Derelicts, ambushes and comets · Pilot’s Handbook

The Reach doesn't sit still. Every so often something turns up a few jumps from where pilots are flying: a derelict hull drifting in near a belt, a corporate hauler under pirate fire, or a comet crossing a system and shedding ice. Each lasts a quarter of an hour or so, and the first pilots there get the best of it.

Steps

Watch for the toast and Vela's line when one starts in your system or next door, or check What's next. Open What's nextPlay to try this
Set a route there, or press Slip to on the event's card once you're in the system.
Do what the card says: scan and cut the derelict, kill the hauler's attackers, or mine the comet's ice.
Leave before it ends, or before the pirates arrive.

The event card

When something is happening in your system, a card on your HUD shows it: what it is, the time left, what it pays and how many pilots are there, with Slip to for its site. It also holds the event's own controls (the derelict's Scan and Cut open, the hauler's hull, the comet's ice fields). Drag it by its header, and fold it to a line when you don't need it. The site also shows in the Scope like any other.

Derelict drift

An old hull, a Vorr bulk hauler, a decommissioned Charter survey cruiser or a pre-Charter Kessler line hull, tumbles in near a belt. No crew, no transponder: the first pilot to cut it open keeps what's inside.

Slip to the Derelict Hull beacon. It drops you within cutting range.
Press Scan on the card. It takes 6 seconds from within 15 km. Anyone may scan, and the first scan reveals what the hold reads for everyone.
Hold Cut open. The cut takes 20 seconds from within 2.5 km, and starting it stops your ship.
Stay put until the bar fills. The salvage goes straight into your hold, even a full one.

One cutter at a time. If someone else is cutting, the card tells you who. Flying out of range, ordering a fast move, slipping away or losing your ship breaks the cut off, and the next pilot may start. Stop ends your own.
What's inside: Alloy Scrap and Burned Relays, more in the Frontier and the Void, plus Choir Lattice in the Void. One in four holds a named module.
Drift Logs: about one cut in seven also finds a Drift Log, an old crew's last records. It goes to the Span Archive like any lore fragment. See The Span Archive.
A derelict nobody cuts breaks up after 15 to 20 minutes.

Careful

A cut is 20 seconds sitting still. Other pilots can see the card too, and the law works as usual: in the Frontier and the Void, check the Scope before you start.

Hauler ambush

A Vorr, Halcyon, Kessler or Ostrava hauler is under pirate fire at an Ambush Site off a belt, and it calls for help on the System channel. You can defend it, or shoot it down for its cargo.

Band	Attackers	Defenders share
Core	2 Cartel Cutters	150,000 LUM
Frontier	2 Cartel Cutters and an Enforcer	300,000 LUM
Void	2 Choir Acolytes and a Revenant	500,000 LUM

More pirates join when more pilots arrive, up to two extra.

Defending: kill every attacker while the hauler lives. With all its attackers alive its hull lasts about 7 minutes, and longer with each one you kill. Every pilot who damaged the pirates, or spent 30 seconds on scene, shares the pay equally and gains +0.1 standing with the hauler's maker. The hauler then limps home.
Robbing it: the pirates can't finish it, but you can. Once anyone fires on the hauler it can be destroyed, the pirates turn on pilots, and its minerals drop in the wreck. Firing on it is an attack under the law: you become criminal in Core space and the Wardens come, suspect in the Frontier, and nothing in the Void. The hauler calls out who shot it. Anyone who fired on it gets no share of the defence pay.
An ambush runs 12 minutes at most. If nobody settles it, the hauler slips away.

Tip

Weapons safety on Locked refuses the first shot at the hauler in Core and Frontier space, so you can't rob it by accident. See Conduct and flags.

Comet pass

A comet crosses the system in 15 minutes, visible from anywhere in it, its tails pointing away from the star. As it passes the middle of its path it sheds three Comet Ice Fields, one after another, each with ten rocks of Comet Ice:

Comet Ice is found nowhere else. It refines into Zyrium, Noctite and Silvane, and is worth more per unit than Voidstone. Each field stays until 10 minutes after the comet leaves, or until it's mined out.

Careful

Pirates notice. After a minute of mining in a field, raiders arrive and hunt the pilots near it: a Cartel Cutter in Core space, two in the Frontier, two Choir Acolytes in the Void. They come back every three minutes of mining, twice per field at most.

Where to see them

Toasts and Vela when one starts or ends in your system or next door, and the event's card while you're in its system.
What's next lists them with the jumps and the time left.
Every comet, and every ambush in a busy system, is also announced on the Farreach Discord.