Ok, so, I don’t know if it’s a good idea but it would be nice to be able to select NPC ships when necessary (on the fly) and team up with them to complete a mission. Would it be?
Of course, better team with real friends but for a guy who want to play it “solo” it would be nice to pick up few NPC only when needed (you would have to pay for that, or at least share part of the mission reward at the end…). That would also depend on NPC faction allegiance…
Or, for example, recruit a few NPC to protect you while you are mining somewhere or smudging something illegal somewhere, traveling like that would of course be more suspicious and increase the risk of being attacked.
That would be nice but it isn’t likely, at least in the initial release. The only things AI ships will do is bring resources from mining areas to faction owned facilities. You can attack or defend them and that’s it.
There will be civilian and support AI ships (cargo ships, repair ships), combat ships will only be players. Maybe capital ships can be AI, used more as mobile spawns rather than tactical fighting. This is mostly speculation at this point.