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Free Corsairs
August 27, 2026 at 06:26 AM
Corrected the gap between the last use of the Dread Raider name and launch from six months to about eighteen, and standardised apostrophes
The Free Corsairs are one of the six mercenary groups in ZeroSpace, hired partway through a match and mixed into whichever main faction you are already playing. They are the game's pirates, and their motto, "Chaos, and empty coffers", is a fair summary of what they are for: they are less interested in winning a fight than in making sure the other side cannot afford the next one.
The official description calls them space pirates who strike fear across the stars, built for hit-and-run tactics and ambushes. Quick and cunning, they use hovercraft, rovers and improvised traps to outmanoeuvre stronger forces, leaving chaos, and empty coffers, in their wake. The community entity data adds that they carry heightened vision and speed, and that their specialism is raiding harvesters and seizing resources to disrupt an opponent's economy.
That is the rare mercenary identity that touches the economy rather than the battle line, and it runs through the whole group. One unit steals hexite outright, one talent pays you for destroying harvesters and buildings, and the faction power drops cover rather than damage.
The official faction page names two combat traits.
Trait | What It Does |
|---|---|
Hit and run | Fast raids on harvesters starve the enemy economy. |
Dirty tricks | Traps, sandbag cover and ambushes beat a fair fight every time. |
The Corsairs are led by Caylan Yearl, whose title is Corsair Captain. Yearl fits the group: a mobile skirmisher who can walk up and down cliffs, vanish, and leave explosives behind. Like every hero, he rebuilds automatically rather than being lost permanently, as described on Heroes and Commanders.
Field | Value |
|---|---|
Cost | 220 hexite |
Health | 150, plus a 150 shield pool |
Status resist | 40 |
Move speed | 500 |
Vision | 18 |
Supply | 10 |
On death | Rebuilds automatically after 60 seconds |
Ability | Effect |
|---|---|
"Dolly" | His basic attack, named for the weapon. 21 damage at 12 range on a 1.35 second cooldown, against ground and air. |
Disrupting Shot | Blasts enemies for 30 damage, slows them, and stops them using attacks or abilities for 3 seconds. |
Shadow Walk | Cloaks Yearl and grants 40 percent extra move speed for 10 seconds, leaving a mine behind that deals 30 damage and slows for 3 seconds. Only one mine can be active at a time. 25 second cooldown. |
Sticky Bomb | Throws a bomb that explodes after 6 seconds, or immediately if the unit it is stuck to dies, for 50 damage and a 4 second stun. The blast radius grows the longer it waits. 45 second cooldown. |
Corsair units come from the Mercenary Outpost, and most arrive as a squad for one price. The values below are drawn from the community knowledge base's entity data and match the published balance notes through the update of August 11, 2026.
Unit | Tier | Cost | Supply | Health | Armour | Role |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Raider | 1 | 175 hexite (squad of 3) | 2 | 150 | Light | Fast light infantry that jumps up and down cliffs, and steals hexite with Thieve. |
Rover | 1 | 200 hexite, 50 flux (squad of 2) | 3 | 320 | Light | Light vehicle that fires while moving and speeds up its attacks near enemies. |
Deadeye | 1 | 75 hexite, 200 flux (squad of 2) | 4 | 100 (+100 shields) | Light | Long-range marksman reaching out to 20, doubling its damage against light armour. |
Flamer | 3 | 100 hexite, 200 flux | 6 | 1,000 | Heavy | Heavy tank pouring short-range area fire, with bonus damage against light armour. |
Hovercraft | 3 | 200 hexite, 125 flux (squad of 2) | 4 | 375 | Medium | Lays three contact mines that damage and slow whatever touches them. |
The Raider is the group in miniature. Its Thieve ability takes 5 seconds to steal 50 hexite from an enemy main building or harvester, and the wording matters: the owner does not lose the resources, so the theft is pure income for the Corsair player rather than a straight transfer. Combined with cliff-jumping, it turns an ordinary base into something a small squad can profit from without ever winning an engagement.
The Hovercraft is not available at the start. It unlocks only through the level 6 talent, which spawns two of them immediately.
Field | Value |
|---|---|
Cost | 100 hexite, 25 flux |
Health | 1,200, starting at 480 when first placed |
Armour | Building armour, 1 |
Vision | 15 |
Produces | Raider, Rover, Deadeye, Flamer and Hovercraft |
Unlocks | The Sandbags faction power |
The Corsair top bar entry is Sandbags, which drops sandbags at a target location to block enemy shots and movement. Each set has 200 health. At half a point of faction power and a 20 second cooldown it is by far the cheapest mercenary power in the game, which suits a group that wants to shape a fight rather than win it outright.
Level | Talent | Effect |
|---|---|---|
2 | Pillage | Destroying harvesters and buildings provides hexite. |
4 | Plundered Optics | Vision increased by 75 percent and move speed by 15 percent. |
6 | Entrenched Hideouts | Mercenary Outposts act as bunkers, gain 600 health, build in half the time, and their limit rises to three. Two Hovercraft unlock and spawn immediately. |
The group shipped as the Free Corsairs, but that is not what they were called for most of development, and the older name is still visible today.
When | What the sources show |
|---|---|
March 2024 | An official alpha post set out a unique passive bonus for each mercenary group. The pirates are listed as the Dread Raiders, and their bonus is a passive called Pillage that generates hexite by killing extractors and harvesters. |
January 2025 | A development update announced refreshed in-game models and new textures for the Protectorate, the Marran and the Dread Raiders, so the old name was still in first-party use around eighteen months before the game launched. |
Today | Every current source calls them the Free Corsairs: the official faction page, the site's own front page and every post-launch balance note. |
Still today | The official standings page carries seven battle-record boards for total damage, and one of them is labelled Dread Raider. The legacy string outlived the rename. |
Pillage survived the rename too. It is no longer a group-wide passive but the level 2 talent, worded now as destroying harvesters and buildings providing hexite. The mechanic that defined the Dread Raiders is the same one that defines the Free Corsairs, and it is still the first thing you unlock when you hire them.
Date | Change |
|---|---|
July 25, 2026 | The Rover's move speed dropped from 750 to 700. Separately, the Raider's Thieve ability was removed in the campaign only, leaving it intact in versus and skirmish play. |
August 11, 2026 | The Deadeye's damage fell from 30 to 25 while its bonus against light armour rose from 75 percent to 100 percent, a net drop from 52.5 to 50 against light targets. The Raider's bonus changed from 75 percent against Harvester armour to 50 percent against medium. |
The Raider change was part of a larger rework. The same update removed the Harvester armour type outright, moved harvesters and extractors onto medium armour, and rewrote every weapon bonus that had keyed off the old type, the Raider among six units affected. That is documented on Units. Note also that the Campaign change to Thieve is one of several places where the studio tunes a unit differently by mode.
The Free Corsairs are one of six groups on the Factions page, beside The Marran, The Valkaru, the Arandi Empire, the Cha'kru Kingdom and the Endari. They can be contracted in Skirmish matches and in the Galactic War, and their economic pressure is best understood alongside the hexite and flux systems on Resources and Economy.
