Aside from shopkeepers, quest-givers, and other NPCs considered essential in other games, are NPCs in a given area going to be generated randomly based on the current environment and the parameters set in the area?asked by Narcoman

So what's going to happen is that we have a universe simulation that runs on a separate server. That's much more of a big picture simulation. Think of it kind of like a Civilization game or something like that. Sort of a slower turn based game. That actually is simulating the universe, what all the NPCs are doing, on a macro basis. Who's trading with what? What's producing what? What goods are needed where? Where pirates are attacking? The sort of general outcomes of those results are all happening on the universe simulation and it's own process. Then that is getting trickled down to the local game servers that all the players (i.e. you guys), are attaching to and playing in. The snapshot of what's happening on the universe server is sort of carried across the game server.What would happen is, for instance, if you were down on a planet it would say, "Okay, well this planet is a mining planet and, you know, so I'll generate and the population is this size; therefore, we'll probably populate the landing area with 'X' number of NPCs, 60% of them will be miners, and then we'll have some, law enforcement, and you know we'll have some service workers in the bars and stuff like that." It will all be generated by the data that's pulled down, or pushed down, from the universe server, so it will dynamically change.If a place becomes... turns on hard luck times or whatever and there starts to be unemployment or people start moving off world to go somewhere else to seek jobs, and the population is lowered, then you'll see less people in the landing area. Perhaps the mine shuts down so then you won't really see miners anymore. Maybe the criminal element will increase because there's nothing to be done in that area where you can be gainfully employed so people are turning to crime.So what's gonna happen is there's going to be a loose, fuzzy, connection to what's happening on the universe simulation with what you actually see when you're moving around personally in the game. It will change with what happens in the universe. Of course what happens in the universe is influenced by what players also do in the game as well. So the AI meta actions are all handled on the server and then the player actions are simulated in those local game instances. Like for instance, you guys connect to Crusader right now, and results from that will be pushed back up to the universe server and then that will effect things like pirate count and some stuff like that.If there's pirates preying on a cargo run between two planets, say they're AI pirates, then the company that's not getting the goods because the pirates keep attacking its shipments hires some bounty hunters (i.e. you the players), to go after the pirates in the area or take them out. You do and you go and kill the pirates that are there, the 20 pirates or whatever, then that gets pushed back up to the universe simulator and the universe simulator says, "Okay, let me kill the 20 pirates." If that kills all the pirates on the universe simulator, when you go back and fly that area back on the local game server instance, no longer will pirates be a potential spawning encounter because there's no pirates in that area anymore whereas before there were.So that's kinda how the connection happens between the game and the universe simulation and I think that it should be pretty cool and be pretty dynamic. So you will definitely feel impact from overall... macro movements and player influence. You should sort of feel places change with time depending on what's happening in the universe, so it should be cool.