As with all my suggestions, this is for Frontier staff to look at and consider for a (likely far) future update to Elite. I've been pretty critical of the "Disney animatronics" version of what I would call Elite's "Foreground Simulation" - that is, the generation and behavior of NPC ships that instance with a CMDR. The criticism is that these ships are purely eye candy that pop into and out of existence without any actual existential purpose or sense of being ships piloted by real people with real lives in the game. Compare this to a game like X4 Foundations, where every NPC is "real", and Elite's world starts to feel very shallow, staged, and predictable.
Now I totally understand that it's unreasonable to expect X4's "every NPC is tracked in real time in all systems, always" system, due to the hugeness of Elite's bubble and multiplayer nature. I'm not suggesting this. However, there is a way to "seed" the existing NPC generation system to make at least some NPCs more "real" - dynamically create NPCs based on actual CMDRs across all modes. Here's how it would work:
Frontier already tracks CMDR data on their servers - what ships they are flying, what systems they are in, their cargo, etc. All you need to do is have a bunch of CMDRs in your friends list to access this data. This data could be used to spawn unique NPCs that share a CMDR's ship type, name, cosmetics, cargo, and flight path. I'm not suggesting that the NPCs following a detailed "replay" flight path, but rather that CMDR data be used to set the already existing generic data that defines an NPC - the aforementioned ship type, name, cosmetics, cargo, destination, etc. The NPC would then behave just like a normal NPC does today, doing it's own thing based on these parameters. However, instead of just being some RNG parameters that exist for a short session, these parameters would be based on real CMDRs doing real things in the game. This means that if a CMDR was in the system hauling a specific cargo in a specific ship, the NPC would mimic that (again, using it's own automated NPC flight mechanisms). When it comes time for the NPC to jump out of the system, it will go where that CMDR went, thus giving the NPC the illusion of existing outside of the instance; in other words, you could follow a single NPC around the galaxy and get a sense of purpose behind that NPC's routes, because it would be based on an actual human. I think you get the idea.
For this to work, it couldn't be real time, but rather a "playback" of earlier traffic in the system. The idea isn't to create a live copy of a CMDR across instances and modes, but to instead use CMDR traffic to "guide" the creation of at least a portion of the NPCs in a system. Obviously not every NPC would be based on a real CMDR, but even if a percentage of NPC traffic was "real", it would greatly add to this thing I call the Foreground Simulation. If each system focuses on its own traffic, this itself would generate realistic cross-system traffic, since a CMDR jumping from system X to system Y would result in an NPC first appearing in system X and then appearing in system Y. So in some ways players would be seeing "ghosts" of CMDRs from all other modes and instances, but the NPCs would still be NPCs - flying their own specific tracks in space, but sharing the destinations of the CMDRs they are based on. This is what I mean when I say "Bridge between modes", because a player in Solo could see realistic NPCs created from all other players visiting their system in any and all modes. Conversely, players in Open could see NPCs based on players in Solo or even players in a different (console, for example) version of Open. Though I do recommend that NPCs not be spun up for any CMDR that could actually instance with the player, since that would be weird.
From a technical standpoint, I think this would be relatively easy to implement, since it's just tweaking the currently existing NPC model (I believe I could do it myself if the game were moddable). Basically I'm suggesting replacing RNG NPC stats with CMDR data. There are some obvious caveats that need to be considered. For example, if a player attacks and destroys an NPC based on a CMDR, that NPC should be removed from the pool for a period of time. It wouldn't be that long, assuming the NPC clone flies with a rebuy, but there needs to be a buffer to allow for the NPC's "reality" to differ from the CMDR it's based on (obviously destroying an NPC would have zero effect on the "parent" CMDR). There's also the issue of really busy systems, like CGs, where spinning up an NPC for every CMDR in that system would be too much. There should be a cap on the number of realistic NPCs, and when there are more CMDRs in a system than that cap, use an algorithm to pick every nth CMDR to model an NPC around. Another caveat is that so far I've focused mostly on more simplistic trade and mission-running traffic. How does an NPC behave when it's modeled after a CMDR who is bounty hunting in a RES or fighting in a combat zone, or "ganking"? But again, if the idea is to just seed NPCs with basic data from a CMDR (ship type and configuration, name, cosmetics, cargo, and destination), then an NPC need not be a bounty hunter itself, it just needs to show up in a RES like any other NPC. And if the CMDR is wanted, the NPC based on that CMDR should also be wanted and be programmed to behave like a typical NPC pirate. Oh, and I do see the benefit of making this system optional from the settings menu, since some people will not want even a hint of "real" players in their solo game.
So in conclusion, my recommendation is to create a "Foreground Simulation" where at least a subset of NPCs behave much more like actual humans rather than "animatronics", using existing human patterns to seed those NPCs. This would create the illusion of a "living, breathing galaxy" without the extra overhead of a game like X4 Foundations. It would also help bridge all the modes together while still keeping them separate (people in solo would get more realistic NPC traffic but ultimately NPCs are still NPCs, not humans). This idea is actually not that novel, as other games do something similar. For example, MSFS optionally generates AI traffic based on the flight plans of real air traffic. This traffic is still, strictly speaking, NPC AI, but in most cases it does an amazing job at simulating a real world "realism" based on relatively simple metadata. Another example is Dragon's Dogma, which is a single-player game, but it allows a player's customized companion to be shared automatically with other players, so that you'll see NPCs in the solo game world that were created by other players, adding a rich diversity to that world, and mirroring my suggestion to copy player ship cosmetics to their NPC "clones". I also recognize that only a subset of NPCs would be these more "realistic" NPCs, but it would still add to the overall experience (the woman in the red dress in the Matrix comes to mind). And someone more clever than myself might be able to use historical CMDR data and analytics to generate realistic, truly unique NPCs at a much higher percentage. Anywho, something to think about!
Now I totally understand that it's unreasonable to expect X4's "every NPC is tracked in real time in all systems, always" system, due to the hugeness of Elite's bubble and multiplayer nature. I'm not suggesting this. However, there is a way to "seed" the existing NPC generation system to make at least some NPCs more "real" - dynamically create NPCs based on actual CMDRs across all modes. Here's how it would work:
Frontier already tracks CMDR data on their servers - what ships they are flying, what systems they are in, their cargo, etc. All you need to do is have a bunch of CMDRs in your friends list to access this data. This data could be used to spawn unique NPCs that share a CMDR's ship type, name, cosmetics, cargo, and flight path. I'm not suggesting that the NPCs following a detailed "replay" flight path, but rather that CMDR data be used to set the already existing generic data that defines an NPC - the aforementioned ship type, name, cosmetics, cargo, destination, etc. The NPC would then behave just like a normal NPC does today, doing it's own thing based on these parameters. However, instead of just being some RNG parameters that exist for a short session, these parameters would be based on real CMDRs doing real things in the game. This means that if a CMDR was in the system hauling a specific cargo in a specific ship, the NPC would mimic that (again, using it's own automated NPC flight mechanisms). When it comes time for the NPC to jump out of the system, it will go where that CMDR went, thus giving the NPC the illusion of existing outside of the instance; in other words, you could follow a single NPC around the galaxy and get a sense of purpose behind that NPC's routes, because it would be based on an actual human. I think you get the idea.
For this to work, it couldn't be real time, but rather a "playback" of earlier traffic in the system. The idea isn't to create a live copy of a CMDR across instances and modes, but to instead use CMDR traffic to "guide" the creation of at least a portion of the NPCs in a system. Obviously not every NPC would be based on a real CMDR, but even if a percentage of NPC traffic was "real", it would greatly add to this thing I call the Foreground Simulation. If each system focuses on its own traffic, this itself would generate realistic cross-system traffic, since a CMDR jumping from system X to system Y would result in an NPC first appearing in system X and then appearing in system Y. So in some ways players would be seeing "ghosts" of CMDRs from all other modes and instances, but the NPCs would still be NPCs - flying their own specific tracks in space, but sharing the destinations of the CMDRs they are based on. This is what I mean when I say "Bridge between modes", because a player in Solo could see realistic NPCs created from all other players visiting their system in any and all modes. Conversely, players in Open could see NPCs based on players in Solo or even players in a different (console, for example) version of Open. Though I do recommend that NPCs not be spun up for any CMDR that could actually instance with the player, since that would be weird.
From a technical standpoint, I think this would be relatively easy to implement, since it's just tweaking the currently existing NPC model (I believe I could do it myself if the game were moddable). Basically I'm suggesting replacing RNG NPC stats with CMDR data. There are some obvious caveats that need to be considered. For example, if a player attacks and destroys an NPC based on a CMDR, that NPC should be removed from the pool for a period of time. It wouldn't be that long, assuming the NPC clone flies with a rebuy, but there needs to be a buffer to allow for the NPC's "reality" to differ from the CMDR it's based on (obviously destroying an NPC would have zero effect on the "parent" CMDR). There's also the issue of really busy systems, like CGs, where spinning up an NPC for every CMDR in that system would be too much. There should be a cap on the number of realistic NPCs, and when there are more CMDRs in a system than that cap, use an algorithm to pick every nth CMDR to model an NPC around. Another caveat is that so far I've focused mostly on more simplistic trade and mission-running traffic. How does an NPC behave when it's modeled after a CMDR who is bounty hunting in a RES or fighting in a combat zone, or "ganking"? But again, if the idea is to just seed NPCs with basic data from a CMDR (ship type and configuration, name, cosmetics, cargo, and destination), then an NPC need not be a bounty hunter itself, it just needs to show up in a RES like any other NPC. And if the CMDR is wanted, the NPC based on that CMDR should also be wanted and be programmed to behave like a typical NPC pirate. Oh, and I do see the benefit of making this system optional from the settings menu, since some people will not want even a hint of "real" players in their solo game.
So in conclusion, my recommendation is to create a "Foreground Simulation" where at least a subset of NPCs behave much more like actual humans rather than "animatronics", using existing human patterns to seed those NPCs. This would create the illusion of a "living, breathing galaxy" without the extra overhead of a game like X4 Foundations. It would also help bridge all the modes together while still keeping them separate (people in solo would get more realistic NPC traffic but ultimately NPCs are still NPCs, not humans). This idea is actually not that novel, as other games do something similar. For example, MSFS optionally generates AI traffic based on the flight plans of real air traffic. This traffic is still, strictly speaking, NPC AI, but in most cases it does an amazing job at simulating a real world "realism" based on relatively simple metadata. Another example is Dragon's Dogma, which is a single-player game, but it allows a player's customized companion to be shared automatically with other players, so that you'll see NPCs in the solo game world that were created by other players, adding a rich diversity to that world, and mirroring my suggestion to copy player ship cosmetics to their NPC "clones". I also recognize that only a subset of NPCs would be these more "realistic" NPCs, but it would still add to the overall experience (the woman in the red dress in the Matrix comes to mind). And someone more clever than myself might be able to use historical CMDR data and analytics to generate realistic, truly unique NPCs at a much higher percentage. Anywho, something to think about!
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