How will the PU handle instancing of missions and the NPC enemies that spawn around them? In the mini-PU now we have a direct correlation between the number of players in the area and the number of NPC pirates that spawn. I realize this is just a temporary solution, but will the final PU use a similar process to scale the difficulty of the mission based on the number and quality of the players accepting it?

Yeah what we have right now is actually far simpler than what we're going to have very shortly as soon as the mission system makes it debut. Right now it's just a simple linear relationship to scale the difficulty, whereas what we're going to be able to do is take into account not just your specific capabilities in terms of the number of people in your party, the ships, the capability of those ships, what your reputation is, what you're actually carrying and all of these things will be factored into this database of you know, possible missions which is also able to take into account what you should be seeing in that area such that if you're a freighter and you're carrying loads and loads of valuable cargo through a dangerous area and you have no escorts, that's going to make you particularly attractive to pirates that are looking to make a quick buck.

So what you've seen thus far, there's really no comparison. This is basically functionality that was put in to give a little bit of ramp of difficulty to make it playable but the real system is far more playable.