So I arrived by teleporter to my oldest base, which is built on a ridge that overlooks a crashed starship site.

My base has two landing pads, and when I arrived, I found an NPC standing alone on the empty one, walking around and looking at his tablet, and generally acting as though he was inspecting an invisible starship that only he could see.

That's odd, I thought, his starship must be parked there but didn't load or something. So I went over and spoke to him, because I was curious, and thought maybe I could see what sort of ship it was if I inquired about buying it.

Well, the NPC did behave like a normal NPC pilot, able to buy and sell items, and able to negotiate on a price for his starship. But when I chose that option, the ship I was presented with was damaged to hell. All tech non-functional, many damaged slots, the works. It was as though the NPC were trying to sell me a crashed ship.

I exited out of the conversation, and I turned and caught sight of the crashed ship that my base overlooks, and realized — this guy is trying to sell me THAT crashed ship, right there. He is standing on an empty landing pad, acting exactly as though he landed there in a working starship, but instead he's become associated to the damaged one sitting by the distress beacon about 100u away.

After a few minutes, the NPC disappeared from the landing pad, and then the damaged ship at the nearby crash site (which had no working engines) rose into the air and flew away.