As it appears we are doing an expansion on common NPCs, might I suggest a few new ideas:

Common
Mylari Mineral Droid
(Could work in the story line as yet another malfunctioning unit.)

Similar stats as the new Tech Parts Ship.
Instead of dropping parts, it would drop Kurenite.

An Un-Common upgraded version would drop Aidonium.

There are currently no NPCs that drop anything of value in hard currency. This would give players the opportunity to add a little cash to their piles or minerals.

I know the Very High level players may not have the need, but for many mid-rank players who struggle for cash for upgrades, ship maintenance, etc, this would prove beneficial.

oh that sounds like a great idea! I'm consistently broke more and more these days, even with over 10K minerals per hour.

We already had a post about mineral NPC's and we basically all wanted Astroids no ships.

I think we all had our fill of shooting rocks during the Kalvium Plating mission. (Still don't know how an asteroid can do 1 damage.) But, either way, as long as it is an NPC dropping valuable items, it is worth it.

Shards fly off and ht your ship and Astroids make much better sense

Personally I don't see the need for an NPC that drops minerals, just up your mining per hour if you are finding that you don't have enough to support your upkeep. Tech collectors are a different story, once you get to a certain rank, there are very few bosses that you can see (only 3 of them past rank 1000 I believe. feel free to correct me if I'm wrong) so compared to players in the 200's and 300's rank range, it's quite a bit harder for higher level players to collect any decent amount of parts.