I look on NPC how they fly in team and i have great idea.How about mercenary for players? For Example you dock to base and go to bar you can read news take mission and hire mercenary of you faction? Maby make new icon in the bar at mission and news icon with level of Mercenary. Highter level highter pay for them . And when you dock out they fly with you (something like when NPC help in the mission) It will be more interest when you fly and NPC fly folow and escort you. You if you trade and fill youself like big boss, if you Navy you can navy you fill youself like navy in
squad or create a little gang if you pirate.
1: This isn't impossible but requires a significant amount of work.
2: This is an RP server, not a PVE server. The purpose of the server should not be interaction with NPCs, player controlled or otherwise.
This has been done in the 88-Flak mod, where they added NPC wingmen. I don't know if they participate in missions, but they are persistent NPCs that follow you from system to system and support you in fights.
It is a bit buggy and, as previously stated, requires a lot of work to implement (complete rework of every system, adding NPC routes and hidden bases, some plugins to generate the NPCs or let you customize them, and new loadouts and ship entries for all the NPCs).
One of the bugs is if you hail your NPC "buddy" on the comms they will turn hostile to you.
If you're curious about this possibility, go try out the Flak mod, but I doubt it would be implemented on Disco.