Beyond 3.0 - C&P and Wing missions

[TheSisko]

Right now you can pick up 180 ton haulage missions, paying up to around 4.7M CR, with the right cargo and rep with factions.

The mind boggles at what some of the 800+ ton missions shown in the stream would pay for a solo-player doing a wing mission. I'm not complaining, anything but. You could be looking at mission payouts just north of 20M CR, basically a mini-CG for solo players.

 

[encrypted]

We'll see how it works in the beta but for myself...

... I am just hoping to see huge distance missions (for example 200-300LY delivery of 2400 tons of basic meds in emergency) for greater payout that I will enjoy doing on my own.

 

[Cageman]

Right now you can pick up 180 ton haulage missions, paying up to around 4.7M CR, with the right cargo and rep with factions.

The mind boggles at what some of the 800+ ton missions shown in the stream would pay for a solo-player doing a wing mission. I'm not complaining, anything but.

It will certanly make the use of any of the big ships fun again, regarding cargo delivery missions. A personal mini CG where you can make some good money.

 

[Kaocraft]

Hi there,

Can you give an example of something you can't do as a wing with single player missions already that you would like to be able to do?

Other than using the mission depot for carrying goods for the mission.

Thanks,
Dom

Every Planetary scan mission. Every black box retrieval mission. Every piracy/liberation mission. I want to take a "Retrieve 4 black boxes or whatever" mission with 4 of my wingmates. I want us to drop into the signal source as a group. I want each of us to be able to pick up one of the black boxes and have it count towards mission completion.

Same basic idea for any mission. It should be shareable with a wing, and if anyone in the wing completes any of the mission objectives, it should count towards the furthering of that mission. So if we are pirating a T9, one of us can fight off the escort ships, one of us can launch hatch breakers, and two of us can scoop up the cargo.

We want to be able to divide the labor as well as the spoils. You don't have to duplicate the rewards, just split them up and that will be fine, thanks.

Let's say I am by myself and I take on an assassination mission. I fly out to the location where the target is expected to be, drop into the signal source, and find that I am way out of my league and get blown up. There's still time on the clock, and one of my wingmates comes online. i would like to be able to share that mission with him right then and there, so that we can go back out to the site as a due and take on the target together. I would like it if, should he arrive at the site before me, the signal source would still generate for him. Etc.

And again, all of the planetary base assaults are better suited towards group play anyway. But if there's a series of data panels which all need to be scanned while a timer counts down, it needs to be possible for *any* of my wingmates to scan that panel and have it make a difference, and it needs to be possible for *any* of my wingmates to independently shoot down any of the required skimmers, etc, and have it count towards mission completion.

It doesn't need to be balanced for multiple people, though I am certainly happy with the idea of *also* crafting missions designed especially for groups. But really you just need to give us the ability to divide up the tasks, and the rewards, and we'll balance it ourselves automatically. If a task is too hard for me, I would like to have the *option* of bringing a friend (or stranger!) into the mission so that we can combine our abilities and take on something that individually we would not be able to do.

It's much more fun to invest your imagination in a make-believe world where there are simply challenges, dangers, and obstacles Out There; which can be tackled in any number of ways. It's exciting to try, and fail, as an individual; but then meet a friend or an ally and suddenly WE are able to overcome the obstacle. It is considerably less exciting to go to the bulletin board and click "sign up here for this group activity."

 

[SpaceScania]

It will certanly make the use of any of the big ships fun again, regarding cargo delivery missions. A personal mini CG where you can make some good money.

Yeah I hope there’s no catch here as I am a solo player. Bigger and better missions for the larger ships whether you call them wing missions or not, would be the biggest and most exciting part of the update for me for sure. Focusing just on haulage for a moment which was demoed. How could they make these too difficult for single player commenders to do really?

* They could maybe throw hordes of NPC pirates at you that only a wing could handle? This seems unlikely?
* Or they could make timers that make it almost impossible for a single player to complete the mission on time.

I really hope this isn’t part of the plan. What they demoed today looked amazing (other than the low test reward amounts).

 

[Kaocraft]

How would you balance that?

Lets say that I take a mission designed for a solo player to complete; kill a pirate lord as an example.

Then, just because I am in a wing, all my wingmates get the same mission... we all jump in and completely gank the pirate lord in 20 seconds, and everyone gets the reward?

No... Wing missions needs to be in its own category where the challenge is scaled based on the fact that it is a winged mission.

EDIT: This can be done currently btw, but without the other CMDRs getting any reward... for the other CMDRs, it should be a truly altruistic action, to help a fellow CMDR complete his single player mission.

No, it doesn't need to be scaled based on the fact that it is a winged mission. The rewards don't need to be duplicated but they should be shareable. At that point you're making a very simple risk/reward choice: do I try and solo this Pirate Lord or do I bring in a friend and get half the rewards?

And you're also wrong about wingmates being able to "altruistically" help you with a mission. The signal source won't spawn for them, number one. Second, if they kill the pirate without me landing a hit, it won't complete the mission. And even if I do land hits, but get blown up whilst my partner remains and finishes the fight, it won't complete the mission.

But you know what? I would even be OK with NO DUPLICATION and NO SHARING of mission rewards, so long as it were possible to share the OBJECTIVES of a mission with my wing. As in - we can pick up unique cargo items from a signal source and all turn it in, or eject it from our holds and exchange it with one another, and it would Just Work.

 

[JonSnowman]

Wing missions need to have some actual outcome on the system or they're just another piece of content you do a few times and then leave it.

EG: if wing missions require you to kill a massive thargoid mothership or somthing, then the thargoids should be kicked out of that system, etc.

 

[maboleth]

Every Planetary scan mission. Every black box retrieval mission. Every piracy/liberation mission. I want to take a "Retrieve 4 black boxes or whatever" mission with 4 of my wingmates. I want us to drop into the signal source as a group. I want each of us to be able to pick up one of the black boxes and have it count towards mission completion.

Same basic idea for any mission. It should be shareable with a wing, and if anyone in the wing completes any of the mission objectives, it should count towards the furthering of that mission. So if we are pirating a T9, one of us can fight off the escort ships, one of us can launch hatch breakers, and two of us can scoop up the cargo.

We want to be able to divide the labor as well as the spoils. You don't have to duplicate the rewards, just split them up and that will be fine, thanks.

Let's say I am by myself and I take on an assassination mission. I fly out to the location where the target is expected to be, drop into the signal source, and find that I am way out of my league and get blown up. There's still time on the clock, and one of my wingmates comes online. i would like to be able to share that mission with him right then and there, so that we can go back out to the site as a due and take on the target together. I would like it if, should he arrive at the site before me, the signal source would still generate for him. Etc.

And again, all of the planetary base assaults are better suited towards group play anyway. But if there's a series of data panels which all need to be scanned while a timer counts down, it needs to be possible for *any* of my wingmates to scan that panel and have it make a difference, and it needs to be possible for *any* of my wingmates to independently shoot down any of the required skimmers, etc, and have it count towards mission completion.

It doesn't need to be balanced for multiple people, though I am certainly happy with the idea of *also* crafting missions designed especially for groups. But really you just need to give us the ability to divide up the tasks, and the rewards, and we'll balance it ourselves automatically. If a task is too hard for me, I would like to have the *option* of bringing a friend (or stranger!) into the mission so that we can combine our abilities and take on something that individually we would not be able to do.

It's much more fun to invest your imagination in a make-believe world where there are simply challenges, dangers, and obstacles Out There; which can be tackled in any number of ways. It's exciting to try, and fail, as an individual; but then meet a friend or an ally and suddenly WE are able to overcome the obstacle. It is considerably less exciting to go to the bulletin board and click "sign up here for this group activity."

I do agree with this. I play a fantasy MMO RPG and you can share quests between group members, do overland content, do EVERYTHING together, no matter how small/big is. But there are also group-required (or recommended) places and dungeons with tougher enemies and bigger rewards. Or super hard raids/trials that require 12 people to start. Generally, any restrictions in the team play is usually counter-productive in the long run.

 

[Mengy]

Wing missions have been explicitly described as being acceptable and achievable by single players - so I can't really buy the balance thing. NPC missions are not hard anyway, so I can't buy it from that angle either. Finally, the rewards would stay the same, so again - no balance issues created by doing single player missions with your friends.

If you think I am asking for regular missions to reward everyone in a wing for completion, that is not the case. I'd like to see the UI/system to facilitate a wing working together.

I'm not sure making 3 cutter runs vs 1 to complete a mission is really anything special - why not simply allow all missions to be done in multiple runs (either done sequentially by one player or simultaneously by 2 or more) and pay the same?

I kind of have to agree with Bigity and Kaocraft on this.

The new wing mission mechanic looks pretty awesome to me, and powerful as a feature in the game. So why not utilize it fully? Really all cargo, massacre, and assassination missions could be turned into wing missions if you just varied the difficulty of the missions to allow solo players in weak ships to do some of them too. The flexible cargo mechanic of winged cargo missions is awesome, but honestly any ship in the game can do them just fine from a Hauler to a Cutter, so why not make every cargo mission wing compatible? Vary the total cargo of each mission so that some are low quantities but some can be up into the thousands, and if a solo player in an Adder wants to tackle it then let them!

The winged mission mechanic looks awesome, so much so that the old mission templates seem worthless now. Why not just replace them instead of adding even more specific mission types to the already limited space mission boards?

Frontier has a winner here with this, but I think they haven't fully realized just HOW awesome it is, and how it can completely replace the old templates instead of standing alongside them.

 

[SpaceScania]

The winged mission mechanic looks awesome, so much so that the old mission templates seem worthless now. Why not just replace them instead of adding even more specific mission types to the already limited space mission boards?

Frontier has a winner here with this, but I think they haven't fully realized just HOW awesome it is, and how it can completely replace the old templates instead of standing alongside them.

This makes sense. I can say for myself (as a solo player) if I have a choice between the old scrounge around and try to find 3 or 4 180T missions to the same place (or have to loop around to 4 different systems), or just take one juicy 800-5000t mission for doing haulage, I am ALWAYS going to take the latter. The old missions will cease to be of any value at all when I am in my Cutter. I’ll just ignore them completely.

 

[andrak]

Please do not just carbon copy the normal mission templates and apply x4 multiplier on them.

Hauling and escorting, having escorts fight off or interdict hostiles enroute before they pull the haul out of supercruise.

Steal a prototype from a federal convoy. Requiring hatch breakers and fighting off 10 corvettes etc

Use your imagination.

 

[Kaocraft]

I kind of have to agree with Bigity and Kaocraft on this.

The new wing mission mechanic looks pretty awesome to me, and powerful as a feature in the game. So why not utilize it fully? Really all cargo, massacre, and assassination missions could be turned into wing missions if you just varied the difficulty of the missions to allow solo players in weak ships to do some of them too. The flexible cargo mechanic of winged cargo missions is awesome, but honestly any ship in the game can do them just fine from a Hauler to a Cutter, so why not make every cargo mission wing compatible? Vary the total cargo of each mission so that some are low quantities but some can be up into the thousands, and if a solo player in an Adder wants to tackle it then let them!

The winged mission mechanic looks awesome, so much so that the old mission templates seem worthless now. Why not just replace them instead of adding even more specific mission types to the already limited space mission boards?

Frontier has a winner here with this, but I think they haven't fully realized just HOW awesome it is, and how it can completely replace the old templates instead of standing alongside them.

You're much better at constructive criticism than I am. Frontier: what I meant to say, is that your new wing mission system is SO Awesome, that I would like it to be applied to ALL mission types. I would like your wonderful wing missions to be the ONLY missions types which exist in the game.

 

[SpaceScania]

You're much better at constructive criticism than I am. Frontier: what I meant to say, is that your new wing mission system is SO Awesome, that I would like it to be applied to ALL mission types. I would like your wonderful wing missions to be the ONLY missions types which exist in the game.

Maybe Frontier will be surprised by the universal acclaim that these new missions will generate? When I saw missions on the board with 800t of haulage my heart skipped a beat. When I heard thousands of tons on the livestream for haulage I was in a state of nerd ecstasy. Perhaps when they see a mass exodus to these missions they will, for the next update, look at merging the two?

What Cutter pilot in their right mind is going to waste their time delivering 180t of cargo when they can take a mission for 1000t? Unless the economics on wing missions are gimped so that the economics only work if you do it in a wing, everyone with a large cargo ship is going to flock to these new missions.

 

[Faybs]

Hi there,

We actually made mission cargo more permissive to stealing, not less. Recently we made it so you could sell mission cargo without even abandoning the mission.

You just can't sell mission cargo back to the same market you got it from, which makes sense.

Thanks,
Dom

Does that mean that if I'm short on cash for an upgrade I can take a mission, sell the cargo, buy the upgrade, earn some cash with the upgrade, buy the cargo I sold (maybe cheaper from somewhere else) and still complete the mission? That's awesome!

 

[[DOOK] Droogie]

This C&P system is a ridiculously convoluted solution to a very simple problem. Make security mean something. High security = swarmed when you commit these crimes. Anarchy = do as you please, and enter at your own risk. Low and medium security somewhere in between.

Why do they always avoid the elegant solutions and make it more complex than it needs to be?

 

[ITZC0ATL]

I kind of have to agree with Bigity and Kaocraft on this.

The new wing mission mechanic looks pretty awesome to me, and powerful as a feature in the game. So why not utilize it fully? Really all cargo, massacre, and assassination missions could be turned into wing missions if you just varied the difficulty of the missions to allow solo players in weak ships to do some of them too. The flexible cargo mechanic of winged cargo missions is awesome, but honestly any ship in the game can do them just fine from a Hauler to a Cutter, so why not make every cargo mission wing compatible? Vary the total cargo of each mission so that some are low quantities but some can be up into the thousands, and if a solo player in an Adder wants to tackle it then let them!

The winged mission mechanic looks awesome, so much so that the old mission templates seem worthless now. Why not just replace them instead of adding even more specific mission types to the already limited space mission boards?

Frontier has a winner here with this, but I think they haven't fully realized just HOW awesome it is, and how it can completely replace the old templates instead of standing alongside them.

Well put Mengy and totally agree.

I immediately liked the wing missions and didn't see any issues, but once it's been pointed out that all missions should just be available for wings once the technical capability is there already ... well, it's a no-brainer really.

 

[Dominic Corner]

Does that mean that if I'm short on cash for an upgrade I can take a mission, sell the cargo, buy the upgrade, earn some cash with the upgrade, buy the cargo I sold (maybe cheaper from somewhere else) and still complete the mission? That's awesome!

Hi there,

Generally speaking, no.

If the cargo is marked as "Haulage", then you cannot buy it anywhere (and you're unlikely to find it in space - afaik piracy and salvage missions may still spawn the required items, but if we've given you the cargo in a smuggle or delivery mission then nothing spawns it.).

I'm not saying it is a good idea to sell mission cargo, just that it is possible... it does generally lock you into failure, though... except in the case of the new wing missions, I guess, as you don't need to deliver the full complement of cargo in order to complete them, just up to a certain threshold (you will get fines applied by the mission giver for any undelivered cargo, though).

Thanks,
Dom

 

[the source 0179]

C&P - I am very convinced this will solve some of issues with consequences in game. Not all of them, not at once, but it is quite a good start. New addition of notoriety will address some of combat logging. Overall feeling very good about this. Very important to balance friendly fire though.

Wing missions - loving direction, because I hate 'special' wing content, but interface for mass delivery and potentially god like NPCs (similar to Thargoids) for Assassination wing missions sounds very nice direction. If mechanic works, it can be extended to lot of directions.

I also like 'Anonymous access' icon shown on nav panel.

Totally agree with you. But they definitely need to balance friendly fire and accidents better. I know I've been fined etc for npcs flying in front of my fire and either npcs flying into me or me accidentally bumping into them. I think unless you have sustained fire or repeated fire on a friendly it shouldn't be counted.

 

[the source 0179]

Not sure if anyone has mentioned this cause haven't finished reading thread. But they could reduce the amount of people complaining about board hopping passenger missions by including winged passenger missions that you could take solo and fill up you passenger compartments in one hit. Just a thought.

 

[Mengy]

What Cutter pilot in their right mind is going to waste their time delivering 180t of cargo when they can take a mission for 1000t? Unless the economics on wing missions are gimped so that the economics only work if you do it in a wing, everyone with a large cargo ship is going to flock to these new missions.

I'll be honest, I'd do a 1000t winged cargo mission in my T6. I like the concept of doing several cargo runs to complete a single job much more than picking lots of little jobs, usually requiring mode switching and board flipping just to fill my hold.