I've been trading a lot lately and felt something was missing, I made round trips between traders to become insanely rich without any kind of threat, it became boring, the only thing that kept me going was the will to have the highest trade volume on the server. I thought, could we have NPC contacts that would spawn momentarily somewhere for us to meet? I would find an NPC, he would give or sell me a contact, I could summon this contact, new coordinates would be generated for us to meet him, upon arrival on these coordinates, we would have to make a confirmation to make it spawn. In space, you would see a static CV warp, allowing you to meet and interact with an NPC onboard, other NPC could spawn inside his ship like pirates, alien, assassins, anything for an attack to spice it up. NPC ships could spawn outside to increase the difficulty of the attack, a teammate would stay inside the ship to defend while you're interacting with the contact NPC. It could be used for different scenarios: - Trading: The trader NPC would provide something special, better prices, accept illegal items, etc... The coordinates to the rendez vous would change theses parameters. The player could choose the risks he's willing to take. For example if he chose low risk, the generated coordinates will be near the player in a PvE playfield without enemy NPCs. If he chose high risk, the rendez vous will be in a PvP playfield in a dangerous remote system and an attack will happen when onboard the NPC ship. The coordinates could change every time we summon the contact or stay the same. - Mission/Story: You're meeting an ambassador, a secret agent, a defector, retrieving a token, a special item, you've been lead to an ambush, etc
These kinds of events could also be interesting to just have randomly happen, where a CV could warp in and maybe they've just got some random traders and it's completely peaceful, maybe they're followed by another CV. Maybe the one that warped in first is a known criminal and followed by an 'enforcer' style ship trying to capture or kill them, maybe an allied trader is trying desperately to get away from a pirate ship. Either way, you get to make the choice of how to handle the situation if you decide to get involved at all.
