¶ NPC Ships and Factions
The expanse system has various NPC ships flying around different areas of the map. Depending on where you are you will see different NPC ships, of varying strength. The system is being expanded, and you can expect to see more NPCs in the near future.
All NPCs except the [CIVL] faction and the nation you're aligned to, if any, are hostile towards you.
- The NPC ships are not good for player use, the admins do not recommend trying to capture them whole and use them as player ships. We recommend you grind them down after disabling them.
- they are built to be hunted, to be prey. They are not good for PvP.
- hacking all the blocks is tedious work for a questionable gain
- they are controlled by a plugin and each one has a unique entity ID tracked by the plugin. If you do not disable that entity ID they can still be deleted by the plugin during cleanup.
¶ NPC Ships
T0 Warning (TIH and FNVY)
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.
CIVL ice haulers will periodically spawn asking for assistance with their reactors/drives. You can assist them by peacing the CIVL faction, boarding the ships, and completing tasks listed in the workshop room, found in the center of the floor you board on. Make sure to search all the crates you see aboard, as there are multiple trips worth of items that can be obtained from this encounter.
Tip: Go up the stairs, find the 3 buttons up top that open the engineering door downstairs. And read all the text!
After getting the ship back on course, a door will unlock in the workshop allowing access to another cargo crate, which can be looted for a much more valuable reward compared to the general ship loot.
Make sure to select the helmet icon on the right-hand inventory screen, as you can only access crate cargo from that menu.
The Transport Union employs a fleet of haulers, tankers and ferries that operate all over the Sol system. They're lightly armed and have little tech value; however, they provide a decent amount of basic components, packages, and H² when looted, making them very valuable for starters if you can manage to take one down while keeping the cargo or tanks intact. They can be found in the following instances: in the Belt Asteroid Cluster, around Jupiter, and around Saturn.
You need a ship with at least 3000 PCU to reliably spawn TTU NPCs.
The haulers, tankers and ferries 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.
- All of the TTU ships are armed with 2 Voltaire Collective Anti Personnel PDCs.
Red circles mark the approximate location of the reactors. Shoot them to depower the grid so you can grind it up and get the loot. Many thanks to Vahal and Sinari for providing the images.
This is a ship that is preferred by the shadier sides of the belter society, due to its larger drive pack it is more adept at dodging things that could be flying its way.
Trivia: You can actually find a modified version of this ship as a station in Jupiter.
It contains 4 large cargo containers and 5 small cargo containers.
This is a cargo ship run by well off belters who have the funds to fill the cargo containers to their max, each run.
It contains 11 large cargo containers and 3 small cargo containers.
This is a larger cargo ship run by slightly better off belters who can afford the higher running costs.
It only contains 4 large cargo containers.
This is one of the smallest cargo ships out there, its what a lot of successfull belter traders started in and thus is a favourite for up and coming traders.
It only contains 4 large cargo containers.
This ship has the largest cargo capacity out of all the ships of the TTU faction and thus is flown by only the most sucessfull belters.
It contains 12 large cargo containers.
This ship is a bit of an outlier compared to the other ships of the TTU faction. While it does have a small cargo capacity of 4 large cargo containers, it makes up for that with a whopping 23 large hydrogen tanks for ferrying fuel to various stations and ships. A word of warning if you are hunting these, they are highly explosive and it is reccomended to be very careful in where to place your shots.
It contains 4 large cargo containers and 23 large hydrogen tanks.
The Belter Ferry is supposed to move passengers across Sol, and as such there's little cargo space on it which leads to less loot compared to other spawns.
Please let @CaptFacepalm on SDX discord know the exact amount of CCs and position of reactors so he can add it because he cba to search for this useless tin can.
In DX6 within the Jupiter zone, players can encounter The Iron Heart (TIH) belter-themed pirate faction in addition to occasional TTU spawns. These are ships/stations that are equipped with better weaponry, including torpedos and railguns. There are 4 distance thresholds a player may pass to encounter increasingly difficult spawns. Beware of them, they are aggressive and considerably stronger than any cargo ships.
TIH NPCs won't spawn if all grids nearby combined are below 5000 PCU.
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 |
¶ Spawn Types
All TIH NPCs shoot belter tech level Ramshackle 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 a single Zako turret. 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.
FNVY ships are much more aggressive than TIH pirates, be careful out there!
In DX8 within the Saturn zone, players can encounter the Free Navy (FNVY) themed faction. Based on the Free Navy seen in the books/show, FNVY spawns are a mix of Belter and Martian vessels. All are highly dangerous, sporting some of the most advanced weaponry on the server.
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 220mm 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 railgun spawns with many torpedos
- T0 will have multiple inner rail spawns and all the torps
In DX3, DX4, and DX7 (Mars, Earth, and Ceres zones respectively), players who are not aligned to the nation space they are traveling in will encounter military NPCs themed after their nation.
These are the most dangerous zones for players to be traveling through, as in addition to being interdicted by NPCs, a constant GPS radar ping will alert players belonging to that nation of a hostile player in their instance. These zones should not be taken lightly by individuals who cross through; rather, they are usually the objective of an opposing nation or person looking for PvP.
- MCRN Ships : The MCRN ships spawn in Martian territory around Mars. The MCR Navy will protect their territory with extreme prejudice and are extremely well equipped. Don’t test them if you are not also very well equipped. Non-MCR citizens know not to go into Martian territory alone.
- UNN Ships : The UNN ships will spawn primarily in Earther territory around Earth. They will also protect their territory. The UN Navy is equally as well equipped as the MCRN, and will destroy ships that enter their territory. Those not in the UN know not to go into Earther territory alone.
- OPA Ships: The OPA has made Ceres its new capital and their new navy will protect the territory around it. They are well equipped with daring pilots. If you do not belong to the OPA you do not want to go to Ceres alone.
¶ Hunting Tips
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 Rail- or Coilguns 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, but shooting them further may impart new movement.
- 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.
- If you can't leave the spawn zone in time before a restart, hangar you hunter and wait at the gas station. Unhangar after restart and be prepared to
!fixshipand fight immediately after respawning on your grid.
¶ 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 Coilguns, 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.
 |
|---|
| A corvette is shot down by T0 NPCs above Europa |
¶ 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 fixed coil- or 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, Zmeya 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).