Looking for some help in the NPC department.

from what I know the most elite of NPC's have a max of 600 cloak

besides having 600+ scan , what else does one need to find the elite NPC's?

currently rank 133

Luck or a good supply of quality goats to sacrifice to the Goddess of Random Numbers...

You don't need more than around 200 Scan at your rank. The Elite/Bosses with the higher cloak don't appear till you are well over rank 200.

you need to be in the rank range of the elite

some are visible for 150-600, other one from 200 to 1000, no one have the same visible range.

Some are 60-200.

i like the cute ones that i can cuddle

Don't worry about the cloaked bosses yet. They're very hard to kill.

For NPC hunting focus on getting as many big guns into your ship as possible. I had about 200 engineers when I started NPC hunting and put all levelling rank points and most rescued prisoner rank points into ship size from rank 150 to 280. Now I have a massive levianthan I've switched to engineers almost exclusively. A Levianth or Heavy Levianth is probably enough for pure NPC killing at later levels. Most people switch to Drannik Builder which is also the best for pure NPC killing, I'm a Vygoid Excator with about 8000 NPC kills but will eventyally change to Drannik I think.

The science is staying in that sweet spot where NPCs get killed with the fewest shots for the most XP and the most chances to find rare ships. Most of the important ones aren't cloaked - TO Troop carriers, Rogue Labpods, Dark Arms carriers and Crimson Blades. Focus on the easiest ships to kill when going on an NPC run. This means more chances to find those rare ships. Also do the Zolazin chain to get the extra slots. That was a big mistake by me not getting those early on.

The point of the NPC strategy is getting the drops and the high energy-XP ratio. It means you can level up faster. More levels means more planets. The drops are well worth it too. I have 5 15x ,egarich planets all made from the products of NPC killing. One hyperterraformed planet now at 15x and dedicated to artifact. 3 v.large toxic mining pl;anets and one 15x research v.massive planet.

There's some contention about the value of scan other than finding extremely rare elite bosses because some people don't see the practical value of the boost to critical hits. When I started killing NPCs I didn't have any scan but noticed an improvement in kills using subspace seekrs. That's when I started adding a large scanner to my ship build. Recently I rested out flying with 6000 scan and my standard weapons setup. There wasn't much of a difference to having 1000 scan. Now I'm trying with under 60 scan. I think there's a small difference. With 1000 scan I was more often knocking out ships in one less hit. It's really hard to judge how useful those extra few less hits are. It feltt noticeable at rank 150ish but now at rank 300 there's no a big difference.

What is a big difference is not finding those complex tech part ships. The new ones. They're hard to kill and don't offer a lot of XP. Less than 60 scan means I don't see them any more. The reason why scan was useful before was to take out ships but by making those tech part collectors disaooear I get more easy ships which means more xp and more chances to find those elusive TO Trooop Carriers. My goal is to get a Dyson terraformer. Reckon it'll take a while...I have 1 quasi spatial expander from 8000 NPCs of which 20-25 were TO Troop Carriers.

thanks for the in-depth comment Remainder

+1 Remainder - thanks