NPCs, shops, and services

NPCs are right-click interfaces. They handle vending, insurance, shipyards, quests, repair, and bounty hunting. They're an economic stabilizer — always-on, fixed-price, predictable.

Vendor NPC (Trader Terminal)

Right-click a Trader NPC to open the vendor UI. Three modes:

Buy — list of items the vendor sells, by category
Sell — pick items from your ship's cargo to sell
Inventory — for items in your personal inventory (off-ship)

Prices are fixed by server config. The vendor is intentionally suboptimal vs efficient player markets — its purpose is reliable liquidity, not best price.

Catalog scoping

Different NPCs sell different things. A standard IPU vendor sells the default catalog. Specialized NPCs (e.g. "Hub-Prime Library") may sell higher-tier or themed items the default catalog doesn't carry.

What's never sold

Premium currency (no premium currency exists in MVP)
Rare-tier items (you earn these through quests + drops)
Blueprints (BPCs) — drops only, plus the gated capital BPCs which are quest rewards (Dreadnought, Battlecruiser Guardian, T4 Manufacturing); never bought from an NPC.
Void Fragments — drops only, from Reaver pirates in NULL only. Required for T4 modules + the Battlecruiser shipkit.
Tritanium Crystals — drops only, from mining NULL asteroids. Required for T5 modules + the Dreadnought shipkit.
Silica + the planet minerals (Raw Silica, Carbon, Oxidizer, Cryo-Salt, Rare-Earth, Planetary Core) — NPCs buy these from you but never sell them. The only sources are mining (silica, ~6% any zone — see Mining) and planet deposits (the four minerals + cores). They feed the T4 fabrication-web components, so there's no shortcut around going and getting them.

Notable items that ARE sold

Refining Flux — required to refine T3+ ores (Titanium, Platinum, Iridium) and to craft T3+ alloys. Vendors sell at a fixed price; you can also passively earn flux as a ~5% mining-pulse bonus drop, so buying is "speed-up" rather than mandatory.

Shipyard NPC

Right-click a Shipyard NPC to open the shipyard UI. Modes:

Buy hulls — by hull class (Frigate, Cruiser, Battlecruiser, Capital). Each hull is registered to you on purchase + lands in a station bay (or OVERFLOW_DOCKED if no bay fits).
Recall — move one of your existing ships to this station for a fee.
Reskin — change cosmetic appearance (paint, hull color).
Overflow Dock Transport — retrieve a ship from OVERFLOW_DOCKED state.
Buy modules — bigger Shipyards also sell modules.

Capital-tier hulls require capital blueprints, which only drop from specific high-end activities (raid quests, NULL-zone pirate kills). You can't skip the tech tree by paying credits.

Insurance Terminal NPC

Right-click an Insurance Terminal to open the insurance UI.

Ship insurance is per-ship, 30-day policies. Three tiers:

Tier	Premium	Cooldown reduction	Repair subsidy	Loss reduction on destroy
BASIC	10,000 cr	50%	25%	25% modules saved
STANDARD	25,000 cr	100% (waived)	50%	10% modules lost
PREMIUM	75,000 cr	100% (waived)	100% (all repairs free)	No modules lost

Effects of an active policy when your ship dies:

Cooldown reduction — your respawn cooldown is multiplied (lower is better)
Module loss reduction — fewer modules destroyed on the rebuild
Repair subsidy — modules damaged in combat are repaired at the subsidized rate

One active policy per ship. Buying a new policy while one's active is rejected; you wait for expiry or run a different ship.

Premium debits your personal wallet (not the faction treasury).

Station insurance

Separate product, on station hulls instead of ships. Tier values are in game.yml. Premium debits the faction treasury. On destruction, a fraction of installed modules are archived with INTACT state (saved from re-purchase on rebuild).

Repair Terminal NPC

Right-click a Repair Terminal to open the repair UI. Shows your docked ships + their module damage states.

DAMAGED modules can be repaired
DESTROYED modules can be repaired (more expensive)
Repair is a scheduled job — costs money + takes time
During repair the module is unusable
Insurance subsidizes (per the policy tier)
Cancellation refunds the fee

You can queue several modules at once.

Bounty Hunter Terminal NPC

Right-click a Bounty Hunter Terminal to open the bounty board.

Personal bounties

You can post a bounty on any other player:

Amount > 0
Targeted player can't be yourself
Credits are escrowed from your wallet

When a player kills the target, the bounty pays out to the killer. Multiple bounties can stack on the same target.

You can cancel an active bounty (10% admin fee).

Ship-recovery bounties

You can post a bounty on one of your own ships:

Pays anyone who destroys this specific ship
Useful when your ship is stranded somewhere far + you'd rather start fresh

When the ship dies, the bounty pays out. The ship goes to AWAITING_REDEPLOY (your respawn obligation runs as normal). You then recall from a Shipyard.

Cancel

Cancel any active bounty you posted via the bounty terminal's "My Active Bounties" page. 10% admin fee.

Mission Officer NPC

Right-click a Mission Officer to open the quest board.

Lists quests on that officer's catalog (different officers carry different boards)
Each quest entry shows status: AVAILABLE / ACTIVE / COMPLETED / ON_COOLDOWN / PREREQ_UNMET
Click an AVAILABLE entry → accept

Some quests are story arcs (chained quest lines), some are SIDE (one-shot), and others may appear as daily/weekly/grinding offerings (see Quests).

Construction Arm — not an NPC, but ship-side

Your ship's Construction Arm console handles station deployment (see Stations). Not an NPC, but it appears in the same UI category for players.