I had to seriously rethink my mission outing strategy when I had something like 4 out of 10 active missions (cargo delivery and salvage) turn into an interdiction festival. I think that was one of the times I was literally shaking as I made it back to turn in the missions I had already completed.
Any mission can turn into a serious problem, jeopardizing all of your open missions; the more you have open, the more likely a complication will come up.
There was a theory posited some time ago in terms of a change in the game, that NPC pirates, in certain instances, could be ramped up, or down, to match your combat rating. Although this may not apply in the case of canned missions and the NPC interdictions that come with many of them now.
I think I had suggested earlier in this thread that I had reverted to flying one bulk mission at a time in the Python. The idea being to avoid the very 4 out of 10 interdicted missions,
scenario from Hell, that you allude to. But then I thought, what the Hell, the interdictions are not all that bad in the Python, for the most part, so I have started taking on 3-4 bulk passenger missions at a time now, and let the chips fall where they may.
And speaking of my beloved Python, albeit in need of a
paid-for paint job for better screenshots, I was farting around in Photoshop Elements™ last night, and for the first time, I tried making composite images of screenshots from the game:
Elite-D 2.2 Python Panoramic Composite - Flickr static - (1800x703 - 454kb)
I'm not about to win a
Cordon Bleu award for that piccie, but it has opened up the avenue of new possibilities in the game. I'm an avid amateur photographer at heart and I cut my teeth, back in the day, the mid to late 60's, using my Dad's
Aires 35IIIC, a film camera that required the use of an external light meter. Can you imagine telling the
selfie-popping smart-phone crowd that they have to switch to using something like the Aires.
I also find that I get a certain adrenalin rush and a ramped up level of excitement with the chained-interdictions in particular. They are maybe 1-in-5 and they're not a bug, they're hard-coded and more often that not, they happen when your destination is a planet settlement. And the biggest annoyance isn't so much any real threat from the low-level interdictions that I'm personally subject to, but it's the delayed delivery of them, if the servers are too busy, and the subsequent
Yanked-Back in Space effect.
One night it seemed like I would never get close enough to a planet to even attempt to enter Orbital Cruise. It was like that cinematic effect you see in some dreams, typically a horror movie, where a hallway keeps stretching and getting longer and longer, so you can never reach the door at the end. And of course over here in the colonies, north of the 49th parallel, that would be the door into summer that the cat is always looking for now -
Flickr static.
My one big complaint about the bulk-passenger mission, chained NPC interdictions is that they are not realistic, if you will. I'm flying these in the Python and whatever is interdicting me, I never bother to take the time to check, never even gets rounds on me. Any human pirate/griefer would tend to quit after 1 or 2 utterly failed attempts, but not so with the chained instances, you have to get into OC, or safely into the no-fire zone of a station or outpost, before the interdictions finally stop.
But hay, which is only for horses, it's not like I'm about to make a big deal about it. And at least in my case, I have much bigger fish to fry. I still need to get a better handle on flying my Conda out through the mail slot. I flew two mid-range tourist missions last night, netting me around 11-Mil in total,
Small Change but hay, I'll take it, and on the way out for both of those missions, I got chastised by the
Station Master for being kind of sloppy, but thankfully no fine.. just a slightly bruised pilot's ego..
