Besides having ACTUAL NPC pirates, i would like to suggest a service where you can hire NPC's from stations to rock up in behemoths, pick up your loot, carry it back to station and store/sell it. This would be useful for miners also i imagine.

Of course there would be nothing stopping people from killing these NPC's. With proper planning I don't think it particularly breaks anything in the game except makes it easier to collect things from space.

Also, NPC pirates, would be awesome.

I suppose you could hire NPCs from a "salvage company" to pick up all the loot in a specific sector and pay you a portion of the revenue made on it. Accompany that with an incentive to protect the NPC transports like faction standing loss if they're destroyed and it could work without being exploited.

Youi can do that yourself, now. You just need:

-2 subs / active accounts. Paid subs are required to use Moths and decent fighter ships, 8h isnt't enough.
-2 computers. Good news, the 2nd can be even an Android phone, or cheapest netbook in stores.

on best rig you play rat, even the smallest screen is enough to fly a moth properly. My ancient eeePC 701 can play VO (external monitor due HW low res)...

Also works if you wanna use your own turrets. but the increase in protection does not worth it.

This I know Alloh, but it strikes me as a bit overkill to get that setup just to do hauling.

-100000 because this would make the fine pirate fellows lazy

We've been asking for player sponsored convoys for a while now. This idea would slot into that. The only addition here is not just a player being able to sponsor a convoy, but determine what it's carrying too.

+1 to OP.
-1 to Allohs silly impractical idea.
And bring back the damned unrats already!

I can't see the devs embracing this one, their philosophy has always been anti-automating such activity. i.e. Looting a player's cargo should be a players job, and the victim should have at least the possibility of paying a ransom for the return of precious cargo, etc.

An alternative would be an "Ambush Convoy" group mission where your team and a squad of NPC's are tipped off on a voy's whereabouts (perhaps a "stalled" voy that can be spawned by the mission?), go out and raid it, and all profit is shared equally, wether scooped by NPC or Player.

Or, assuming unrats come back, they could scavenge any cargo they detect, and attempt to sell it to the nearest Corvus station FOR THEMSELVES, and the clever rat would kill them near their station to get the loot before some NPC profited from it. Think about it: a class of unrat transports hauling loot would be coming into corvus stations regularly, so the LAZY pirate could just hang out with the station guards, talking about the latest corvus holodiscs and whatnot, and slay unrat transports for fun and profit. The intrepid rat would get more, or at least pick of the hoard by assaulting voys personally.

I personally like the idea of missions that hire npc's to assist the player on specific tasks, as escorts, as gunners, as miners, as haulers, etc., but these should cost per time or task and all activity would follow the player, as LAR bots do.

/me misses the unrat snowflakes

/me also misses the unrat snowflakes

definetely +1 to OP!

I would suggest player crafted bots that do simple chores. A behemoth bot would benefit miners and pirates alike. And really, as far as anti automation go, is it any worse than that fury thingy you can craft that follows you around and shoots at you when you bump into a roid?

It would give players something to do. Make them only craft-able- but reasonably craft-able. Not the 6 year project of building the Arc.

Oh, and you don't need to pc's to run 2 accounts. VO runs just fine in multiple sessions. on a reasonably modern computer.