack friends' and guildmates' colonies? I haven't seen this before.

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It was mentioned by a BB quite some time ago, stating something along the lines of you won't be finding/attacking colonies from friends/guildies from the selection your Explorer returns.
Which I think was also debunked a bit later as someone killed their FL and/or could confirm leftovers werent doing Expeditions and the selection was still crap. That aside, it still wouldn't explain my experience of going through phases where you are guaranteed crap or guaranteed good rolls, FL didn't change, people still werent doing Expeditions regardless (at that time we didn't even get sector shadow XP and there were maybe 5 people doing expeditions on the entire server to begin with).

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Originally Posted by Ceruhe

It was mentioned by a BB quite some time ago, stating something along the lines of you won't be finding/attacking colonies from friends/guildies from the selection your Explorer returns.
Which I think was also debunked a bit later as someone killed their FL and/or could confirm leftovers werent doing Expeditions and the selection was still crap. That aside, it still wouldn't explain my experience of going through phases where you are guaranteed crap or guaranteed good rolls, FL didn't change, people still werent doing Expeditions regardless (at that time we didn't even get sector shadow XP and there were maybe 5 people doing expeditions on the entire server to begin with).

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Thanks for elaborating on this. It seems to me that in the kind of game where it is encouraged, and benefits players to have large friend lists for adventures and trading, it would be counterintuitive to limit "pvp" to an even smaller subset of the population. Especially where any reason for doing so is already mitigated by the fact that opponents are anonymous, and you can't team up with friends and guildmates anyway.