Npcs on Big Bang Smugglers

NPCs & Encounters

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The three types

Type	Base rate per move	Never appears in	Max per sector	Drops
Pirate	3.0%	Federation territory	3	500–2,000 cr
Trader	2.0%	—	2	100–500 cr
Patrol	1.5%	Pirate territory	2	nothing

Region multiplies the base rate:

Region	Pirate	Trader	Patrol
`fed_core`	—	—	×4.0
`fed_space`	—	×0.5	×2.5
`inner`	×0.5	×1.0	×1.5
`middle`	×1.0	×1.2	×1.0
`outer`	×1.5	×0.8	×0.5
`outer_rim`	×2.0	×0.5	—

Pirates take priority over patrols, which take priority over traders. One NPC maximum per roll.

v2.0.9 — Retinues and Trader Encounters

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 12:00:00 +0000

Changelog for v2.0.9.

Tavern retinues

Taverns at stardocks and pirate havens hire retinues on contract. Three tiers, each raising your combat power against NPCs.
Wages are drawn from your wallet every cycle. Miss a payment or lose a fight and the retinue deserts. Contracts run 48 hours maximum.
Federation Auxiliary and Cutthroat Company are available at opposite ends of the standing range.
Retinues apply against NPCs only. Player-versus-player combat and planet sieges are unaffected.

NPC trader encounters

Merchant ships encountered in space can be traded with: three deals each, priced against the live market anchors.
Traders deeper toward the rim may carry contraband, available above level 3.
Traders can also be robbed. Yield chance is derived from the same combat model as a real fight; resistance means a real fight.
Robbery costs alignment and guild standing, raises pirate standing, and in lawful space accumulates Federation heat until patrols engage on sight.
Two named merchant princes added to the galaxy roster.

Planetary minelaying

Planet owners with barracks can convert garrison fighters into mines in the planet’s own sector.
The mines are ordinary mines: they trigger on entry, decay, spare corp-mates, and can be destroyed.
Conversion is one-way, and the fighters spent are no longer available for siege defense.

Corp banners

Corporations can carry a Federation, Independent or Pirate banner, with membership tolerance, leader-set changes, and port-holding restricted by faction.
Disabled this season; enables at a season boundary.

Fixes

The Tesseract drive required level 100 while the season maximum is 50, making it unobtainable. It now requires level 40, matching its progression gate.
Internal: migration ordering guard.

Android: version 2.0.9 is live on Google Play. Web players are already on it.

v1.9.6 — Bounty & NPC Follow-Up Fixes

Sun, 22 Mar 2026 21:50:00 -0400

v1.9.6 is a focused follow-up patch for the new NPC engagement and faction bounty systems.

This release cleans up a few important edge cases found after the broader bounty and interaction overhaul shipped.

Pirates No Longer Spawn in Federation Territory

Pirates were still able to appear in Federation-controlled space under some conditions.

That behavior is now fixed so Federation territory behaves the way the region rules intend.

Sector Validation Added to Remaining NPC Interaction Functions

Four remaining NPC interaction paths were still missing proper sector validation.

v1.9.0 — NPC Engagement & Faction Bounty System

Sun, 22 Mar 2026 12:40:00 -0400

v1.9.0 is a major NPC interaction and bounty system update.

This release changes NPC encounters from simple combat triggers into a more dynamic system with clearer player choice, faction consequences, bounty hunting, wanted status, and smarter interaction flows.

NPC encounters now use a cleaner engagement model with a single Engage button and type-specific options.

This makes encounters easier to understand and puts the costs and consequences up front instead of hiding them behind inconsistent flows.

v1.8.0 — Combat Overhaul

Sat, 21 Mar 2026 21:58:00 -0400

v1.8.0 is a major combat overhaul release.

This update reworks how combat feels across the game. Ship tier still matters, but fighters, torpedoes, shields, stealth, environment, faction behavior, and NPC interactions all matter much more than before.

Combat Formula Rebalance

The underlying combat formulas have been retuned so consumables and loadout decisions are decisive instead of marginal.

This includes:

reduced ship base power dominance
much stronger fighter, torpedo, and shield weighting
shield-based attrition reduction
torpedo shield penetration
fighter superiority shifting win odds before the main combat roll

The result is that stocked ships, better prep, and better tactical choices matter much more.

v1.3.6 — Combat Rewards Fixed

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 12:00:00 +0000

v1.3.6 fixes a significant bug where NPC combat had no real consequences.

What Was Broken

After the instant combat changes in v1.3.1–v1.3.4, none of the combat results were actually being saved. Win or lose, your ship took no damage, you received no loot, and disabled ships stayed active. The battle recap showed the correct outcome — but nothing behind it was real.

Two separate bugs combined to cause this:

Background execution: Cloud Functions v2 does not reliably run code after a response is sent. The previous architecture used a “fire and forget” pattern to apply combat effects after returning the move result to the app. In practice, this meant the writes were silently dropped.

v1.3.4 — Flee Now Works

Sun, 08 Mar 2026 21:00:00 +0000

v1.3.4 fixes a bug introduced with instant combat in v1.3.1.

Flee No Longer Damages Your Ship

When you encountered a non-aggressive NPC and chose to flee, your ship was still taking damage and could be disabled — even though you never attacked. This happened because combat was being resolved and written to the database the moment you entered the sector, before you made a choice.

Now combat is computed instantly as before, but the result is only committed when you actually hit Attack. If you flee, nothing is written and your ship is untouched. Ambush encounters (where flee is not an option) are unchanged and still resolve immediately.

v1.3.2 — Instant Combat

Sun, 08 Mar 2026 01:00:00 +0000

v1.3.2 is a significant architecture improvement to how NPC encounters work.

Instant Combat Results

Previously, when you entered a sector and encountered an NPC, hitting Attack triggered a second backend call that had to cold-start, look up your ship and cargo, resolve the fight, write the results to the database, and then return — all while you waited. This could take anywhere from a few seconds to over a minute.