9.19 Incursions
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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 that 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: don't be a jerk.
