Belt rat spawns
NPC 's on belts
This is an introduction to Asteroid Belt NPC Spawns, mostly focusing on spawns of NPC 's in star systems of 0.0 security status and below.
See also the introduction in Pirate hunting and description of NPC rats. There is also a separate guide discussing various advanced ratting tactics.
In general 0.0 ratting provides comparable income with level 4 missions, although it may be more monotonous.
Spawn generation
A spawn is a group of 1-8 NPC rats seen on belts and gates, they appear and fight together.
Each time a player starts a warp towards the inner grid of an asteroid belt the system checks whether the belt will be empty or whether you will get a spawn, and of what type the spawn it is.
Each system has a maximum number of spawns, which depends on the total amount of asteroid belts, and may depend on security status. For example; a system with two belts seems to always have 2 spawns, while a four belt system will have 3 spawns as the limit.
For systems with numerous belts the limit seems to be half the number of belts. For example a 24 belt system has a limit of about 15, while a 38 belt system has a limit of about 22.
Thus the fewer belts a system has, the more likely you are to get a spawn on entering a belt.
Spawn stability
Once the spawn is generated, it will stay in the system until downtime unless disturbed. So if you quickly check spawns in a system then return 12 hours later you will find the same spawns unless someone has disturbed them.
Disturbing in this context means killing the spawn or hanging around the spawn long enough to make it vanish.
If a system has empty belts (any system with 3 or more belts), the spawns will randomly switch between the belts.
Spawns have some chance to just vanish if you are hanging around them, in my experience one in 25 spawns did that. Consequently if you find a really valuable target, kill it fast!
Re-spawning timers
If you kill part of a spawn, the killed ships will reliably reappear in 20 to 25 minutes. This allows the use of farming tactics, leaving a low end ship of a good spawn and waiting for the rest to reappear.
If you kill the whole spawn, after 20 - 25 minutes the game will create a new random spawn.
Typical spawns in 0.0
These values apply equally to any NPC home system (like Stain) and good -1.0 true sec non-sov system. No statistics yet of how security status in non-sovereignty systems affects spawn rates.
Although different NPC races have different ship names and varying weapon/electronic warfare systems, it seems the ships follow mostly the same distribution in regard to their bounty. That means the chance of getting three 1.4M ISK bounty NPC battleships is the same whether you are hunting Guristas or Sansha.
Regular spawns consist of 1-3 Cruiser to Battleship and 1-3 Cruiser to Frigate class ships. You are more likely to get 2 or 3 ships (40% chance each) per type, rather than only one (20% chance).
The median spawn would be 2x600k ISK Battleships with an escort of 2-3x15k ISK Frigates. Average total bounties of the spawn seem to be 1.4M ISK while the median is only 1.0M ISK.
Only 11% of the spawns will have a total bounty above 3M ISK and a mere 3% will have 4.0M+ ISK bounty. The majority, about 50%, will have a total of around 1.0M ISK bounty. So it is important to make use of farming tactics.
Special spawns
In belts you may encounter three kinds of special spawns, these are officers, faction commanders and mineral haulers. If you try to farm such spawns know that only the non-special ships of the spawn will reappear.
Because these special spawns are rare it is rather difficult to get good estimates of the chances for their appearance.
Anyway, some guesses:
- Chance for faction and hauler spawn is of same magnitude
- The chance to get a faction spawn is somewhere between one per 20 to 50 cleared spawns, at least in good 0.0 space.
- You could expect to run into officer spawn for every 20 to 40 faction spawns you find. Thus chance for officer is about one in 400 to 2000 cleared spawns at least in good 0.0 space.
- Seems likely that 'NPC home' regions, like Stain, have increased chance for officer spawns.
You should note that active farming will drop your chances to see special spawns to half or so depending on how good the spawns you keep are because special spawns coming up only with new created spawns.
Officer spawns
These seem to consist of an officer with heavier than usually escort. You could see something like a 30M ISK bounty on specially named guys like Vizan Ankonn and 4 random battleships as escort.
Finding an officer spawn won't always mean a jackpot. Of 6 officers I have ever found only one dropped loot worth more than 1 Billion ISK. Loot usually consists of 0-4 officer items, and 1-8 faction items.
Seeing an officer is extremely rare and only in null sec systems.
Faction spawns
These tend to look almost normal, with one ship turned to a faction commander variant who has 7.5 times the normal bounty. This faction ship may be of any size, and is named according to his NPC race, like a Sansha ship will then be a True Sansha ship. See a full list of them on this page description of rats.
Hauler spawns
These appear in groups of 1 to 4 hauler class ships, with random escort of 1-3 other ships. Most common is haulers with 3.1M Tritanium. Other typical haulers are Convoy (12.5M), Carrier (25M) and Trailer(6.5M). You might occasionally also run into Transporter, Bulker, Trucker or Loader.
Instead of tritanium you may find other minerals, 70% less minerals by each step. So in Carrier you could find 25M tritanium, 8.5M Pyerite or even 18.5k Megacyte. You will see low-end minerals much more often than high ends.
The maximum sized and rarest spawn would be 4 carriers, dropping 100M tritanium. This would need about 30 rigged greater industrial ships (or 8 Rorquals) to be carried home at once.
NPC 's on belts
This is an introduction to Asteroid Belt NPC Spawns, mostly focusing on spawns of NPC 's in star systems of 0.0 security status and below.
See also the introduction in Pirate hunting and description of NPC rats. There is also a separate guide discussing various advanced ratting tactics.
In general 0.0 ratting provides comparable income with level 4 missions, although it may be more monotonous.
Spawn generation
A spawn is a group of 1-8 NPC rats seen on belts and gates, they appear and fight together.
Each time a player starts a warp towards the inner grid of an asteroid belt the system checks whether the belt will be empty or whether you will get a spawn, and of what type the spawn it is.
Each system has a maximum number of spawns, which depends on the total amount of asteroid belts, and may depend on security status. For example; a system with two belts seems to always have 2 spawns, while a four belt system will have 3 spawns as the limit.
For systems with numerous belts the limit seems to be half the number of belts. For example a 24 belt system has a limit of about 15, while a 38 belt system has a limit of about 22.
Thus the fewer belts a system has, the more likely you are to get a spawn on entering a belt.
Spawn stability
Once the spawn is generated, it will stay in the system until downtime unless disturbed. So if you quickly check spawns in a system then return 12 hours later you will find the same spawns unless someone has disturbed them.
Disturbing in this context means killing the spawn or hanging around the spawn long enough to make it vanish.
If a system has empty belts (any system with 3 or more belts), the spawns will randomly switch between the belts.
Spawns have some chance to just vanish if you are hanging around them, in my experience one in 25 spawns did that. Consequently if you find a really valuable target, kill it fast!
Re-spawning timers
If you kill part of a spawn, the killed ships will reliably reappear in 20 to 25 minutes. This allows the use of farming tactics, leaving a low end ship of a good spawn and waiting for the rest to reappear.
If you kill the whole spawn, after 20 - 25 minutes the game will create a new random spawn.
Typical spawns in 0.0
These values apply equally to any NPC home system (like Stain) and good -1.0 true sec non-sov system. No statistics yet of how security status in non-sovereignty systems affects spawn rates.
Although different NPC races have different ship names and varying weapon/electronic warfare systems, it seems the ships follow mostly the same distribution in regard to their bounty. That means the chance of getting three 1.4M ISK bounty NPC battleships is the same whether you are hunting Guristas or Sansha.
Regular spawns consist of 1-3 Cruiser to Battleship and 1-3 Cruiser to Frigate class ships. You are more likely to get 2 or 3 ships (40% chance each) per type, rather than only one (20% chance).
The median spawn would be 2x600k ISK Battleships with an escort of 2-3x15k ISK Frigates. Average total bounties of the spawn seem to be 1.4M ISK while the median is only 1.0M ISK.
Only 11% of the spawns will have a total bounty above 3M ISK and a mere 3% will have 4.0M+ ISK bounty. The majority, about 50%, will have a total of around 1.0M ISK bounty. So it is important to make use of farming tactics.
Special spawns
In belts you may encounter three kinds of special spawns, these are officers, faction commanders and mineral haulers. If you try to farm such spawns know that only the non-special ships of the spawn will reappear.
Because these special spawns are rare it is rather difficult to get good estimates of the chances for their appearance.
Anyway, some guesses:
- Chance for faction and hauler spawn is of same magnitude
- The chance to get a faction spawn is somewhere between one per 20 to 50 cleared spawns, at least in good 0.0 space.
- You could expect to run into officer spawn for every 20 to 40 faction spawns you find. Thus chance for officer is about one in 400 to 2000 cleared spawns at least in good 0.0 space.
- Seems likely that 'NPC home' regions, like Stain, have increased chance for officer spawns.
You should note that active farming will drop your chances to see special spawns to half or so depending on how good the spawns you keep are because special spawns coming up only with new created spawns.
Officer spawns
These seem to consist of an officer with heavier than usually escort. You could see something like a 30M ISK bounty on specially named guys like Vizan Ankonn and 4 random battleships as escort.
Finding an officer spawn won't always mean a jackpot. Of 6 officers I have ever found only one dropped loot worth more than 1 Billion ISK. Loot usually consists of 0-4 officer items, and 1-8 faction items.
Seeing an officer is extremely rare and only in null sec systems.
Faction spawns
These tend to look almost normal, with one ship turned to a faction commander variant who has 7.5 times the normal bounty. This faction ship may be of any size, and is named according to his NPC race, like a Sansha ship will then be a True Sansha ship. See a full list of them on this page description of rats.
Hauler spawns
These appear in groups of 1 to 4 hauler class ships, with random escort of 1-3 other ships. Most common is haulers with 3.1M Tritanium. Other typical haulers are Convoy (12.5M), Carrier (25M) and Trailer(6.5M). You might occasionally also run into Transporter, Bulker, Trucker or Loader.
Instead of tritanium you may find other minerals, 70% less minerals by each step. So in a Carrier you could find 25M tritanium, 8.5M Pyerite or even 18.5k Megacyte. You will see low-end minerals much more often than high ends.
The maximum sized and rare spawn would be 4 carriers, dropping 100M tritanium. This would need about 30 rigged greater industrial ships (or 8 Rorquals) to be carried home at once.
Belt Rat anomalies
- It seems warping on the belt grid is not always enough to trigger a spawn. Your warp probably needs to target some smaller trigger area. Thus you could first warp to 300km and see nothing. Then warping to 0 km and seeing a spawn as soon as you start warp.
- Occasionally you might see two separate spawns in a belt. This appears to be related with one spawn moving onto the belt without the earlier spawn having gone yet.
- Run-away spawns. Sometimes a spawn may decide to leave the belt and start flying away at maximum speed, perhaps towards another belt. After a while these will leave the visible grid area and be very hard to find. System NPC spawn limit will be down by one till such a rogue spawn is killed or downtime resets the system.
- Although system specific limit is good for telling how many spawns you can expect (at least on small systems), there is a small chance of expected spawns not appearing. In a test set of 200 Guristas spawns in a -1.0 two belt system this happened 4 times; in set of 2x200 Sansha spawns in a two belt system 0 times.
- Starting a warp away from the belt may trigger a spawn at the departure belt.
- You may see spawns, even officer ones, on gate grids as well. These seem to be independent of the belt spawns and are too rare to give any chance estimates of here.