A small number of NPC ships should start appearing next boot. I wouldn't
advise actively hunting around for them, they'll be quite thin to start with
(while I check out any bugs that may crop up). Some people will however
stumble across guidance that'll make finding them quite easy.

The real purpose of this post is to give a couple of major points regarding
npc ship battle.

1) NPC ships do not regenerate during battle. However, if left alone, they
will regenerate to full <very> quickly.
2) NPC ships are currently immobile and non-aggressive. This will change in
the future, but probably not anytime real soon.
3) NPC ships are currently all pirate aligned, so everyone can feel free to
attack them.
4) Rep awards are split up amongst attackers, based on damage dealt.
5) NPC ships have a reasonably intelligent method for picking who they attack.
High damage output and low defenses are a good way to get singled out.


I think that's all. You may consider this a sort of "live beta" period.
There are some rewards available, but you can expect heavy tuning for a while.

Oh, and one final cryptic remark - "You can use the coin, and it will work,
but you can't use the resulting points just yet."

Melemkor