I have just spent 2 hours trying to find the location of an assassination target. I have every other kind of uss except the guy telling me where he is. This is not acceptable. Most people dont have that amount of time to play and having the whole play session wasted will just chase people away.....and yeah I was in the right system and no....I still haven't found the informant.
USS mechanic is ridiculous
- Thread starter Shads
- Start date
Yep, kind of agree with you. The game seems to be centered around having many hours of time. Those USS's can be elusive.
They are random. Just cut engines. Sit at 30 and wait. But sometimes you have to wait, quite a while. I have abandoned some for lack of time.
Amen, the randomness is not only bad gameplay, its non-sensical from a universe standpoint -
You're just going to....run into your target?
OK.
The USS's really really REALLY need work. There needs to be distress signals, sensor arrays for detecting weapons fire, or debris, or flipping wedding barges (what is with that?!!). For the assassination missions of a pirate for example, you could have distress signals, if you get there in time you can catch the pirate before it kills its prey or you could find wreckage and a frame shift wake that would need scanning. Or you could find survivors of the pirate attack that would say which faction the pirate was with, you could then stake out that factions space station (if it has one). Hopefully in future versions you might be able to track them to hidden pirate bases in asteroid fields.... Just not random USS's please...
I usually find the target within 30 minutes at the most, but the USS system is still terrible. It feels very placeholder and I hope it is.
It's more than just the USS mechanic that's at fault. It's the missions themselves.
Missions are repetitive with too little variety, shallow and often overly simplistic, they make no attempt to scale, they aren't matched to ship/rep/ranking and they aren't worth the time after a day into the game.
Missions are repetitive with too little variety, shallow and often overly simplistic, they make no attempt to scale, they aren't matched to ship/rep/ranking and they aren't worth the time after a day into the game.
USS are garbage. Espicially for missions that are critical to advance
They should of made a mission, where you accept. It puts a new 100% guarantee USS in the system, you warp in and their is a derelict station (normal station / no dock) with 5 bandits. Oh, and when you warp to the 100% guarantee USS? It becomes visible for other players ( good for PVP and PVE oppurtunities)
They should of made a mission, where you accept. It puts a new 100% guarantee USS in the system, you warp in and their is a derelict station (normal station / no dock) with 5 bandits. Oh, and when you warp to the 100% guarantee USS? It becomes visible for other players ( good for PVP and PVE oppurtunities)
I'm sure missions will get a revamp in a future update, but for now I agree that using USS as a fundamental part of missions is a placeholder that needs replacing. I enjoy dropping into USS when I'm just pootling about, and in my first few days made a fair bit of cash from them, but missions need a more believable mechanism.
The devs mentioned the mission system is in for a major update. Hopefully this will also help with the blumbering around space playing USS roulette.
First time I saw a wedding barge I thought "hey that's cool". Second time it was "oh again? Ok...". Since then I can't put them behind me and get back into supercruise fast enough. Them and the funeral ones and the mineral magpies/tech aquisition/etc ones, in fact ANY T9 in a USS are just pains.
While I'm whining about USS's, a few LESS of the alternate mission ending thing would be nice too. It's a nice idea but it should be rare, not happen EVERY TIME! If I take 6 missions I -know- the first 6 USS's are just gonna waste my time. And if they really want me to give up all that reputation and "give up my attempt to kill pirate" they need to offer me a LOT more than the original mission.. like at least 50% more. The way they are now is just a pain in the rear.
While I'm whining about USS's, a few LESS of the alternate mission ending thing would be nice too. It's a nice idea but it should be rare, not happen EVERY TIME! If I take 6 missions I -know- the first 6 USS's are just gonna waste my time. And if they really want me to give up all that reputation and "give up my attempt to kill pirate" they need to offer me a LOT more than the original mission.. like at least 50% more. The way they are now is just a pain in the rear.
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Right, did the devs think multi-stage missions was some kind of antitode to repitiveness? It just makes the scenarios that much more ridiculous and tedious...(I randomly run into the one guy who just escaped from the very pirate I'm looking for and can't wait to tell me about it??)
Lets hope it was just proof of concept mechanical stuff for something more sensible.
Yeah, agreed. I don't usually have any issue doing Assassinations quickly, but as it stands it's still a really poor mechanic in a few different ways.
- When the only thing you need in a system is a new USS, waiting for one to spawn is time consuming and more importantly completely devoid of any real gameplay. It's even worse in sectors that are just a sun with empty space, if you happen to accidentally accept a mission awful enough to send you there. There should be a way to essentially 'ping' for USS signals, actively, so that you can start moving along to the next one without spending potentially minutes drifting through space with no activity.
- The idea that USS or other forms of random waiting are required for some missions is insane. There are a few ways to make that less terrible: Like was mentioned, adding a 100% guaranteed USS to a system if you've got an active mission that needs it, and/or adding some way to identify what a USS is going to be before dropping out of supercruise. For example, "combat readings" when it's some feds or bounty hunters and pirates, "high ship concentration" for trading convoys and wedding/funeral barges, and so on for mission-specific stuff like Black Boxes or Assassination Targets.
It's cool that they added a mechanic that's supposed to randomly give you something to do while flying between stations or whatever else, but it's hurt badly by the number of USS events that are completely useless and the number of missions that rely on finding a specific USS. There needs to be at least some major change to this system so that it isn't just wandering around empty space getting disappointed a lot.
Also, for assassination targets specifically, it would be nice if there were a better way to seek them out by other more "realistic" means. I'd love to see them flying around real space and able to be Interdicted, it would feel much more satisfyingly like hunting them down, and it also wouldn't hurt to have things like Pirate Lord targets spawning at nav or resource beacons or General targets spawning in warzones.
- When the only thing you need in a system is a new USS, waiting for one to spawn is time consuming and more importantly completely devoid of any real gameplay. It's even worse in sectors that are just a sun with empty space, if you happen to accidentally accept a mission awful enough to send you there. There should be a way to essentially 'ping' for USS signals, actively, so that you can start moving along to the next one without spending potentially minutes drifting through space with no activity.
- The idea that USS or other forms of random waiting are required for some missions is insane. There are a few ways to make that less terrible: Like was mentioned, adding a 100% guaranteed USS to a system if you've got an active mission that needs it, and/or adding some way to identify what a USS is going to be before dropping out of supercruise. For example, "combat readings" when it's some feds or bounty hunters and pirates, "high ship concentration" for trading convoys and wedding/funeral barges, and so on for mission-specific stuff like Black Boxes or Assassination Targets.
It's cool that they added a mechanic that's supposed to randomly give you something to do while flying between stations or whatever else, but it's hurt badly by the number of USS events that are completely useless and the number of missions that rely on finding a specific USS. There needs to be at least some major change to this system so that it isn't just wandering around empty space getting disappointed a lot.
Also, for assassination targets specifically, it would be nice if there were a better way to seek them out by other more "realistic" means. I'd love to see them flying around real space and able to be Interdicted, it would feel much more satisfyingly like hunting them down, and it also wouldn't hurt to have things like Pirate Lord targets spawning at nav or resource beacons or General targets spawning in warzones.
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