Will the game automatically tell us if a character is a player or an NPC, or will they be indistinguishable?
TL;DRPlayers probably won't be told outright whether someone is a player or NPC, but names, organization affiliation (NPCs belong to NPC-only factions) and erratic movement should help tell them apart.
Yeah, it's a tricky one. I think first you'll need to see them and be able to know who they are, because if I see a ship in the distance and I don't manage to scan it, I don't know who that person is, or which other persons might be on board. If I actually scan and find out, if I see the name, I think that's the point. When we see the name, we should be able to know who that person is, whether it's an NPC or a player. But in most cases, you might not see the name. If a dude is hiding behind a rock and you see something there, until you actually get to find out who, what he is, what ship he's flying, you won't be able to tell.
Well, and I think so much of that would go to the naming system. For example, I see some of the names on Spectrum, it would be like Exile Knights, and for us to do Exile Knights underscore 111, there's going to be some things from a name standpoint that just don't fit fiction, but we allow players to do it, just because that's the handle that they want to create.
One thing that will also help is the affiliation. If you see the organization, the faction that they're part of, you will know, because the NPC ones will be NPC only.
It sounds like there will be ways to figure it out, but it won't necessarily be something we explicitly spell out for people.
No, and I think players, for the most part, move a lot more erratically: running everywhere, jumping, doing all these kind of random things. So I'm assuming that will be the first thing that will...