I was playing in open around Quince but kept getting a matchmaking error when going into SC so I switched to solo. Got into SC and noticed a holo square on my radar. Checked and confirmed I was in fact in solo mode and the hollow square was in fact a cmdr. I sent a greeting message asking if he was in solo mode too and his reply was simply ??? He entered the planet before we could talk more. That's a first for me.
Essentially the instances are spun up to handle one or more commanders, because it's matchmaking that controls who we do, or don't see. PG is essentially identical to open, it's just a 'filtered' list of clients that are permitted to connect. Solo essentially is matchmaking not connecting any other clients, ergo they are invisible. It's plausible that this could break occasionally, and 'leak' another client connection in.
When this happens though, it can also be because people are
actually in open and think they are in solo and have miss-clicked or lost track when mode switching.
Solo isn't single-player from a server perspective iirc; just from matchmaking. The instance parameters may be different due to matchmaking rules (hence why instances can get out of sync for missions and so forth) but it is actually a pretty efficient way to handle what is otherwise going to be fairly expensive compute requirements for the universe servers, versus instance generation.
So there you go, if you are in solo, just think; you aren't
automatically alone, just visibly.
"I see commanders, flying around like regular commanders."
