In Galaxy Legion, NPCing is something that is vital to success. Every other aspect of the game can be pretty much ignored (with a few exceptions on certain missions) if you NPC enough. That's not, to my mind a good mechanic.
There are those of us who do not find NPCing interesting. I'm sure there are various reasons for this, but for me? The ease. I'm at the point with PvP, that I'm mostly PvPing for sh!ts and giggles, ergo, energy efficiency isn't the interest - challenge is. That's exactly what makes NPCing so uninteresting. Challenge - or rather, lack there of.
Let's face it. NPCing is just mindlessly clicking targets over and over again repairing perhaps once, and restoring your neural interface should you be using one. Nothing more, nothing less. A few NPCs can change this up somewhat, but they are few and far between.
So, obviously, a lot of people like NPCing. Don't understand it myself, but here we are. Therefore, changing the system wouldn't be a good thing to do.
My answer? "Combat Missions".
Get yourself a button.
This button would change when you have a target lock.
From here, you can click the button. This button would allow you to take on a mission.
Okay. So this is the screen for if you don't have a target lock. You can see a few things from the screenshot, but I'll go over them individually.
1) "Accept a Mission", as in, you don't get the choice. Mission Control gives you the mission.
2) "Recent Missions". Here you can see the past 5 NPCs you fought as a mission. I only added 4 to the screenshot, because I was feeling lazy.
==> "Enemy Level" The opposing NPCs have ranks just like any normal NPC. This is displayed here.
==> "Time Taken" The time you take to defeat the NPC affects the drop you get.
==> "Wut, no images?" I think the images should be displayed here, but these non-existent NPCs sadly do not yet have sprites.
3) "View Enemy Data" The NPCs you've defeated are logged. It displays the stats of each one, the number of each you've defeated, etc.
4) "Drops can be the same as NPCs?" This is deliberate. Many of the "vital" NPC drops should be available from this. Terraformers, Caches, maybe Sacs spring to mind. Not all NPC drops will be available, and there will be drops unique to this.
5) "Genetarr Outlaw"? There would be three types of these NPCs.
==> "Outlaw" NPCs.
==> "Enemy" NPCs.
==> "Special" NPCs.
===> Outlaw NPCs are NPCs of playable races. These will have a race-related drop, as well as giving some political favour.
===> Enemy NPCs, are of the races you see in standard NPCs. These will have a drop similar to rare or elite NPCs.
===> Special NPCs are enemies pertaining to no faction. These are rare to encounter, and have powerful drops.
The NPCs that spawn would all be solo NPCs. No elites or bosses. Every NPC would have an ability, and it would be a powerful one too. More along the lines of Attiroth than the laughable Stryll Trapper. These NPCs would easily be able to take on an average player of a similar rank to it and win. They're supposed to be challenging to defeat, which is why it's not overpowered to have them drop powerful drops every time. Additionally, they'd give no bonus XP on defeat, they would however give "Mission XP", which would level up your combat mission levels.
So what does leveling up your combat mission levels do? Well, it's a requirement to find the better NPCs.
So, for example, at level one, you'd be able to see a Stryll Trapper-esque NPC in terms of drops, though it would be much more powerful. At this point, the NPCs shouldn't be too hard - perhaps the strength of the average elite NPC of it's rank.
At level two-hundred, you'd be able to see some truly special NPCs... but... you're looking at soloing particularly powerful bosses. The rewards? Terraformers, high-efficiency modules, etc if you can defeat them quickly enough...
...which wouldn't be easy, since all of these NPCs would be on a short time limit. Additionally, as I mentioned earlier, the drops scale to how quickly you kill the NPC. You may have been trying for that Dark Smuggler's Cache, but ultimately it took you nearly 20 minutes to defeat the foe. Dark Pyramid for you! You're just lucky that was a 20 minute NPC... probably the longest of them.
If you have a target lock, the screen would look pretty much like if you have an enemy base locked, showing the timer, NPC, rank, etc.
The battle that ensues would be just like a normal fight, but difficult.
Anyways, I think I've explained everything. I had some other thoughts, but I wasn't sure about them.
1) Resource for getting targets. Personally, I don't want it to be energy. I don't want it to be free and nothing else makes sense.
2) Limit per day. I think one might be necessary, but I don't want one.
3) Boss fights to promote certain levels. Maybe 5, 10, 20 etc.
