RNG Hurts: High Time, High Risk, Low Reward

Since the server went down for maintenance for an hour during a mission I have already spent 2 hours on, with about 1.5 of those hours flying in circles at the same...view...I figured I wanted to bring up something for discussion.

Myself as a player, I prefer playing the game with combat being a major component for me. In fact, I spend most of my time on combat and not trade routes. I am sure there are thousands of others who are the same just as there are thousands of others who are the opposite.

However, I seem to notice a bit of a complication.

U.S.S. RNG is seriously hurting the combat type players.

The basic idea is simple. I want to do combat in the game, so when a mission to hunt down 6 pirates in "x" sector is given, I gladly choose it, because I get to have some combat. This mission gives me 6 hours to complete it. It sends me to an anarchy system with no planets, no stations, no nav point, no mining areas (worst systems for these mission types). Also turns out that finding a pirate and interdicting it and killing it "never gives credit", 80% of the U.S.S. you find are cargo only, then out of the 20% that have pirate ships, only 10% or less count as credit toward your mission type.

Then you run into Mr. Fun Bags trying to get your to abandon the mission who always resets the kill count (this is a bug I assume, and has nothing to do with my point).

In any case, I am noticing huge discrepancies between the "opportunities" for players in the game. I could have grabbed a simple trade mission ran it real quick and been done in 30 minutes no problem for a higher payout.

This almost makes it seem like TRADER players have Low Time Investment, Low Risk, High Rewards while COMBAT players have High Time Investment, High Risk, Low Rewards.

It does not balance out to make sense.

All in all, I think the RNG of the U.S.S. system is completely screwed up and is too random. When you have a specific mission it needs to increase your chances dramatically. Furthermore, interdicted pirates should count, and the bug for the count reset should be fixed.

Additionally, the mission should state that if it wants "specific pirates" or not. I believe part of the reason half the pirates I kill do not count is because they are not from "x" faction and thus they are not who the mission wants me to kill, but I can only guess this because there is nothing ever indicating this to be true.

------

Overall I want to know how the TRADER focused players feel as well as people who do both and those who are COMBAT focused like me. For now I shall wait an hour for maintenance to end so I can try and find 1 more freaking pirate who falls under some invisible criteria in an RNG U.S.S. that hopefully has a ship to shoot down instead of more random cargo useless to me. HAPPY HUNTING!
 
While I agree that USS right now need work, and all of your other points are valid, trading is not always "low risk".

There's no cargo insurance. If you have a type-6 full of metal, and you crash it/get blown up, all that cargo is up in smoke. For a type-6 full of gold/other high value cargo, that can be over a million credits, which if you're in a type-6 starting out, may be your entire bankroll. Now you're stuck with an empty type-6 an no money to trade with, and you have to downgrade to a Cobra/Adder and lose 10% of your ship value (which is over 100k in a type-6 that's worth well over a million with upgraded cargo racks) to get money to start trading again. It can be very high risk, especially after you jump up to your next ship level.
 
You're spot on on all accounts but one, OP. Anything that wants to scan you with a message like "What sweets do you carry?" counts as a pirate. Any wanted target that isn't after cargo, doesn't.

We can only hope they'll fix the USS bullcrap and the counter resets. Throwing some more risk in for traders, or some more reward in for fighters, would also be nice.
 
At the risk of pointing out the obvious why not just go to the nav beacon and flip bounties while you wait for the pirates to come to you. I usually take home 150k credits on average doing it that way + the mission reward.
 
While I agree that USS right now need work, and all of your other points are valid, trading is not always "low risk".

The only risk for traders is to crash their ships when docking at stations. Interdictions are generally easy to get away from, and there's no other danger in supercruise, aside from falling asleep and flying into a star I suppose.

At the risk of pointing out the obvious why not just go to the nav beacon and flip bounties while you wait for the pirates to come to you. I usually take home 150k credits on average doing it that way + the mission reward.

Because, as the OP pointed out, there are systems which are devoid of Nav beacons.
 
i noticed that you dont need to actually "fly" around in supercruise to find the USSs. just throttle down to the minimum of 30km/s i think and wait for 30 seconds or so....
USSs will popup so close to you, you can directly enter them most of the time.
 
You're spot on on all accounts but one, OP. Anything that wants to scan you with a message like "What sweets do you carry?" counts as a pirate. Any wanted target that isn't after cargo, doesn't.

We can only hope they'll fix the USS bullcrap and the counter resets. Throwing some more risk in for traders, or some more reward in for fighters, would also be nice.
actually no. interdicted pirates don't count as pirates for missions, even if they give the scanning message...
 
RNG, what does this mean?

I agree the USS hunting is one of the more tedious aspects of the game.

Also, just because someone is wanted does not mean they are a pirate. So going around interdicting NPCs that are wanted does not mean you are to expect your pirate kills to go up.
 
Last edited:
I was playing with the OP at the time and listening to him over VOIP...and became curious. He had already been in system for an hour or so...so I picked up 3 different find item in USS missions that were at USS's. Lo and behold I wound up in the same system for one of those that he did. I picked up my first item on my second USS...one that was unrelated to him, as he had already gone down a USS made for him.

I picked up my next item just as quickly in the next USS...travel time and hunt took no more than 15 minutes. I snuck them into the system port received my payment, turned in another mission I had done on the way out and ran to another system to turn in another mission i had finished on my way back in. In less than an hour, I did two USS missions, and two fetch missions. All the while he was frustratingly jumping down rabbit holes continuously finding blown up ships that had puked their cargo.

I have to agree with the OP. The RNG is messed up for the missions that he took. My return was better and I wasn't nearly as frustrated doing them.

- - - - - Additional Content Posted / Auto Merge - - - - -

Hmm... What ship do you have? I only started taking on these combat missions once I got my Cobra :D

He's running a well padded Viper.
 
Back
Top Bottom