In empty Sectors thoughout the Universe you could once in a while stumple upon a lonely non hostile NPC ,lets call him Carl, whose navigation/communication system is damaged.
Now If a player gets close to him, Carl will ask for help.
The player could either decline, agree or blow Carl up (Carl is rich!).
If he agrees Carl will tell the player to bring him to the nearest station or a certain station(depending on the players level).
The player can still decline, but this time he will get a faction hit for the nation Carl belongs to (Carl has influence!).

Let's assume the player agreed to help Carl. Now Carl will try to follow (Carl is slow but tough!) the player to the station he told him to go. He has to be close to the player to follow him through jumps. On arrival Carl will automatically dock with the Station and the player gets a reward(faction and monetary.).

If Carl dies on the way he will be pissed and the player gets a faction hit.

comments?

I'd be upset too if I died. Sounds interesting. The mission would have to involve the mission bot and mission chat. Give another reason to fly into less used sectors.

Bubba's Towing and Salvage missions? Join the faction and check the mission computer for calls from NPCs needing assistance. Some could be more urgent than others ("air recirculator broken!" or "courier carrying vital info shot down by pirates in X sector! Find and destroy the wreckage, pick up the data chip")

what's cool is that this probably isn't that hard to implement. Bots (non strike force) already follow you if you keep close enough...
I've let motherships tail my bus out into cold space so I could kill them in peace :)

This does sound like a convoy-escort mission though. Carl needs more depth than "that guy with the broken nav"
Since Carl is rich and important, maybe there could be Carl-smuggling, with the implementation of cloaking/identity devices, and you + Carl could carry out objectives together.
Who knows, maybe Carl is an important game piece that will unleash a special game mechanic!

You should have carl make you jump through places with harder bots, or mabye pirates like at b8 or somthinhg.. Also, if you kill carl you dont use anything..so you should make more of an incentive to take him to the station...more money...bunch of trade exp...faction standing. etc Mabye if you save 20 carls you get a bonus and can you Neut3s :)

I like this idea alot!

Carl rocks!
I think this was meant like this. You run into Carl and he'd give you an option to replace your current mission with the "save the Carl" mission or ask you to group up with him or something.

On a related note. Orion stations need a guy called "Bob" floating near them. He preaches random crap and dumps drill bits if you give him a few credits.

I'll take a crack at this under the mission editor.