Joss C. K.: Are they handcrafted or generated? (the characters)
Michael: A mixture of both, but predominantly generated.
RealDB: I wonder, will it be possible to use the Commander Creator to develop profiles for leaders of the player group minor factions so they can be represented in-game? As in will you be willing to accept those from player groups for implementation into the game?
Michael: For minor factions they are generated, certainly for the immediate future.
Rudolphus: when you are a founder of a minor faction does that have impact on the recognize part or start you like everyone from scratch building up reputation.
Michael: No - you'll need to build the reputation, but other things will also impact how they treat you.
djh: This is a great and long-awaited plan. But as I said in the Reddit post that you're referencing, I think the visibility of your contact's face should not be an immediate option when you check the Bulletin Board. It would make more sense that it occurs once you've built trust with the recruiter after successfully completing their missions. After all, where in the real world can you check a Bulletin Board and see the photo of the anonymous person asking you to commit a crime? So Michael, can you confirm that there is a progressive reveal of the mission contacts, as well as the aforementioned hierarchy of mission contacts?
Michael: You'll be able to see the face of your contact, but the contact will change according to your relationship with them.
Momoka Azuka: The Character creator is the next update? Please tell me this will release after 14/2/2016 otherwise I may miss my own wedding.
Michael: No - we're using some of the technology to put faces to mission givers and mechanics - the Commander Creator will come later in the season.
Ziljan: Will these be persistent NPCs for a given faction? Or will we see a new face each time we interact? Also, is this just when docked at stations or also for NPC pilots?
Michael: They are persistent for each minor faction, although there will be a different character for each of the ranks within the minor faction. These are for the station based mission givers for now.
Marc_Hicks: You mentioned in your last Dev Update how you want the BGS to be more "visible" to players. Do you envisage the personalities as being part of the way of doing that? As an example, a system in famine might have a talking head clearly underfed, or an outbreak state having a talking head wearing a mask or visibly diseased.
Michael: Yes, we want the minor faction contacts to provide more information about states and changes relating to that minor faction.
Marc_Hicks: In Elite II: Frontier, sometimes when you took or completed certain missions, you'd have bounty hunters or assassins sent by an opponent to kill you for taking missions with the wrong people. Any chance we will see this kind of thing in upcoming updates?
Michael: This already happens in game, but is something we're likely to use more of down the line.
Kris: The way i read it will it be 1 NPC for Neutral, 1 for Friendly, and 1 for Allied status?
Michael: It'll be a bit more granular than that, but we're still working on the implementation.
https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/412l2p/michael_brookes_answers_some_questions_about/