Hey Guys,
There will be 4 modes from memory. Open Play, Private Group, Solo and Solo Offline.
The first 3 all exist online and use data from the same server. So events to the galaxy like, commodity prices, wars etc are seen by all players. The only difference is what people see in terms of other human players.
Open play - Everyone is potentially visible.
Private group - People in your private group are visible
Solo - No other players are visible
Solo Offline will be the offline version where the server runs locally on your computer and won't be influenced by anything happening online. For example commodity prices, wars etc.
Cheers,
-Todd