I do used to do it sporadically, now i do it regularly, just once though, but I do it i.e solo->open or vice versa.
Reason I do it is:
- In 2.3 mission generation was changed... where a faction may be offering 8 missions on the board, they had 20-odd generated in the background. If you accepted and abandoned missions you didn't want (for the associated rep hit), new missions would spawn in their place. This was, imo, a fair and reasonable system, with a fair cost associated with it (being loss of rep; agent getting annoyed at offering me missions and saying "No thanks, got something else?")
- In 2.4 FD changed it so
all of those missions (or something approximating that) would appear. This meant, depending on a system's faction count, you could have anywhere from 20-40 missions on the board. This was great, and I never needed to board flip, except when
this happened. Somewhat sadly, those missions are now constrained only to Tourism economies. It was the best state for missions
- Sadly, the change didn't stick. The volume of mission generation in 2.4 Live was too large, and so it was cut back to numbers more closely resembling. *unfortunately* this change also removed (whether intentionally or not; I never saw an announcement about this) the ability to churn missions like in 2.3. This meant the only option to get a decent set of missions to work on
- (not really a reason, but) I've made the suggestion elsewhere that agents should offer mission categories, and then you get offered a randomly generated mission (or maybe, a set of three options). If you don't like it (destination, content, rewards, whatever), you can request a new one (or set), but it costs you a minor rep hit. This would fix a lot of issues with the mission boards for everyone, mission stackers (on the surface it might seem like a nerf, but it's actually a boost), BGS runners, "casual" mission runners, rep grinders, you name it.
These days, a lot of mission boards for some reason, in my experience, spam salvage missions. So much salvage spam. Sometimes I'm in the mood and have the time for these (often I avoid them because the "fly to this body and wait an arbitrary length of time near it till the mission USS spawns" mechanic is pants), but if I'm just after anything else, and all there is are these, on both Open and Solo boards, well, I just hang the towel up and play a different game at that point.
Changing agents to offer mission categories, not missions, just makes sense. People stacking certain mission types are only going to use 10-15% of the missions generated of that type (that's why anomalous systems like Robigo etc. are so popular for it; their conditions generate a much smaller subset of certain missions due to the inability to create other missions of the same type. People running for a certain faction for the BGS again are only going to use a small subset (8-12 offered by a single faction) of the 60-odd missions generated... and even then they won't be taking all those missions. People who grind rep are in the same boat, and "casual" mission runners just looking to do a mission or two for anyone won't really care what's on the board, they just want there to be something, while more discerning people are going to have a trade vessel, and only want trade/hauling missions, or combat pilots will only want assasination/massacre missions.
Then when you introduce things like long-range missions to Colonia, people who want to stay in the bubble grumble when their mission boards only offer mostly missions over there; again, large volumes of wastage. Luxury Cabins are currently useless as you barely see any luxury passenger missions, and waste time and space fitting them when lower-class passengers require higher volumes. Wouldn't it be awesome if, when you fit a luxury cabin, you could just ask for a luxury passenger mission.
If the issue with the 2.4 change is that it couldn't keep up with the volume of mission generation requests, it's really important to remember that 80-90% of the generated missions will be wasted. Even if you didn't care and just accepted literally everything, we're capped at taking 20 missions, but a typical full board generates 60 missions, so that's 66% wasted computing time. Another source of waste is handing missions in... when you hand that cargo delivery mission in at your destination, you may not care about taking on any more missions, but we go through the rigmarole of generating a complete board of missions anyway, so that's 100% waste. That's a huge overhead, and would be fixed with a system allowing a player to ask for a procedurally generated mission. It puts a bit more thought behind stacking, but still allows it, and likewise gives everyone else exactly what they want.
