So there's loads of great things done with plugins like the various shops and VODR which greatly add to the ecosystem. The problem with these is you need a dedicated machine to be constantly on and you can only run a single instance of VO per machine.

What would be nice would be an open source VO API server with a very similar plugin API (in LUA or C) where you could host multiple instances on a RPi or on small AWS instance. It would be headless (i.e. no UI components) but you could build chatbots, and create AI bots which fly around the universe. This would mean re-enabling the various ship control commands which are currently blocked in VO (except turbo) and have some more finer grained radar API's so you could detect the actual locations of other objects for shooting at.

This would enable community hosted AI bots - like the hive bots, so you could have NPC pirates, traders etc. Just thinking it would be a great way to add to the content of the game and relieve some of the pressure on you guys.

You guys could still retain control, by enabling / disabling certain bots or only allowing them to operate for certain lengths of time etc.

You can run as many instances of VO as your machine can handle. I have old chromebook with a Intel Celeron 847 that can handle 4 instances of VO without too much trouble.