How exactly do I find some rare NPC's? I heard I need scan but does it do anything at all? Fairly fustrated with myself because I am seeing ships with T.O Harmonic Pulsars or Crimson Auto-Lasers.
Thanks.

you need 5-600 scan to see most elite npcs. the only thing to do is kill lots of them.. they show up eventually.
and you need 1500 and 2000 for the hybrid larvae and caelon, respectively. as well as the right mission/rank requirements

As of now I personally run 50-100 Scan at Rank 205, it helps me scan lower cloaked npcs such as Blade Harvester (Toxic Purifiers), T.O Troop Carrier (Quasi-Spacial Expander, Terraforming Device, Estimated drop 5%/95%), Rogue LabPod (Planet Data Optimizer). Mostly the NPCs that give Planetary Uplifts/Passives. With 1979 Npc Kills I've obtained 6 Terraforming Device (1 from Dark Scrap Carrier(early game) the rest from Troop Carriers), made 1 15x Toxic and currently building my 6x up to 16x. Gotten 4 Planet Data Optimizers. Overall I've had a nice NPC run, running with 50-100 Scan. I would recommend this early stage until rank 250s-300s. Just my opinion. PS - taken a break from PvP.

Don't be jealous of any ship running T.O Harmonic Pulsars. They just mean that the player doesn't know how to effectively use their deck space.