I got inspired by Yoda's movie ( http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/1/10907?page=2#127559 ) and this is how nation capitals should look like, but with npc traders in stead of bots. Just look at that traffic, wow!

I'm sure (or I should say I hope) that once the game is actually advertised it'll look very populated on a regular basis. The NPC count is okay as it is right now. But I agree that maybe more NPCs can be used to sort of offset the lack of players we have now. In addition to that maybe more variation can be placed on NPCs. Seeing Atlases over and over gets boring after a while. And they don't exactly fight back or attempt to avoid death. But I'm sure all that is still in the works.

One thing I still really wish they devs would do, and it doesn't seem that hard to me, would be to add some flavor to the vanilla atlas npc traders. I'm sure that at least 1 other trader out there could afford to by a centaur or a maud or a behemoth on occasion. Just a little diversity in the npc's. Perhaps give them a little bit more trade licenses and give them some mines to defend themselves better with. The current npc trader AI is horrible, you hit them, they slow to avoid shot but end up just making it easier to kill them since they are stilling still.

I would love to see a capital sector with 30+ traders bots lining up to enter the docking bay, and a few mining roids, and lots of jump in/out points all over the sphere of view.