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, and as a Fold Collapse wormhole run-completion reward. 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, Lodestone, 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.
- Fluorspar: same buy-from-you-only deal — frozen-planet underground veins are the sole source, and it gates the Enrichment Centrifuge (30× per build).
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, 7-day policies. A policy ends at whichever comes first: the 7-day window expires, or its claims run out. The claim cap is the real death penalty, since coverage is consumed by dying. Three tiers:
| Tier | Premium (Frigate) | Claims (deaths) | Cooldown reduction | Repair subsidy | Loss reduction on destroy |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BASIC | 10,000 cr | 1 | 50% | 25% | 25% modules saved |
| STANDARD | 25,000 cr | 2 | 100% (waived) | 50% | 10% modules lost |
| PREMIUM | 75,000 cr | 3 | 100% (waived) | 100% (all repairs free) | No modules lost |
Claim cap: each tier covers a fixed number of destructions before the policy terminates: BASIC 1, STANDARD 2, PREMIUM 3. The Nth death is still covered, then the policy ends and you must re-insure.
Premiums scale with hull class. The prices above are the Frigate base. The premium is multiplied by hull class:
Frigate ×1, Destroyer ×1.5, Cruiser ×2.5, Battlecruiser ×5, Colossal ×10
So a PREMIUM policy on a Colossal hull costs 750,000 cr.
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. You can change tier while a policy is active: buying a different tier upgrades or downgrades in place (re-buying the same tier is the only thing rejected).
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.
See also
- Mining: what you sell to the vendor
- Ships: the Shipyard, repair, insurance
- Quests: the Mission Officer interface
- Crafting wiki: what every NPC item costs to make yourself instead