9.19 Incursions
Incursions are NPC attacks targeting a space sector. These can be pirates looking for plunder, spaceborne monstrosities looking for spacers to feed on or debris to add to their nests, or the many agents of the Ishvana itself looking to fuel its machinations. Whatever the inspiration, it is impossible for any power to secure the entire vastness of space, so that’s where you come in. Daring spacers can return from incursions with a wealth of captaincy experience, space junk for marks, and even the occasional piece of ship tech for modders to reverse engineer.
Incursions can happen everywhere outside of factional space. The two tools to find them are:
INCURSION MAP
INCURSION LIST
The INCURSION MAP is a version of the STARCHART highlighting your location and all current incursions. This is sufficient if you want to avoid incursion sectors, for example if you're just travelling or mining.
The INCURSION LIST is where a lot more details can be found. The first column gives you the name of the attacked zone. The second column will provide you with information on the attackers. Incursions are generally sorted into two categories: ships and organics, with the latter not referring to something fleshy, but just to enemies without shields. It is highly recommended for beginners to stick with organic incursions first.
The “organic” incursion types are:
Anomalies, Binaries, Cleax (Not always, sometimes ships), Devourers, Leviathans, Mining Drones, Rogue AI, Sarkeen, Sa'hak-ren, and Trinaries.
This leaves the following as “ship” incursion types:
Breakers, Bushraki, Cleax (Not always, sometimes organics), Iron Corsairs, Ishvana, Loroi, Nabians, Pirates, Selassians, Vendals, and Vonikin Krel.
The Danger Rating of an incursion tells you which ship it is balanced for: easy incursions can be done with an interceptor, medium incursions are balanced around corvettes, hard incursions around destroyers, legendary incursions for cruisers and fleet incursions should best be undertaken as a group with well equipped ships and experienced pilots, though some truly talented pilots have successfully defeated even these on their own.
Taking On Incursions
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Incursions have a set amount of enemies and a fixed timer. The timer begins to tick down the moment the incursion begins, and the incursion will be considered successful if the timer reaches zero without all enemies being defeated. If that happens, all resources excluding material rich asteroids (see HELP ASTEROID EXPLORATION) will be removed and the piracy rating of the sector will increase (see HELP PIRACY). Defeating an incursion will prevent the removal of those resources and slightly decrease the piracy rating of the sector.
Enemies will begin to spawn in your vicinity shortly after you enter the affected sector and will continue to do so in waves until either there are no more enemies or there is no time remaining. Your targets may also move around, so you may need to use your SHIP BEACON to find them. The “enemies remaining” column lets you estimate how close you are to defeating the incursion. Note that more enemies will continue to spawn as long as you are in the sector, regardless of the fate of the previous wave.
Finally, the “distance” column shows you how many sectors the incursion is away from your current location. Unless you intend to utilise quick travel (see HELP VOIDGATES, HELP COSMPIERCERS), there may be little point in flying towards an incursion 30+ sectors away. Don’t worry if there’s currently no incursion matching any criteria you’re after, a new incursion will appear shortly after an old one runs out or is defeated.
Firm reminder that you should never fly an uninsured ship, ever! Exploding without insurance can be incredibly costly. Learn more about in-game insurance in HELP INSURANCE.
Incursions and PK Zones
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Being in an incursion does NOT flag you for PK. Someone else fighting an incursion you wanted to fight does not grant you reason to attack them - incursion targets aren’t resources you can claim or defend. While it is possible for an incursion to happen in the PK zone around a cosmpiercer, using this as an excuse to prey on novice pilots is not recommended. Remember, the main rule is “don’t be a jerk”.
