Using NPC scout to search and loot lockboxes automatically

[Koschei]

Hiya, per advice I have bought a cheap scout with a pilot to explore a system and search for lockboxes, and loot them. But How do I make the MPC captain scan for lockboxes, open the lockbox and collect the loot? That was the whole point for me to buy that ship. It has the scanners and a cheap weapon on board by the way.

[Nanook]

In the behavior settings for the ship, for the lockbox, tell it to 'collect'. Then set your ship to 'explore' a sector and it will collect whatever is in the lockbox automatically. Be aware though that the NPC pilot's ability to open and collect successfully is dependent on their pilot skill. Lower skilled pilots will sometimes fail to open a box, especially if it has a large number of locks, and they also may not collect everything that comes out.

So successful collecting depends on both the pilot's skill and the RNG.

[Mookau]

Nanook already answered what you specifically asked for. But I will say, if you already have a large empire it might not be worth it due to how the code for spawning lockboxes works.

If you want to know more, I did a steam guide / writeup for 6.20 that covers this. Apart from potentially new sectors, I don't believe the lockbox code has any changes for 7.0 so it should still be quite accurate.
Specifically check out Check Crew Skills - Misc: Spawn Lockbox and the very small section Crew Skills - Orders: Open Lockbox.
It goes over the details of how ships find lockboxes, and how crew skill applies to the chance to open them.

A quick summary is that you want to use lone scout ships (no subordinates) with the explore command set far away from any stations.
You also want few total ships - that is: you want to own very few of your own faction ships. The more ships you own, the less likely it is that a specific ship will trigger the code responsible for finding lockboxes.
You also want to avoid the following sectors, as no randomly generated lockboxes will appear in any of them:

• Atreus' Clouds
• Avarice I
• Avarice IV
• Avarice V Dead End
• Barren Shores
• Great Reef
• Kingdom End I
• Menelaus' Oasis
• Ocean of Fantasy
• Reflected Stars
• Rolk's Demise
• Sanctuary of Darkness
• Saturn 2
• Towering Wave
• Unknown System
• Watchful Gaze
• Windfall I Union Summit
• Windfall III The Hoard
• Windfall IV Aurora's Dream

(I've not yet looked into the lockbox details for the new sectors, I will need to add them when I update the guide)

[Imperial Good]

It is my understanding that lockboxes mostly follow and spawn around the player. Very few will be found naturally by player owned ships.

If you want inventory items you can use repeat orders to collect wares around common NPC battlefields. This is likely a lot more reliable/profitable than trying to find lockboxes.

[Koschei]

OI, it sounded too good to be true lol. I am noob, so I don't have a big empire or anything yet. Just bought a scout with basic stuff including scanner mk2 and a single weapon. It came with a pilot on board. It's all I have so far.
Going to read the write up by Mookau because he answers some immediate ponderings I had anyway. But still going to send out the AI scout to practice AI NPC handling. Next up is practice AI mining. It appears noobs do that quite early in the game so I must follow .

[Nanook]

It is my understanding that lockboxes mostly follow and spawn around the player. Very few will be found naturally by player owned ships...

I don't believe this is true. When I start a new game, I send several scouts around to open up and survey new sectors, ones I've never visited. They're always finding lockboxes, so much so that I have to turn off the 'notify me' option in their behaviours. Early on, I don't generally have these scouts open the boxes because they're usually only one, or at most two, stars in piloting and they almost always fail.

[Mookau]

It is my understanding that lockboxes mostly follow and spawn around the player. Very few will be found naturally by player owned ships...

I believe they spawn around the player when using the long range scanner, which is a different mechanic to the spawning stuff I mentioned earlier.

If you already have a lot of ships then it makes sense that few will spawn around your other ships as most of them won't be scouts using the explore command, and the chances get diluted by your other ships. Which could explain why you find more spawn around the player.

I don't believe this is true. When I start a new game, I send several scouts around to open up and survey new sectors, ones I've never visited. They're always finding lockboxes, so much so that I have to turn off the 'notify me' option in their behaviours. Early on, I don't generally have these scouts open the boxes because they're usually only one, or at most two, stars in piloting and they almost always fail.

Odd. They should have a 70% success chance at minimum. At least when they are in low attention. High attention, they actually have to shoot the locks.

[Koschei]

Well that's irritating. It looted a few lockboxes, but now it's stuck on a lockbox it seems. It doesn't loot it, and stopped exploring all together.
Edit: it flew to the center of the exploration sphere and it could have been stuck on the same lockbox again. I didn't check it due to noobness.
Edit 2: or maybe it stops exploring once all space has been explored within the sphere of exploration. But this means it can't hunt for lockboxes forever.