What kind of interactions can players have with non-hostile NPC ships? Can we request repair, refuel and resupply assistance from a passing carrier, trade goods with merchant ships, things of that nature?asked by Arbitrysketch
TL;DRYes, players are planned to be able to get refueling and similar help from NPC ships, since NPCs are meant to behave human-like and be hard to tell from players.
The answer is absolutely yes. Those are all things that we want to do. As I said a little earlier, one of my goals is to make the NPC behavior be pretty human-like, and they behave and do the same jobs and same actions that most players will do, and also obscure the fact that it is an NPC from a real player, at least from a distance. So it just feels like it's a living, breathing world that's populated. And you'll run into people and, hey, some may be AI controlled and some may be player controlled. And if we do our job right, maybe you won't even realize that a player is playing a ship and you think it's an AI, and vice versa. But they'll definitely be able to help you out. They'll refuel you. They'll do all those kinds of things. They're all things that we're planning for.