Pilots & Behaviour
A ship's doctrine tells you what its pilot does, independently of the hull class.
Every ship has a pilot, and every pilot flies a doctrine. Learn the doctrines and you can read a system at a glance.
Doctrine is not the hull: a support hull can fly hauler routes and a demilitarized battlecruiser can too. What a ship IS, scout through dreadnought, is its hull class (see Ships); this page is about what the hands on the stick DO with it.
Fighter
Escorts and hunters. With nothing to shoot they PATROL — prowling a slow loop around where they hold ground rather than sitting dead-still — until something hostile enters their aggro bubble, then they pursue, hold attack range, and strafe past rather than ram. Player-fleet fighters keep station on their commander.
A fighter doesn’t hunt YOU specifically — it hunts whatever its faction hates. Standings, not your presence, decide the fight: a militia patrol and a pirate wing sharing a system will tear into each other whether or not you’re watching. Out on the contested frontier past Karda — the Marches — that’s the whole weather: two faction pickets bracket a belt and a militia wing pushes a pirate line across it, and you can fly in on either side of a war that was already happening.
A wing of two or more fighters isn’t a scatter of loners — one is the leader and the rest hold formation on it, breaking off together to run down anything that gets close. Kill the leader and the escort falls apart: the survivors stop coordinating and scatter back to patrol on their own.
Hauler
Point-to-point cargo runners. Dock, load, fly the next leg, repeat. Unarmed as a rule: their defense is a schedule and, if they can afford it, an escort. They leave systems by lane; the big ones fold out.
Miner
Belt workers. Fly to the rock, chew, return with ore. A miner’s route is the most predictable in space, which is why belts in dangerous systems pay so well.
Salvager
Wreck pickers. Where ships die, salvagers follow: hulks get stripped for materials and the occasional intact module.
Trader
Margin chasers. Unlike haulers (fixed contracts), traders read market data and fly wherever the spread is widest. Their routes tell you where prices are wrong.
Right of way
Hulls are solid. Fly into another ship (or a station) and you don’t pass through it; you grind along it, bleeding speed and dignity until one of you gives. Nobody takes damage from a shoulder-check (armor plating earns its mass), but a ship in contact isn’t flying, it’s shoving.
Every pilot worth the name flies with proximity feelers out (a pair of whiskers off the nose) and steers around traffic before it becomes a problem. Watch a convoy thread a crowded station approach and you’ll see the whole line ripple as each pilot leans away from the hull ahead. Civilians do it, raiders do it mid-chase; the only pilots who plow straight in are the ones holding the stick on your ship.
Drones inherit these doctrines in miniature: a combat, mining, or salvage drone runs the same behaviour on a short leash around its carrier.
See also: Scanners. Reading a pilot’s class is free.