[Suggestion] Dynamic Encounters / Dynamic World

In a different post, I mentioned how the team is currently looking at Combat and discussing the how Combat and the Loops (core, meta, etc) should work.

I believe that there is a very large opportunity here, while the game is still early, to make the encounters very dynamic.

For example, on each planet, it would make sense that there are people guarding lots of landmarks and mining deposits, whether they are things like salvage yards, cities, stations, trading posts, or rare resource mines. It also makes sense that other factions would be very active in trying to colonize the world for themselves, so ships would be ferrying cargo from one outpost to another, or bringing it from space, make sense.

This also gives the player a lot of extra choices, since they could decide "hey, I can be friendly with these guys, then they'll trade X rare resource with me" or "these guys suck! I should take out their ammo transport ships before they can re-arm their turrets at the mining outpost I want!".

There could even be ships that come from space, guarded by a small escort, which land on planet and build further stations to either send out other ships (attacks, trade) or to do utility (refueling/resupply, mining). Functionally, they'd likely have to either use NPCs to build, or something similar to SE1's Nanites mod to easily build a projected base (or any other implementation).

Having a bunch of ships, with real goals and impact, would really elevate the experience quite a bit. It gives players a large amount of control about how their world is going, and opportunities to feel like you are part of a diverse world.

On steam, Dan had mentioned a few possibilities for combat encounters that make sense (which was the original intent of this, but I re-worded my stuff a bit), which I have slightly added on to and put below:

- Rare ore mines, guarded by enemies, available on planets (but usually only available in space)

- Abandoned Stations, likely guarded very lightly by broken turrets, or by turrets that only function during the day (powered by solar, batteries destroyed)

- Special areas with high amounts of enemies, perhaps a territory system of some sort, which has some benefit to the player if taken (ex: shipyard to build ships, prevents enemies building ships, etc)