General The 6 year old problem with rescues – still not fixed

[Phill P]

A quick introduction. I am the Coordinator of a Rescue Squad, the Post Disaster Evacuation Service (PDES). We are also part of the MODE Alliance that has come together to fight the war. The MODE Alliance includes Marauders Vanguard, Operation Ida, Hutton Orbital, Steel Wolves and many other groups. The MODE Alliance also coordinates with AXI on our respective operations. And we are all having the same problem with rescues that has existed since rescues began almost 6 years ago.

I have created a issue for this on the Issue Tracker. Please consider voting even if the issue does not affect you personally, in the interest of having all activities recognised and treated fairly and equally.

Link to Issue on Issue Tracker

The Mission and Passenger Boards for Rescues are a copy and paste of regular mission and passenger boards, with some of the descriptions changed but no further thought given to how it works. It doesn’t work and hasn’t for almost 6 years.

No thought has been given to what makes rescues different. They're not just "another type of hauling except with people." No other operation involves taking up to 20 of the same type of mission a few jumps away then coming back for more with the same level of intensity and speed as rescues. There may be other activities where this happens to an extent but never to the extent it does with rescues and never all the time. This results in frequently running out of missions, leaving rescuers waiting for the boards to refresh.

Saying “do something else while you wait”, as some people have, is not an acceptable response. That would not be said to AX pilots if CZs in Control systems stopped producing Thargoid encounters for twenty minutes every half an hour, it would be fixed.

Before the war machine arrived, in the previously hand placed invasions, it was particularly bad as the rescue ship was next door to the burning station in the same system. A large ship could clear the Passenger Board in 4 trips and have to wait twenty minutes for the board to refresh. Taking missions sooner than this, as they appeared, would simply clear the board again and further delay replenishment.

When the war started with missions for larger amounts of people and the longer distances to the rescue ships the problem was not fixed either, only hidden by taking fewer missions with the corresponding increase in delivery time, but we can see it was never fixed from the way the missions have gone back to smaller amounts of people since Update 16 and once more the boards are being cleared out.

There is no point in Pilots being in the same instance in Open or a PG. They will only take jobs from each other and clear the board even quicker. Therefore winging up or even working together is impossible.

We are a rescue squad who have to work in solo to avoid taking work from each other and running out of it even faster than we already do. This is ridiculous in a game that is supposed to be supporting cooperative play.

When the CMs were hinting in Frameshift Live about doing wing missions to clear systems it further rubbed salt into the wound and highlighted rescues as an activity with no wing missions, unlike deliveries and AX. Once again rescues were marginalised and ignored.

Either increase the refresh rate on rescue missions or otherwise ensure there are always missions so that rescues are not continually disadvantaged by periods of inactivity and being unable to work in a wing, handicaps that other activities do not have. It’s a problem that has existed since the first attacked station in December 2017 (3303 in game) and has never once been considered, acknowledged or addressed. I think it's past time it was.

 

[V'larr]

I have to wonder if this could be addressed by making it possible to browse mission boards remotely - because my first thought here is, "why not just browse more stations for missions instead of trying to stack 20 at a single place?"

Does that say something about how 'individually rewarding' missions are, just in general?

(p.s. Has it really been SIX YEARS since rescue missions got added? I still feel like the additions of passengers, as a whole, was just around the last corner...)

 

[Phill P]

I have to wonder if this could be addressed by making it possible to browse mission boards remotely - because my first thought here is, "why not just browse more stations for missions instead of trying to stack 20 at a single place?"

Browsing boards remotely won't solve the problem of boards running out. Other activities don't need players picking up from multiple places to make up for a lack of consistent work in one place. Why should one activity be disadvantaged by having to do more work just to start its job than any other?

You wouldn't tell AX "Oh do the CZs run out of Thargoids ten minutes in? Never mind just go to another CZ or jump to another system". You'd quit giving them the runaround and fix it.

Does that say something about how 'individually rewarding' missions are, just in general?

No, it says how fast the board runs out because of how rescues work in game.

(p.s. Has it really been SIX YEARS since rescue missions got added? I still feel like the additions of passengers, as a whole, was just around the last corner...)

That's why this is so disappointing. It's a brave move dumping the war machine on a game in any case but after 8 years in I appreciate it for that. Nobody can say we weren't given something new and different, whether they like it or not. It's a gutsy move and I like it.

The war has been going nowhere for years. Now it might go somewhere. If not to a resolution then to the next stage of whatever this is. All good.

Ok so I'd like to see a bit more high concept science fantasy war and a few less tired old WW2 tropes about beachheads and supply lines re enacted in space, but I like more about it than I don't, my general rule for any game.

So it just lets the whole idea down when it's the ideal opportunity for players from all corners of the game to engage in a massive cooperative venture and then some activities are handicapped like this so neither they, nor the idea, can ever reach their potential to be something genuinely new. It's just a twist on what we know with the same old problems.

 

[V'larr]

I'd opine that various other activities do demand either checking multiple locations or else lots of station refreshes to be carried out with a full mission stack - including those invested in CZs, not just for AX.

What I'm really questioning with mission rewards, is why 'full stacking' has become the goal line for any 'reasonable measure of progress', and why individual missions do not feel adequately worth investing time into.

No dispute with the rest of what you're saying though

 

[[VR] Bulbulunufus]

Lets talk about who is talking here - PDES are like the fuel rats/hull seals of burning stations. They're the domain experts. They're working with Op Ida - who are well known to similarly vanguard emergency relief freight. Together with the other big names in MODE they've formed, from the start, one of the two main prongs of humanity's defence, no less effective than AXI, the other prong. This issue is like superman having to fill out a form for flight level clearance before saving the world .

 

[Phill P]

I'd opine that various other activities do demand either checking multiple locations

No they don't because it isn't necessary or even efficient to get a full mission stack for AX or Delivery work. With AX you have to go and kill Thargoids then return and hand in the mission, or source and return for Deliveries then hand in the mission. Especially when stacked they take far more time than Rescues where you simply hand missions in and return for more. You're not taking that into account and trying to compare them as if they were like for like, so it's another false equivalence.

What I'm really questioning with mission rewards, is why 'full stacking' has become the goal line for any 'reasonable measure of progress', and why individual missions do not feel adequately worth investing time into.

Rescues have always been about taking as many as possible as fast as possible. It's not a recent development, it hasn't "become" like that, it's always been that way. Still, if they want to change it so taking one mission for ten passengers is suddenly massively productive that's fine by me

Not very practical or realistic though.

I don't think you're really grasping what makes rescues different to other activities otherwise you wouldn't be making such inappropriate comparisons, because you can only do that by ignoring the very real reasons why they are different. Which isn't helpful. As I said, they are not just another type of hauling except with people. You cannot simply equate them to Deliveries or AX in that way. They are a different operation in practice.

And again this comes across as saying don't bother fixing it because it's not really a problem.

 

[Phill P]

Lets talk about who is talking here - PDES are like the fuel rats/hull seals of burning stations. They're the domain experts. They're working with Op Ida - who are well known to similarly vanguard emergency relief freight. Together with the other big names in MODE they've formed, from the start, one of the two main prongs of humanity's defence, no less effective than AXI, the other prong. This issue is like superman having to fill out a form for flight level clearance before saving the world .

Tell me about it. We don't mind the work, we just want it to be consistent and to have fairness and parity with other activities. Apparently that's too much to ask so we get these false comparisons and brush offs as if we had nothing better to do than invent problems.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Question: if it's impractical to make the mission servers refresh faster, would including larger passenger missions also work, so that rather than taking 10x10 passengers you could take 2x50 passengers? Or is there a reason I'm not thinking of that the individual missions need to be kept small, so that picking up a full 20-mission stack (or a significant portion of that) is still needed?

(It sounds like wing missions of 1x500 passengers would also be welcome, though that would definitely be new for passenger missions as it'd need some sort of depot mechanism adding; but that might also be useful for allowing larger normal passenger missions, of course)

 

[Factabulous]

If fdev were to make these missions more frequent they would also have to rebalance the rewards as these are already a meta for superpower ranking (and don't the pax ones also have good material rewards? I know the VIP ones do). You'd need to nerf them to make them only useful for RP, as an infinite fountain of rewards would be pretty OP.

I can see why fdev leave them as they are. At least in this phase in the war there are more places that need rescues, better than previous times when there were far less locations active.

 

[Shadowsnog]

Question: if it's impractical to make the mission servers refresh faster, would including larger passenger missions also work, so that rather than taking 10x10 passengers you could take 2x50 passengers? Or is there a reason I'm not thinking of that the individual missions need to be kept small, so that picking up a full 20-mission stack (or a significant portion of that) is still needed?

(It sounds like wing missions of 1x500 passengers would also be welcome, though that would definitely be new for passenger missions as it'd need some sort of depot mechanism adding; but that might also be useful for allowing larger normal passenger missions, of course)

passengers in a single mission can vary from very few to almost hundred. i evac in python and its not uncommon to fit only two missions into 120+ passenger ship...

having missions for large amounts of passengers could offer some kind of fix(?)
mission for hundreds of passengers that you would evac in multiple runs. hopefuly the rewards would match such effort. i certainly wouldnt mind securing a mission that would reward me 50 modified firmware or biotech conductors after an hour

 

[Phill P]

Question: if it's impractical to make the mission servers refresh faster, would including larger passenger missions also work, so that rather than taking 10x10 passengers you could take 2x50 passengers? Or is there a reason I'm not thinking of that the individual missions need to be kept small, so that picking up a full 20-mission stack (or a significant portion of that) is still needed?

They were that way when the war machine came here. Up until Update 16 there were missions for larger amounts, up to 80. As I said in the OP this merely masked the refresh problem. But it did stop the board running out faster. I don't know why they changed it for U16.

(It sounds like wing missions of 1x500 passengers would also be welcome, though that would definitely be new for passenger missions as it'd need some sort of depot mechanism adding; but that might also be useful for allowing larger normal passenger missions, of course)

The mechanics are already there for deliveries.

 

[Shadowsnog]

They were that way when the war machine came here. Up until Update 16

yea i noticed that the general group evac got changed to look more like the luxury passenger transport. are all missions now like that in terms of passengers (and rewards)? i was getting 2-10 passengers every mission with rewards ranging, lets say in mats, from grade 1 to grade 5... in a group evac.
also not seeing how many passengers there are until i accept the mission seems kinda weird. theres just some bozos name...

 

[Phill P]

If fdev were to make these missions more frequent they would also have to rebalance the rewards as these are already a meta for superpower ranking

This reward has always been blown out of proportion and only applies to rep.

Back when you could take missions to a rescue ship half a light second away in the same system you could stack missions for Fed or Imp aligned factions - if they existed, which was not a given - but even then for Imp rank courier missions out of Ngalinn were faster and didn't run out every twenty minutes.

Then too, burning stations rarely happened often enough for it to be regularly taken advantage of, as you noted yourself. Months could go by without any attacks and often did.

Even then it's a one time thing. Once you have the rank that's it, end of usefulness. A one time niche use does not justify a disproportionate nerf based on an exaggeration of that one time use.

It's never been the automatic fast magic ticket to the Vette or Cutter that it's been touted as. It was relatively fast compared to most things but no more than that. The circumstances had to be right for it to happen, it still took a lot of work, that work ran out periodically and even if you earned the rank you still had to go elsewhere to do the actual ranking missions.

Returning to the present and most war systems today are predominantly Independent. Coupled with the longer distances to deliver it's even less of a fast track than it was before. And still relies on enough Fed or Imp factions in system to work with any speed at all. Our current Alert target has 1 Fed and 4 Indy factions. Nobody's building rank fast there. Fed and Imp factions in large amounts are the exception in the warzone. Of the 32 Alerts this week only 8 have Fed factions and then only a couple with the rest being Indy.

But yes, we still get people who think "passengers = magic ranking exploit", especially Fed rank, because they don't understand this. People who have heard that passengers get you superpower rank and are just repeating it but haven't checked the in game reality for themselves.

It's our version of "clean drives help with fuel scooping."

(and don't the pax ones also have good material rewards? I know the VIP ones do). You'd need to nerf them to make them only useful for RP,

No because they are a war activity, they affect war progress, they are not just RP. RP has nothing to do with this, unless you count the fact that as we keep running out of work it makes no sense there either.

as an infinite fountain of rewards would be pretty OP.

The "infinite fountain of rewards" is another exaggeration. The mats are no different from the mats you would get at any station after allying with every faction there. Again, it is only because you do more rescue missions at once than any other type of mission that it gives this exaggerated impression. And again in practice it's not such the massive thing it seems in theory.

When the war machine arrived it changed passenger missions to larger amounts of people and also disconnected them from faction rep so anyone could take them. The rewards were good but also took time to build up because fewer missions were being taken over longer distances than before.

With the drop to lots of smaller missions in U16 they still take time to build up. The missions are back to paying out depending on your status with the faction so you don't get great mats right away. You have to get allied with all the factions first, just like any other station, and you still don't get great mats with every mission then. You can't even touch the VIP missions without getting the rep with that faction first and they are not that frequent, certainly not frequent enough to stack, and if they were it would be for small amounts in total since VIP cabins have the smallest capacity. They are not efficient for war progress, which is the primary reason for doing rescues. To actually achieve progress with them. Not for rep or mats.

Regardless, those material rewards could be changed if people thought they were excessive (they're not) and it's no justification for empty mission boards.

For war progress the value of rescues does not need changing, it's fine where it is. We just need consistent work as AX and Deliveries have. It still takes a ton of them to clear a system.

I can see why fdev leave them as they are. At least in this phase in the war there are more places that need rescues, better than previous times when there were far less locations active.

Nothing justifies starving an activity of jobs for prolonged periods of time while other activities have consistent work. Despite the repeated attempts to make it about anything other than the actual problem, it's still the actual problem.

 

[Danieros]

I really liked the bulk passengers more, just a quick auto fill of 2-3 missions (even if not optimal). Accepting so many passenger missions now feels like it manages to be slower than filling up a ship with powerplay materials...

Wing passenger rescue missions could potentially fix this issue of the mission board running dry if they can't just make the mission generation faster. But I believe these wing missions would have to be only for the thargoid war, so they don't get copy pasted back to the non-rescue passengers. On normal mission boards wing missions can be annoying due to how they dillute the mission pool - for example when looking for a single kill pirate/pirate-lord mission for a specific system... but instead getting 10 wing ones and none solo.

Ideally it feels that there should just be an emergency lounge which you could fill your entire ship in a single click.

 

[Phill P]

I really liked the bulk passengers more, just a quick auto fill of 2-3 missions (even if not optimal). Accepting so many passenger missions now feels like it manages to be slower than filling up a ship with powerplay materials...

Not far off I tend to switch to the gamepad to fill the bays because doing it on the Hotas is RSI waiting to happen.

Wing passenger rescue missions could potentially fix this issue of the mission board running dry if they can't just make the mission generation faster. But I believe these wing missions would have to be only for the thargoid war, so they don't get copy pasted back to the non-rescue passengers.

Yes, agreed. That said, a big war should not be needed to create a situation where a station gets attacked and there are refugees to rescue, We've already seen this doesn't have to be the case with the NMLA attacks and we're supposed to be in a future dystopia with corporations fighting each other all the time, so with a bit of imagination all kinds of scenarios could be created.

Ideally it feels that there should just be an emergency lounge which you could fill your entire ship in a single click.

Nice as that would be even I think that would be too fast. But instead of having to select autofill each time they could make it a toggle so that when you selected a mission it would autofill without you having to tell it each time. People always think of big changes being necessary to fix problems and fdev like many game companies have frequently taken the "sledgehammer to crack a nut" approach to problem solving (example, the FSS), but a lot of the time the small QoL fixes like that can go a long way towards building player goodwill, often more than new content.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

You cleared the board? Job well done. You rescued the people in distress. I dont see what the problem is.

 

[Phill P]

You cleared the board? Job well done. You rescued the people in distress. I dont see what the problem is.

The problem is we haven't. It doesn't clear the system, the board just keeps running out of missions. So in order to continue to clear the system we have to wait for it to refresh where others do not. This holds us up.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

The problem is we haven't. It doesn't clear the system, the board just keeps running out of missions. So in order to continue to clear the system we have to wait for it to refresh where others do not. This holds us up.

Yes, that's how it is. The board refreshes at some point. Do other players also see this as a problem? Has been this way since ED released. If you find other players than your particular group who also have a problem with this it would make a much better case.

 

[Phill P]

Yes, that's how it is. The board refreshes at some point. Do other players also see this as a problem? Has been this way since ED released. If you find other players than your particular group who also have a problem with this it would make a much better case.

Read the first paragraph of the OP. All the groups we are working with and all the ones we are not working with directly but coordinating with, like AXI, we are all having this problem. That's at least 70% of the people fighting this war.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

Read the first paragraph of the OP. All the groups we are working with and all the ones we are not working with directly but coordinating with, like AXI, we are all having this problem. That's at least 70% of the people fighting this war.

The thing is there doesn't seem to be a problem. Why is running out of missions a problem? We all run out of missions, then we take other missions.