Giving open world npcs more difficult loadouts.

[Mitroll]

I'm hosting a private server for some friends, and we'd like to make the random NPC encounters more difficult. We'd like the random npcs to be hard enough that, like with high level missions, high level and lucrative trade runs should only be doable if the trader hires strong escorts.

So we have a couple problems, first, the NPCs have useless guns that do like 15 shield damage and 30 hull damage per shot, secondly they never cruise disrupt you, so there's no reason for any player to hire escorts: Any area in which you would be mining or trading is safe enough for a freighter to simply ignore npc pirates as though they don't even exist.

I've tried bumping up the "toughness" in all of the encounters, but that doesn't seem to change the fact that they're using guns that do 15 shield damage per shot.

Where can I find the files that control these ships' loadouts? Is there an easy way to make sweeping changes to the worthless npc pirates that equip non-discovery weaponry?