I keep hearing about npc's?

Look for buy/sell orders with ~365 days expiry time (more than 90 anyways). Those are for example sell orders for blueprints and citadel cores, and buy orders for triglavian and sleeper loot, OPE boxes, etc.

You probably mean NPC Haulers.

There are 3 kinds of those:

  • Civilian ones from the olden days spawn around npc stations, they often have that station faction in their name. They carry some cheapish trade goods, warp around stations within a system. Station turrets might shoot at you if you kill them. They’re pretty much useless.

  • Pirate mining haulers. These are too a relic of olden days. They too are pretty useless. They are named something like “Gurista Hauler” but they are actually a frigate sized belt rat. Might carry a handful of minerals.

  • Badass diamond npc mining rats. They are a part of NPC Mining Operations - EVE University Wiki while miners mine asteroid belts, a hauler spawns from time to time and simulates hauling the ore to a local station. If belts are empty, a hauler will not spawn. If you attack them, they will warp out to a safespot and response fleet will come after you. BTW they don’t actually have “Hauler” in their name, instead they are named smthn like “Ducia Foundry Impel”, or “HZO Refinery Bestower”, so a faction name and actual hauler ship name. They might belong to one of 16 empire corps or 5 pirate factions. Those are quite lucrative to hunt - skins, meta mining upgades, mining drone BPCs, and ore.

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