Pirates and hunting spots

Pirates are the enemies controlled by the game. They’re everywhere, from the Solar System to the frontier, and they get stronger the farther you are from the Sun. Hunting them gives credits, experience, scrap, equipment and blueprints for the workshop. Dying to a pirate does damage and costs a lot, but it never makes you lose the ship: that only happens in PvP with a license.

Level by distance

The level of a system’s pirates depends on its distance from the Sun: it starts at 1 and goes up one level every 2.5 light-years, up to level 100, at around 250 light-years. On the star map, a spot’s color tells you the danger for your level: gray easy, white at your level, orange hard and red deadly.

A pirate far below your level gives little experience (10% when it’s more than 10 levels below); a pirate above your level gives more.

Where they are

Type	Where	Behavior
Asteroid fields	Around the system’s fields	Fixed groups; a killed one stays out for 10 min
Garrison	Fixed posts at each planet and moon, plus reinforcement waves of 1 to 10 ships at the inner planets	Stays at its post and only attacks whoever comes within 600 km
Roaming patrols	Groups of 2 to 3 making wide loops around and between the planets	Come back 3 min after being killed
Deep-space gangs	Roughly one in every three regions of space, inside and outside systems	Always in the same place: you can come back and find them
Ambushes	Waves of 1 to 3 hunter pirates that appear in front of you, about 12 to 22 km away	Attack right away

In ambushes, the hunters get a bit stronger the more kills you have (up to 3 levels above the system). Each ambush opens a bounty: for one hour, every hunter killed in the system pays 50% more.

Escorts: every so often, pirates attack a cargo ship from the traffic near you. Defending the ship pays a bonus (250 ¢ + 100 ¢ per system level) split by each pilot’s damage, with a minimum of 50 ¢ for anyone who helped. If the pirates destroy it, it disappears and only comes back minutes later.

Hunting spots

Spots are fixed places in each system, with a name (“Sirius Lair”, for example), where pirates respawn in 1 minute. They’re on the ⚔ HUNT tab of the map ([M] by default), with the danger shown by color, the state of the elite and the commander, and the neighboring systems at your level. In space they show up as double diamonds, and warp drops you about 12 km from the center, already within their range.

Spot	Pirates	Level	Special
Patrol	5	the system’s	—
Nest	6, two of them heavy	system + 2	an elite every 5 min
Pirate fortress	5 heavy	system + 4	a commander every 30 min, announced to everyone

Every system has a patrol and a nest; pirate fortresses only appear in some systems from level 5 on. At Sol there are two patrols and a nest, levels 1 to 3, for learning. The pirate fortress has nothing to do with the Fortress War.

Elite, commander and Pirate Captain

Enemy	Hull	Damage	Reward
Regular pirate	base	base	150 ¢ + 60 ¢ per level
Heavy pirate	higher	higher	260 ¢ + 60 ¢ per level
Elite	4×	1.5×	5×
Commander	12×	2×	25×

The Pirate Captain is a rare boss: it appears in a system with pilots in flight (the first one between 8 and 15 minutes, then every 25 to 40 minutes) and is announced in the all-pilots chat. It has a huge hull and regenerates when it goes 8 s without taking damage, so you can’t do it alone: call in allies. The reward (4,000 ¢ + 500 ¢ per level) is split in proportion to each pilot’s damage, and the target panel shows your share live. Anyone who dealt at least 20% of the damage also gets an item.

A regular pirate low on hull tries to flee; the Captain doesn’t.

What each kill drops

Every kill pays credits, experience and scrap into the hold, with a 30% chance of a component. On top of that:

Enemy	Equipment	Blueprint
Regular	8% chance	4%
Heavy	15% chance	8%
Elite	always 1	35%
Commander	always 3	always
Pirate Captain	1 for anyone who dealt 20% of the damage	always

The luck attribute raises these chances, and elites, commanders and the Captain lean toward better rarities. A legendary item is announced in chat. Loot goes straight into your inventory: in flight, the hold first; if the backpack and the hold are both full, it’s lost. Blueprints become equipment at the workshop.