What's in the pods?

[Purple]

What controls the content of the pods? I thought it was fairly random, but lately I've noticed that in some games I seem to get a large percentage of tech discoveries, in others money, money, money (in addition to the usual native lifeforms and various resources).

Does one's faction have anything to do with the probabilities of receiving various goodies?

And is this specified somewhere, e.g., in alpha.txt?

[Timexwatch]

I don't think that factions have anything to do with it.

I know that the pods are somewhat random, but things like exploring sea pods with transports increase the likelyhood of getting artifacts and that when warships with no transport ability are more likely to get worms.