¶ Hunting Tips
This page will be deleted soon(tm) as it was a temporary copy made after the OG hunting guide broke.
The hunting guide is back where it belongs,
at https://wiki.sigmadraconis.games/en/spaceengies/expanse/npc_hunting
Do not go into NPC / PvE Zones without loaded weapons.
These are no-restore zones if you lose a grid.
Be warned, hunting is a dangerous, but effective way to gain tech and better gear as well as large amounts of vanilla Components. Combat NPC spawns (not TTU) are tiered form T3 to T0, with lower numbers indicating a higher difficulty and better loot.
- Every hunting ship should have Ramshackle Grinders mounted and at least 1 LCC worth of cargo space
- To loot an NPC, depower it and grind it whole
- Turreted Railguns are recommended for TIH and FNVY
- Advanced hunters often dump surplus Components out into space using Sorter blocks and Connectors
- NPCs come to a stop once they're disabled. Shooting it further may impart new movement
- Visit NPC Ships for more Info on NPC factions and their ships
- For a more in-depth guide to high-tier FNVY hunting in particular, check out Snek's Hunting SOP
- Do not bring a specialized hunting ship to PvP, you'll be a prime target and die fast.
¶ Shipwright Corvettes
The corvettes available at Trade Stations (Tycho, Vesta, Pallas) use fixed weapons and will have a very hard time in the later tiers. They are suitable for piracy though, both against lightly armed player grids and TTU. Try to find the blueprint on the Steam Workshop, it's usually an upgrade to the store bought variant.
¶ Nation-specific hunting ship
Every Nation HQ Shipwright sells a 'Nation Hunter' for 2,000,000,000 SC. These ships come with unfinished weapons, you'll need to provide the tech and weld them up. They're armed with a whole bunch of Flak PDCs and two Zako railguns, designed to take a beating and can handle all Jupiter spawns and the outer tiers of Saturn in their basic 'Belter' variants.
You can find the blueprints for both the 'Belter Tech' variant and an upgraded 'Inner Tech' variant in this Steam Workshop Collection.
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|---|
| A corvette is shot down by T0 NPCs above Europa |
¶ Spawn Zones
T0 Warning
These spawns will be much harder than T1, but more rewarding. You will face more, and heavily armed ships while being very close to a gas giant's gravity well.
You need a ship with at least 3000 PCU to reliably spawn TTU NPCs.
The haulers, tankers and ferries of the Transport Union (TTU) spawn in nearly every slow zone and are rumored to be more commonly found near major traffic routes and trade stations. You can even spot them near the outer border of nation space (Earth/Mars/Ceres proper), but I'd suggest searching in asteroid fields or near CIVL Trade Stations (be aware of the Trade Zone rules, no weapon use within 20 km of a NPC station!).
If you struggle finding them, travel for about 30 km in any direction, then slow down and drift at 100 m/s or slower. You'll risk missing them otherwise, as they tend to spawn outside of render distance and slowly move along their travel route (which takes them near your postition) before despawning after a while. Consider bringing an Ore Detector to do some prospecting on the side.
You need a ship with at least 5500 PCU to reliably spawn TIH NPCs.
The Iron Heart (TIH) Pirates patrol Jupiter and offer Inner and High Tech Scrap which converts to Inner and Upgraded Belter Components.
¶ Spawn Zones
| Tier | Distance |
|---|---|
| T3 | 715 to 625 km |
| T2 | 625 to 550 km |
| T1 | 550 to 450 km |
| T0 | 450 to 0 km |
Jupiter stations can have mounted railguns, approach with caution.
¶ Spawn Types
All TIH NPCs shoot belter tech level torpedoes. Mount Ostman-Jaszinski Flak PDCs or better.
T1 and T0 will have ships armed with coilguns, too.
- T3 can have all station types + lightly armed ships (some ship-only)
- T2 has all station types + more lightly armed ships (no ship-only)
- T1 has only railgun type stations + medium escorts
- T0 has only railgun type stations + harder escorts for increased rewards
The 'railgun type' stations are called 'Anderson Station' and 'Fence Station' and employ one Mounted Zako Railgun. You can ignore them if you stay out of their railgun's 10 km range when starting out, but they also provide 100+ High Tech Scrap if you keep collateral damage in check.
The Free Navy (FNVY) fleet partrols Saturn and offer Inner, UNN and MCRN Scrap which convert to Inner, UNN and MCRN components.
The Railgun ships in T1 and T0 offer Advanced UNN/MCRN Scrap to convert to Advanced UNN/MCRN.
¶ Spawn Zones
| Tier | Distance |
|---|---|
| T3 | 550 to 475 km |
| T2 | 475 to 375 km |
| T1 | 375 to 275 km |
| T0 | 275 to 0 km |
FNVY ships will chase you hard and they're heavily armed, approach with extreme caution.
¶ Spawn Types
All FNVY ships shoot Inner Tech level Torpedoes. OPA or Inner PDCs recommended, but Flaks can work, too.
T3 is pretty easy, but the difficulty ramps up with every tier.
- T3 will have easier ships with few torpedos
- T2 will have medium ships more torpedos
- T1 will have inner rail spawns with many torpedos
- T0 will have multiple inner rail spawns and all the torps
¶ Early hunting tactics
These apply mainly to TTU and are very hard to pull off against NPCs that actually want to kill you.
¶ PDC brawl
You can abuse the fact that TTU's PDCs are set to a range of 2,500 - 2,700 m.
Set your own PDCs to 3,000 m, 'Target Grids: On', 'Target Subsystem: On, Power', 'Objective Mode: Disabled' and try to shoot the reactors out by getting close, but not too close. Voltaire PDCs recommended.
¶ Fixed Weapons
You can use a Zakosetara fixed railgun, Kess Cannons or Glapion Gatlings to depower your target. Set a 'Target Lead Group' in the Weapon settings and do a reconnect F5 and !fixship before heading into battle to mitigate desync.
¶ Hydromanning
If you know the blind spot (or shoot the PDCs off of the NPC), you can suit over and grind the reactors to depower the ship. This method minimizes collateral damage.
¶ Advanced hunting tactics
Employed against TIH and FNVY.
¶ Spawn Exclusion Zone
Once a spawn occurs, an exclusion zone surpresses new spawns within a few kilometers. The exact size of the zone remains undisclosed, but estimates range from 30 km to 50 km. Do /gps when you get a spawn, stay within the zone and rest assured you'll have all the time in the world to grind down your prey.
¶ Drive tanking
To minimze damage to your hunter, a common tactic is mounting a large, high integrity Epstein Drive (Kaminari preferred) repaired by welders mounted inside your ship. Try to bundle your power pack (all reactors and batteries) behind the drive. All NPCs target power, so if you point away from the enemy they'll end up shooting your main drive, which can tank sustained fire from three railguns with 4+ welders pointed at it and enough repair components. High tier hunters commonly bring 30,000 - 80,000 Steel Plates if they plan on tanking Inner Railguns.
¶ Targeting Utility
Targeting something other than Power when hunting is somewhat controversial. There was a time when it was faster to go for Utility when fighting the Inner Rail Spawns Pella and Granicus, but FNVY strengthened their ships by deploying Utility Decoys. Now it is much harder to snipe the AI Core / Remote Control, and it is very much debatable which method has a lower TTK (time-to-kill).