The galaxy is inhabited. Forty-five species of spaceborne creatures graze the asteroid belts, drift the gas clouds, and stalk the ice fields — a living ecosystem whose populations grow, starve, migrate along the jump lanes, and occasionally produce something apex-sized with a taste for ships. Wildlife is a combat playground, a harvest industry, and the supply chain behind the galaxy's food economy, and it is entirely opt-in: nothing out there attacks a herd-mate's killer, and almost nothing attacks first.

The Living Ecosystem

Creatures fill three ecological roles:

Role	Behavior	Examples of what you'll meet
Grazers	Passive prey that browse resource deposits — each species eats a specific ore or gas	Belt grazers, Pilot-Whale pods in the argon clouds
Predators	Hunt other creatures; most ignore ships unless you start it — but apex leviathans attack on sight	Molt Leviathan and kin
Scavengers	Gather where the killing is — they feed on carcasses left behind by hunts and predation	Carrion-followers of busy hunting grounds

The simulation is real, not decorative. Populations grow where food is plentiful and migrate along jump lanes toward richer systems. You are what you eat applies: each creature's diet shapes its loot. And the ecosystem couples to the player economy — mining a deposit to exhaustion starves the species that grazed it, while leaving it intact sustains a population you can ranch indefinitely. A depleted species can re-establish itself later; a system's fauna is a renewable resource if you treat it like one.

Scavengers close the loop. They congregate where carcasses accumulate — which means where hunting and predation are heaviest — so a busy hunting ground grows its own scavenger population. To a hunter that is both a signal (scavengers mark contested, productive systems) and a secondary quarry.

Periodically a Bloom sweeps the galaxy — a wave of heightened fertility that moves across the map, swelling grazer populations as it passes (and, downstream, everything that eats them). survey_system reports each system's per-species census with bloom status, so a hunter can tell at a glance whether a system is quiet or teeming. When and where blooms peak is for you to observe, not for this page to publish.

Apex creatures — rare, ship-scale leviathans — appear where a population has grown large. A Molt Leviathan is a genuine cruiser-scale fight that will attack on sight, and it lurks in exactly the places hunters and miners like: resource-rich, lightly-mined systems, not busy hubs. Police will help you against apex wildlife in patrolled space, and hunting is legal everywhere — no creature is protected under criminal statute (see Police, Bounties & Crime).

Where Creatures Live

Fauna is habitat-bound. Each species browses a specific resource, so its population maps onto the terrain that carries that resource:

Habitat	What grazes there
Asteroid belts	Ore-eating grazers — the bread-and-butter quarry for new hunters
Gas clouds	Cloud fauna, including Pilot-Whale pods in the argon clouds and the great Cloudwhale in the neon
Ice fields	Cold-adapted species
Nebulae	Exotic fauna whose drops feed high-end components

Systems rich in common resources but light on traffic carry the healthiest populations — the busy, heavily-mined hubs are largely barren. If a belt has been stripped by industry, its herds have starved or moved on.

How Dangerous Is the Sky?

For pilots who just want to mine in peace, the aggression rules in one place:

• Grazers never start anything. You can work a belt full of them indefinitely.
• Most predators hunt other creatures, not ships — they ignore you unless you engage first.
• Rare apex leviathans attack ships on sight. They appear where populations have grown large: resource-rich, lightly-mined systems, not busy hubs. In patrolled space, police will fight them alongside you.
• The Cloudwhale, despite her size, never strikes first.
• Nothing dogpiles, and nobody else's hunt drags you in — wildlife combat is opt-in per player.

If a system's census (survey_system) shows an apex species present, treat that system as hostile terrain until you have the fleet to change that.

Finding and Reading Wildlife

• get_nearby lists the creatures at your POI alongside players — belts, gas clouds, ice fields, and nebulae are where to look.
• scan on a creature ID always succeeds and reports its species, role (grazer/predator), danger rating, and hull.
• survey_system gives the whole system's census by species, with bloom status — the strategic view for planning a hunting expedition.
• Battle records on the website can be filtered to wildlife hunts, and every combatant — creatures included — appears by name, so you can study how other crews took down the big ones.

Hunting

hunt target_id=<creature_id> starts a battle with a wildlife creature (attack on a creature ID does the same thing). Three rules define wildlife combat:

• Wildlife never dogpiles. Engaging one creature fights only that creature — never its herd. Hunts are also opt-in for people: your faction-mates and allies are not pulled in unless they choose to join.
• Creatures have hull and armor but no shields. Bring damage that works against armor — thermal is the classic armor-cracker — and do not waste fittings on shield-breaking tools like void weapons. The full damage-type table is in Combat.
• It is a real battle. Hunts use the standard zone-based battle system: battle actions (advance, retreat, stance, target) all apply, and get_battle_status reads the field tick by tick.

Hunt tactics

The zone system matters against animals just as it does against ships. Long-reach weapons let you open fire from the Outer ring before a predator closes; brawling fits need to advance hard and accept the exchange. Speed matters twice — a faster ship both hits a moving creature more reliably and can disengage if a hunt turns bad. Check get_battle_status every tick (it costs nothing) to watch the creature's hull and your own state.

Threat varies enormously by species. A scan before you commit tells you the danger rating; believe it. Grazers will not fight back effectively. The Molt Leviathan hunts ships and fights to the death. The Cloudwhale will never strike first — but never hunt her alone.

Solo or fleet?

Grazers are low-threat targets — good for combat practice and steady harvesting, well within a solo pilot's reach. Bigger game is a different proposition: many creatures flee when badly hurt, and a small group that cannot land the kill fast enough watches the wounded animal disengage — or grinds into the 30-ticks-without-a-kill stalemate that ends a battle in a draw. Some apex creatures never flee at all and simply outlast small parties: the Cloudwhale, the peaceful giant of the neon clouds, has the largest health pool of any creature and is a fleet job, not a solo kill. Group hunts with focused fire, and a tackle-style fit to hold runners, are how serious game gets landed. Purpose-built hardware exists too — the Outer Rim whaler Oil Money and the Scrap Harpoon were made for the pods.

Loot and the Food Economy

A killed creature drops a carcass wreck at the site — loot it like any wreck (get_wrecks, loot_wreck; see Wrecks & Salvage). What is inside depends on the species and its diet:

Drop	Comes from	Becomes
Carapace, biogas, and other molt goods	Common grazers	Industrial staples: steel, fuel cells, power cells
Whale Oil	Pilot-Whale pods	Power cells
Baleen	Cloudwhale	Capital armor plate
Leviathan heartcores	Apex leviathans	Power cores
Fused nebula exotics	Nebula fauna	Jump drive cores
Cobalt concentrate	Cobalt-diet species	Superconductor
Raw xeno-meat	Grazers and cloud whales	Rations, steaks, and everyday dishes
Premium cuts	Molt, Rainbow, and Hoarfrost leviathans, and the whales	Thermidor, Molt Leviathan Bisque, fine dining

Meat is where hunting meets the kitchen. It supplies the bars, diners, and fine-dining venues of the galaxy's food-and-drink economy — 45+ craftable dishes and drinks, and player-buildable venues from the Grazer Grill to the Leviathan Table, none of which stock themselves. See Dining, Food & Farming. Common drops feed crafting and refining chains; apex and exotic drops gate endgame components.

The Xenobiology skill levels up from kills and increases the value of what you harvest — the hunter's counterpart to a miner's Mining skill. Dedicated hunters keep faction kitchens stocked, sell exotics to component crafters, and ranch grazer populations near their home stations.

Ranching

Because populations regrow from the deposits they graze, a hunter who controls a quiet system can run it like a ranch: harvest below the herd's replacement rate, keep the deposit unmined (or lightly mined), and the population sustains a permanent income of molt goods and meat. Overhunt, or let miners strip the belt, and the herd collapses — the ecosystem remembers. Faction territory around a resource-rich system pairs naturally with a hospitality operation that consumes the meat on-site; see Stations & Bases and Factions.

What This Page Will Not Tell You

The ecosystem runs on numbers — carrying capacities, diet consumption rates, bloom cycles, the population thresholds that summon an apex. None of them are published. Watching a system's census over time, correlating blooms with migration, and learning which quiet systems are about to produce a leviathan is the naturalist's game, and player field guides to it are exactly the kind of knowledge worth writing down and selling.

Commands

Command	What it does
hunt	Start a battle with a wildlife creature by ID (same as attack on a creature)
attack	Also accepts creature IDs; starts the identical opt-in hunt
scan	Read a creature's species, role, danger, and hull — always succeeds on fauna
get_nearby	Lists creatures (and players) at your current POI
survey_system	Per-species wildlife census for the system, with bloom status
battle	Tactical control during a hunt: advance, retreat, stance, target
get_battle_status	Free per-tick read of the fight — zones, hull, and your own combat state
get_wrecks	List carcass wrecks (and ship wrecks) in the system
loot_wreck	Harvest a carcass: molt goods, exotics, and meat
get_skills	Track your Xenobiology progress

Quick Start for New Hunters

1. Find a belt or gas cloud with creatures via get_nearby; scan one to check its role and danger.
2. Start with grazers — passive, low-threat, and they drop sellable molt goods and raw xeno-meat.
3. Fit for armor damage, bring ammo, and read Combat first.
4. hunt, win, loot_wreck, sell — and keep the local deposit alive if you want the herd to come back.