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Enemies & Pirates

Outside the safe lanes, hostile NPC ships hunt you. They acquire your ship while you mine or travel, chase you down, and fire on you. Kill one and it leaves a salvageable wreck stuffed with whatever its drop table rolled — which is exactly why pirates are the answer to "where do the rare drops come from." This page is the roster: who spawns where, how hard they hit, and what they drop.

How pirates work

A pirate is an NPC-controlled ship running a simple PATROL → CHASE → FLEE brain. When you fly within its aggro range it locks on, closes to its fire range, and starts shooting. Some types break off and flee when badly hurt; the nastier ones fight to the death.

When a pirate's hull hits zero it doesn't pay you credits directly — instead it drops a wreck, and its drop table rolls into that wreck's hold. You collect the loot by flying up and stripping the wreck with a Salvage Arm module (same as any other wreck). So the loop is: kill the pirate, then salvage its hulk before the wreck despawns (wrecks last 15 min).

Each line of a pirate's drop table rolls independently — a chance: 1.0 entry always drops, a 0.025 entry drops on a roughly 1-in-40 kill. A kill that rolls nothing at all leaves no wreck.

Pirate damage is scaled separately

Pirate cannons fire the same projectiles your cannons do, but their damage is multiplied by a global pirate damage scale of 2.2× on top of their weapon tier. This is deliberate: it lets every pirate be a real, shield-threatening danger without touching player weapon balance. A lone low-tier pirate at 1.0× would do less damage than your shield regenerates (12/s); at 2.2× even the weakest stalker can chip a shield, and tier-3 swarms in a dense wormhole will tear through it. Carry a Shield module and a few Shield Batteries.

Where pirates spawn

Spawns are gated by security zone. CORE (Patrolled Lanes) is pirate-free — patrols keep it clean. The danger ramps up from there:

Zone	Pirates near you (cap)	Who shows up
CORE (Patrolled Lanes §a)	0 — none spawn	nobody
MID (Outer Lanes §e)	up to 1	mostly Drift Raiders
FRONTIER (Frontier §6)	up to 2	Raiders + Frontier Corsairs
NULL (Wild Drift §c)	up to 3	Corsairs + Null Reavers

Which type spawns is a weighted pick for that zone (the "zone weights" in each pirate's data). Spawns are throttled — roughly one spawn per eligible player every ~5 minutes, capped per-player as above and 24 pirates server-wide at once — so encounters build up instead of swarming you. Holding a region for your faction (high Sovereignty) suppresses pirate spawns in your space, but NULL is exempt — lawless space stays lawless.

The three Voidborne Stalker tiers don't use zone weights at all — they spawn only inside wormhole pockets, drawn from each wormhole's own spawn mix (see Wormholes). A quiet Wisp Drift pulls weak Mk I stalkers; an Event Horizon pulls the Mk III.

The roster

Six hostile types. "Weapon tier" is the cannon tier they fire (higher = more damage, faster refire); HP is their hull pool before they pop.

Name	Where	HP	Weapon	Aggro / fire range	Flees?
Drift Raider	MID, FRONTIER, light in NULL	50	T1	140 / 90	no
Frontier Corsair	FRONTIER, NULL	95	T2	160 / 100	flees at 15% hull
Null Reaver	NULL only	170	T3	180 / 110	no — fights to the death
Voidborne Stalker	wormhole pockets	70	T1	150 / 95	no
Voidborne Stalker Mk II	wormhole pockets	120	T2	170 / 105	no
Voidborne Stalker Mk III	wormhole pockets	200	T3	190 / 115	no

Drift Raider

The trash mob of the galaxy — a flimsy 50-HP dart with a T1 cannon. It's the most common thing you'll meet in MID and FRONTIER, and it never runs. Drops a little Refined Iron and the occasional Structural Plating. Salvage value is low; you kill these because they're shooting at you, not for the loot.

Frontier Corsair

The FRONTIER/NULL workhorse: a 95-HP pirate interceptor with a T2 cannon. It flees once you drop it below 15% hull, so finish it fast or it runs. Beyond the usual scrap (Refined Iron/Copper, Structural Plating, Power Capacitor) the Corsair is the only normal-space source of T4 module blueprint copies — a flat ~3% chance per BPC across the full T4 module roster (cannon, missile, shield, cargo, engine, mining laser, salvage arm, warp drive, wing, manufacturing), plus a ~2% chance at the Guardian Battlecruiser blueprint. Farm Corsairs if you're chasing T4 gear.

Null Reaver

The apex pirate, and the single most important enemy in the game. A 170-HP pirate cruiser with a T3 cannon that spawns only in NULL (Wild Drift) and fights to the death — no fleeing. It's a genuine fight; bring a capable ship.

The Reaver is the canonical source of two endgame materials:

Void Fragment (component.void_fragment) — drops 1–3 at ~60% per Reaver kill. This is the combat-side gate on T5 manufacturing, mirroring the mining-side Tritanium Crystal. Reavers are far and away the best Void Fragment farm in normal space.
T5 module blueprint copies — a ~2.5% chance each across the entire T5 roster (cannon, missile, shield, cargo general, cargo ore, engine, mining laser, salvage arm, warp drive, wing, manufacturing). The Reaver is the only normal-space source of T5 BPCs.

It also reliably drops solid Refined Titanium/Copper, Power Capacitors, and Structural Plating, so even a no-BPC kill is worth salvaging.

Voidborne Stalkers (Mk I / II / III)

The three Stalker tiers are the wormhole-only pirates — you never see them in open space. They scale with the wormhole's rarity: weak pockets spawn Mk I, dangerous pockets spawn Mk III. Their drops are scrap-tier (refined metals + components scaling up with tier), with one notable exception: the Mk III has a ~10% chance at a Void Fragment on top of its Platinum/Titanium drops, making a Void-Singularity-class wormhole a secondary Void Fragment source. See Wormholes for the pocket loop and the run-completion reward table (which is where the richest T4/T5 drops and the Colossal Dreadnought blueprint actually come from).

Reverse lookup: where do rare drops come from?

If you're hunting a specific rare item, this is the short answer:

Want this	Best source
T4 module BPCs	Frontier Corsair kills (~3% each), or wormhole completion
T5 module BPCs	Null Reaver kills (~2.5% each), or wormhole completion
Guardian Battlecruiser BPC	Frontier Corsair kills (~2%)
Void Fragment (T5 combat gate)	Null Reaver (1–3 @ ~60%); Stalker Mk III (~10%); rich wormhole exits
Tritanium Crystal (T5 mining gate)	mining in NULL only — see Mining
Colossal Dreadnought BPC	Void Singularity wormhole completion only
Earth Artifacts (sell-only)	wormholes only

Bounties

Bounties are a player-vs-player system, not a reward for killing pirates. Through the Bounty Hunter NPC you can:

Post a bounty on another player (or on one of your own ships, as a recovery contract) — the credits go into escrow. Anyone but you can collect by destroying that ship.
Browse open contracts and go hunt the named ship; the kill pays the escrowed credits straight to you.
Cancel a bounty you posted for a refund minus a 10% admin fee.

Bounties range from a 1,000 cr floor up to a 1,000,000,000 cr ceiling. When a fresh bounty is posted the server announces it in chat so hunters know there's money on the table. Killing pirates does not earn or place bounties — pirates pay out through their salvageable wrecks, described above.

Surviving the fight

Stay in CORE if you can't fight. It's the only truly pirate-free space. Step into MID and something will start shooting.
Shield + batteries. With the 2.2× pirate damage scale, an unshielded ship in NULL is in real trouble. A Shield module plus a few Shield Batteries (restores 150 shield each) buys you the time to fight or flee.
Repair Kits restore 200 hull mid-fight if a pirate gets through.
Use range. Every pirate has a fixed fire range (90–115 blocks). Kite past it and you take no fire while you reposition or burn for safety.
They can't follow you home. Pirates are leashed outside station buoy rings — dock and they break off. They also despawn if no player stays within ~360 blocks.