Distress Beacons

A distress beacon is a periodic galaxy event. Every so often a derelict ship drifts into an empty stretch of space carrying a hold full of salvageable cargo, and the whole galaxy hears about it in chat. Fly out, strip it with a salvage arm, and the haul is yours. It's a race — first one there keeps everything.

How it works

The server rolls for a beacon once a minute. The roll is probabilistic, tuned to spawn about one beacon per hour on average, so they're a recurring event, not a constant one. When a roll succeeds:

1. The game picks a random sector that's clear of authored content — no stations, asteroid belts, gates, or other features sitting on it. Beacons never spawn inside a player base or an existing landmark.
2. A derelict (a salvageable wreck carrying a rolled loot table) appears at that sector, drifting on the flight plane where ships fly.
3. A galaxy-wide signal announces it in chat, naming the sector and its risk zone, so everyone online knows where to head.

Up to 3 beacons can be live at once. Each one carries its own loot.

Claiming a beacon

There's no ownership and no flagging — a beacon is open to anyone. The first pilot to reach it and strip it keeps the haul.

To claim one:

1. Read the chat announcement for the sector and risk-zone label.
2. Fly there (warp toward the region, then close the distance).
3. Aim at the derelict and fire your Salvage Arm module to scoop cargo out of it, the same way you'd salvage any wreck.

A few practical notes on salvaging:

• The salvage arm scoops whole stacks straight into your ship's cargo. If your hold fills up, the rest stays in the wreck — nothing is lost.
• Higher-tier salvage arms drain a wreck faster (more stacks per click): Mk I pulls one stack per scoop, Mk V up to five.
• It's first-come: another pilot can be scooping the same wreck. Whoever pulls a stack first gets it.

If nobody claims a beacon, it fades after 20 minutes and the cargo is gone. The clock is real — a beacon deep in dangerous space can expire before a far-off pilot ever arrives.

The loot

Every beacon rolls its hold from a fixed table when it spawns. Each entry rolls independently, so two beacons rarely carry exactly the same haul:

These are mid-tier crafting goods — the kind of components and refined metal that otherwise take a full mine-and-refine loop to produce, handed to you in one scoop. The rare-earth roll is the standout: rare-earth is otherwise only mined from planet surface deposits, so beacons are a second source of it (see Planets).

Risk scales the reward

The quantities above are the base roll. The actual haul scales by the risk multiplier of the zone the beacon spawned in — the same lever that drives mining yield:

So a beacon that drops in Wild Drift carries roughly four times the cargo of one in Patrolled Lanes. The catch is the trip: NULL has no NPC protection and full PvP, and you have to survive the flight out, the salvage, and the flight home — often with other pilots racing you for the same prize. A Wild Drift beacon is a fat reward you have to earn.

That tradeoff is the whole point. A Patrolled Lanes beacon is a safe, modest top-up; a Wild Drift beacon is a gamble worth running for.

Tips

• React fast. Beacons fade in 20 minutes and others are racing you. Warp toward the announced region the moment you see the signal.
• Bring a salvage arm. Without one you can't claim anything — and a higher-tier arm clears the wreck before a rival can muscle in.
• Weigh the zone. Read the risk-zone label in the announcement. Don't fly into Wild Drift for a beacon you can't survive reaching.
• Watch your hold. A full cargo hold leaves loot behind in the wreck; bring space, especially for a high-zone beacon's larger haul.

See also

• Ships — the Salvage Arm module
• Wormholes — another source of salvageable wrecks
• Planets — the other source of rare-earth
• Crafting wiki — what the salvaged components build