These could drop arts that permanently raise pop by 50 on a planet and mutagenic cartridges

Make them an elite sharable to ranks 400-9999
And reward 3 ppl

Why would anyone want an npc that increases population or drop mutagenic cartridges(1500 inv atk)?

The first is a stupid drop, and the latter is a rubbish boost that won't even add 1% chance to an invasion for anyone over rank 1k.

If you want this NPC and its rubbish drops making your pool of NPC's smaller, then make it Rank 50-200, that way it goes to those for whom at least one of the drops(mutagenic) might be useful.

Idk so much about either of them, but the population one made me think of something that could come as a reward from mission chain. We've been seeing various permanent planet boost artifacts such as the defense and attack ones from the legion missions, 35% and 25% I believe. From the alarri chain we had gotten the trade outpost intelligence artifacts which gave the permanent 4% boost to production, and then the raix chain that gave the one with the choice of bonus. Maybe something similar in the future from a mission chain that gives a small permanent population percentage boost?

I like perm. Pop increase
how about

an advanced biologist ability that adds pop
elites similar to Fab plants that drop mini pop upgrades and ctp
And a boss that drops % pop and invasion defense structures and screw it make the third drop Hull mods
Medals for population
Plagues .... your planets lose 1% pop and suffer
virus effects every day ...... establish a Max pop/Max resource gain to making cloning pods useful ....have to complete medical missions to get rid of the plague

Plus if you are infected and disable/hack/raid somebody you could infect them

Agreeeeeed. We need better NPCs in the pool...not rubbish as Kirk puts it lol

if pop regen scaled with cap, this might be useful. But as it is, pop cap isn't all that useful. If you are online to pod it, it doesn't matter much at all. Otherwise, it's just some energy.