It's a big universe, but there are a lot of players to fill it. There's already an unofficial rescue service known as the Fuel Rats with a fairly large list of members, so clearly there are enough people who want to play that way. Why not create a mechanism that lets them make a few credits for doing it? It might not be a huge credit draw compared to a 400,000cr assassination, but some people like the feelgood factor of playing as a hero. The brownie points could be a draw- even if you're playing as a pirate, you might at some point want to clean up your rep to try new things and this might offer a good 'path to redemption'. It's also a nice alternative to trading or shooting things. The frontier developers could figure out a much better way to do it than I've come up with, I'm sure, but I don't think this mechanism would disrupt the existing game. Enabling NPC rescues is a good idea- you'd kind of have to, thinking about it, otherwise it wouldn't work in a solo game- and also it provides a solid fallback if nobody takes the mission. There could be a time out factor where if nobody accepts your rescue mission an NPC rescue will be dispatched from the local station.
Yeap, that's a good trade off, and that's partly what the first part of the timer was about, pretending to initiate a call, or in this case, actually initiating a call, but with, say, a 1-minute countdown instead of 10 seconds, so that an NPC answers if nobody else does.
The problem with the bulletin boards is that a person would need to be docked to see it. Would be better if it was broadcast to players through the "secondary mission objectives" info tab that is on the ship, but only go out to players that want to participate in it, and only the 5 nearest ones (based on player's current System), as the UI is already there to accept/reject in-ship missions (for when an assassination mission changes). If nobody accepts within the minute, then send the NPC.
In terms of wanting to participate, I imagine that, beyond distress calls, this "call" feature can be used for Wings, Escorts, Battle-Distress and so on, so there should be a "Services" function in the ship that players can enable/disable to enable/disable these messages based on type (and the player can specify a Range they're willing to go), and with a preference to players in the same Power.
This of course can be abused, by both sides, but that's part of the game being "Dangerous", you may not get the rescuer you want, you may not be rescuing anybody either "It's a trap!". Them's the risks
Then, add in two new Ranks:
1) Service Rank (Novice to Elite). Transferring fuel to a player that initiated a Fuel distress call, +1 service. Join a wing of a person that issued a Wing call, and shoot the same target as them, +1 service rank. join a wing of a trader that issued an escort call, and the trader successfully docks at a different station, +1 service. etc.. etc..
and
2) Bandit Rank (Novice to Elite) for those that answer the call somewhat negatively, and/or issue the call somewhat negatively (whoever attacks first gets the Wanted and the appropriate rank adjustment). If u called and attack first, then +1 Bandit. If you turn up to a caller, and attack first, +1 Bandit. Scoop up manually jettisoned cargo, +1 bandit.
This way, when the players turn up together for the first time, a ship scan can reveal the "genuine" nature of the caller based on their respective ranks.
Add in supercruise missions for NPCs for the same sort of stuff, so Solo players can participate.
There would also be some interesting comedy from time to time, of a wing of pirates issuing a distress call, and then a different wing of pirates turn up for it
