Howdy CIG Devs and Community! My question for the Devs today is around how the Star Citizen experience is currently intended to shake out regarding Solo gameplay. I have a few concerns and I think so do many other folks. I'll do my best to present the topic for discussion using as many official links as possible, but some may come from this forum, reddit and so-on, as I've been searching for understanding about what the solo experience is intended to be. I do have an opinion on the topic myself, but I'll at least try and leave my own until the end. The ideas around Solo gameplay have been bubbling up in my head for a while now. So, I turn to the internet. The internet is confusing. So, I turn to this forum and hoping beyond all hope to get an official, straight answer on just this one topic. QUICK EDIT: I should be clear that I'm specifically talking about solo play in the PU. I know that there are single player modes in Arena Commander and Squadron 42 is a single player game, but the MMO aspect of the Star Citizen family of games is what I'm talking about. The catalyst that finally brought me to the forum spawned from a reddit post where someone named "sgtlobster06" tried summarizing a response from devs during a live Q&A at the recent CON42 in Germany. Question starts here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEE5WebWV6I&t=20422s (link has timestamp) sgtlobster06's summary: https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/12xdihu/comment/jhil242/ "We don't want to make NPC pilots that you will be able to control to fly your ship from A to B because this is not RTS game, we want the players to drive their ship, we want to offer you ways to command your ships with your buddies in your fleet" Later on, another question came up with a similar sort of idea regarding fleet gameplay. This is where sgtlobster06's comment must have originated from. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEE5WebWV6I&t=21220s (link has timestamp) So, I know that was a lot, but it's at the foundation of the discussion in my mind. Summarization of further arguments against Autopilot or even NPC crew entirely. Lack of NPC crew is what prevents the game being "pay to win". If player crew are not required, the game just turns into Elite Dangerous. The social aspect of Star Citizen is what makes the game unique. I get harassed enough during non-combat gameplay by folks in Arrows that I don't want those same people to now be able to control Hammerheads. Summarization of arguments for Autopilot/NPC crew Supply/Demand based economics for NPC crew members and ship overhead can balance out excessive use of NPC crews. Large and Capital ships will rarely if ever be used unless given access to NPC crews. Some anticipated gameplay, specifically things like exploration seem impossible to implement in any practical way without NPC crew. If we don't have NPC crew, then players will not be able to focus on the interesting parts of the game and leave parts of the game that a player finds 'tedious' or 'boring' to NPCs. We shouldn't expect our friends to take on the tedious and boring things just to be able to fly certain classes of player owned ships. OK... so I think that's it for what I've found across the internet and org discussion. I do also want to give a mention and some highlights to other posts on this topic on these forums. This thread introduces a video that I find makes an extremely compelling argument. "It's nearly impossible for a group of players to sync their lives together in a way that would allow them to progress through an MMO at the exact same speed." https://robertsspaceindustries.com/spectrum/community/SC/forum/3/thread/some-things-cig-might-wish-to-keep-in-mind-for-sta https://youtu.be/pFowzZlDK3A?t=405 Another comment I saw once (sorry for the lack of a link) stated something like, "Since the Kickstarter I've graduated school, got my degree from college, got married, and have two kids." The guy was being funny, but that could also be an honest experience for a game 10 years in development. Some of the people who may have initially backed when they thought they'd have all the time in the world to play have experienced whole new stages of life by this point. I'm sure many of the long-term development team may have experienced the same. OK... gonna move all of the 'Just My Opinion' stuff to a comment rather than clutter this discussion starter with it. ANOTHER EDIT: Thanks to @CakeorDeath for posting this thread, which I missed but is largely discussing the same topic. https://robertsspaceindustries.com/spectrum/community/SC/forum/50259/thread/no-npc-pilots-con42-info