Will there be weather patterns and volcanic or any other natural disasters on the surfaces of planets, and will they affect players and NPCs?asked by Robert Chief

Yes, that is one of the things that the procedural folks are working on because we don't just want to make a planet, we want to make the Genesis planet from Star Trek 3. In fact, that's part of the original way, way, way, way back economic plan: there could be a natural disaster on this planet, and you can give the game masters the ability to cause some problem on some planet which will affect the economics around it. Which they used to do in Privateer 2. There was a generic news story. It would be like, there's a flood on Carotacus, and then water would be really cheap there, or there's famine somewhere, and food would be a good thing to ship.