What I suggest is this: add the ability to buy multiple ships for the purpose of hiring npcs to pilot them. The player would need to establish a home base, perhaps a station with a faction the player is friendly or allied with. For the next step you would then need to decide which people to hire, taking note of their skill sets. Maybe combat skills, trade skills, etc. and more skilled employees would demand a larger cut of the action. Or instead of that system, you could set how much of a cut you get from their profits, anywhere from 1-99%, and that determines how likely you are to get job applicants, or even set an hourly wage, making you receive most of the profit. You would then be able to set their profession: trader, miner, bounty hunter, explorer, or pirate (based off their skills hopefully). They would then roam around the galaxy doing their assigned task (the player setting the max distance they could travel from home base), perhaps running into random events where they run out of fuel, get pirated, or die. The player could minimize these risks however by outfitting each of the ships in their fleet. Imagine having 20 haulers (or type 9s if you're rich) roaming around, and you getting say, a 20-30% cut of their profit. The devs could make these npc ships view able by other players, but I'm not sure how much strain that would put on their servers. Who knows, maybe there is some work around.
A note on home bases, or base of operations: perhaps there would be a set max distance, which would require the player to get in good with other factions on farther away worlds to set up more shops or hangers. There could even be a max amount of ships you have operate out of a select base, making it even more necessary to expand. Furthermore, a station might have all their space already taken by other player's operations, removing options and requiring more exploration.
Thank you for reading. Have a nice day.
A note on home bases, or base of operations: perhaps there would be a set max distance, which would require the player to get in good with other factions on farther away worlds to set up more shops or hangers. There could even be a max amount of ships you have operate out of a select base, making it even more necessary to expand. Furthermore, a station might have all their space already taken by other player's operations, removing options and requiring more exploration.
Thank you for reading. Have a nice day.
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