I'm all for giving the crew and side character a life of their own so to speak. Walking around and talking with each other and doing things without the PC initiating it. ME3 did ok with that and DAI did good with dialog between companions and NPCs not so much on the moving around part though. Don't have to be big things but just so the PC isn't the center of everything and give a bit of life to crew and NPCs.
A part of Mass Effect 3 that I really liked was how the crew and your squad would move around and talk to each other on the ship after missions. I felt like this really helped make the ship feel more alive. I hope this returns in Andromeda. Similar things that they could add to also help with this is to bring the meetings back from Mass Effect 1 and maybe to have a character that likes to gossip about other characters, like Kasumi.
,.-~*´¨¯¨`*·~-.¸-(_MEA_)-,.-~*´¨¯¨`*·~-.¸
To be fair, except for some members of your Fire Team, the ship's crew were glued to their positions. There were bits of background / crew conversations that helped with this illusion but insufficient, imo.
If the game design allows for a "living" ship, then off duty personnel must be seen moving around.
Example: 1. In the mess hall, crews would be seen in different tables and walk around. 2. Same in the gym area. 3. No frequent recycling of same background conversations. 4. Crew dialogue reflecting current state of events and recent quest(s).
Still, how many here believe we will spend a lot of time in the ship? Put another way. Will the Capital interrupt our decision to mope around in the ship via an urgent order ? (ie: a game mechanic to move the game along..)
I imagine to a certain extent, the liveliness of areas is dependent on how long we're expected to stand around in the given areas. While recycling of NPC-NPC conversations should be tolerated since we should be more worried about playing the game than analyzing every square-meter, i do think they can change over the commentary to incooperate recent events. Redundancy is common in normal conversations but the change in dialog would be a nice bit of detail they can throw in.