I was thinking of merchant ships, transports that can send back items you collected without bringing you back to base, and NPC “mercenaries” that you can hire to protect you.
haven’t played open space since forever but I remember drones above jump gates that let you send stuff back. Do they no longer exist?
Cargo drones already do the job just fine in most maps.
The trading in OS is kind of problematic because it is not something that you can pause so you may be killed. Also, these kind of inventory/trade windows belong to the hangar UI in this game.
In OS every NPC can be killed if you disable station protection so whatever may be introduced for OS, that also should be killable.
Anyway. Although I feel like your suggestions rather belong to another game, I would also like to see more type of ships in OS and more ways to interact with things.
Maybe paying the friendly npc ships to be your wingman against other hostile npc’s that would be interesting without letting players use it for other players that is, people tend to stick with abusing rather than learning content.
The mercenary -ship/station suggestion also seems interesting to me…