Idea - (Some) Colonization without contracts / "complex mission contracts"

Hello,

Not really sure how much is planned for colonization in the future, once NPCs are present, but from what is in the game now, it seems all of it is related to contracts.

When the feature was initially talked about, I imagined it more as a meter of how much of the sector has been populated by the player builds. Obviously it cannot be as simple due to random encounters and the what the computing would be based on. (Copy pasting the same build over the planet).

Later Addition: There could be some colonization point gain for mining certain amount of resources in a sector / for having containers with x amount of components.

I think it would be interesting in the future to have "contracts" for specific plants/factories/mines from the factions that would be available always. For example, you could just build and iron mine anywhere and then give it over to a faction that requires it, be rewarded (somehow) and the mine would then continue to function and provide Iron ore for you (infinite source if you have money to buy or something such)

The above could also be a contract chain. You have to build a base, but when giving it over for the contract, you would first need to mine certain amount of ore in given time (to prove that it functions a mine) and then defend the base against some enemies, proving you build sufficient defenses. Then maybe a ship gets generated and tries to connect to prove you have sufficient hangar/landing pad.

Another type of contract(chain) could be one to provide a certain amount of resources to a faction, from one of your facilities. You build the facility, then faction cargo ships come to visit and take the resource, with the option of being attacked and having to protect them maybe.

A reward for contract could be a location of large underground deposit of specific resource. (out of range of normal ore detectors), Afterwards you would get the above contract to provide some amount of the resource.

All the above is partially inspired by Splitsies series. Since some of the videos include building giant base, only to then leave it behind and not interact with it much. Contracts like these could actually make use of similar building ambitions and even enhance them to a degree. And with modders support it would enable creating interesting scenarios.

I do understand that this would also rely on the NPC faction intelligence and the ability of NPC pilots etc... But I think someone might use this as a jumping point to other ideas at least.