Wing mission balance pass

Are you sure about that?
Then what defines a Wing?
Must a wing always have 4 members?
Why cannot we say that a single individual is a Wing of One?
And if that is the case, why are Wings of less than 4 being unfairly and capriciously being disadvantaged with unequal payment?

Example (as is now):

Do X - Advertised payment of $10 mCr
Wing of 1 gets paid $10 Mcr
Wing of 2 gets $20 mCr
Wing of 3 gets $30 mCr
Wing of 4 gets $40 mCr

What I am advocating would make the same mission thus:
Do X - Advertised Payment $40 mCr (apply Magic Multiplier UP FRONT where it belongs)
Wing of 1 gets $40 mCr
Wing of 2 gets $40 mCr (each share $20 mCr)
Wing of 3 gets $40 mCr (each share $13.33 mCr)
Wing of 4 gets $40 mCr (each share $10 mCr)

NOW do you understand? I am simply advocating that WE get to choose our own level of Risk v Reward v Challenge and get paid equitably based upon that CHOICE.

This is what is needed. Then add time bonuses to the equation. With the wing of 4 being able to do it 4 times faster with an incentive, everything seems to start making sense and then there is nothing to balance. A much simpler system that can be used for all missions without the need to continually rebalance everything as every mission will just become shareable.

There could be missions that are wing recommended (some base attack or assaination missions as an example), but at the end of the day it is up to the you whether you take that risk of not.
 
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Did one of these last night with 2 others so 3 in our wing. Was for a Lanthanum which was available nearby on several large surface bases. Material cost was 16M CR but mission worth 23M CR reward. In a wing these make total sense <6M CR each outlay for a ~17M profit each!!
 
This is what is needed. Then add time bonuses to the equation. With the wing of 4 being able to do it 4 times faster with an incentive, everything seems to start making sense and then there is nothing to balance. A much simpler system that can be used for all missions without the need to continually rebalance everything as every mission will just become shareable.

There could be missions that are wing recommended (some base attack or assaination missions as an example), but at the end of the day it is up to the you whether you take that risk of not.

Absolutely, the bonuses (time, redirect, etc.) stay - they go into the pool. Additionally, I am suggesting a mechanic for +/- to Wing Member shares (within limits). Further I propose bringing back Rank Lock for missions AND making appropriate Rank have an impact on Mission Parameters. Plus, what I have proposed allows you to hire and pay supporting CMDRs as you see fit. Need protection for Cargo Cows - go hire it. Need AWACS support for base assaults - go hire the meanest Merc you can find...
 
Got one last night that worked out as 1000cr/t solo. So it would have been 4k/t with a full wing.

Buying from the commodities market, from the same starting point to the same endpoint, was worth 4k/t. Assuming the fix ain't live yet.
 
Dear Adam,

This problem of junk rewards goes beyond Wing Missions. It's happening in regular missions too. While the special commodities of Modular Terminals and Bromellite are still offered as rewards, Articulation Motors and Neofabric Insulation are NOT - which has locked us out from ever being able to unlock certain items from the new Tech Brokers!

Beyond this, commodities that the station sells (especially the non-commodity of limpets) is just wasting a reward slot! The money difference between cash only, and the junk commodity is the exact value the station buys the commodity for! We could just buy the commodity cheaper on our own, from the markets, and then go do trading elsewhere if that's what we wanted to do. This is wasting one of the three slots that could be giving us something special - e.g. Neofabric Insulation *COUGH* - engineering mats/data, extra rep, extra influence, etc.

In short, it's just borked. I appreciate that you guys needed to fix the problem with missions giving a reward that could then be used to complete another mission, thus creating an infinite loop, but replacing that with junk is not the way to fix this.

Please - remove these junk options from the rewards for both WING and Solo missions.

Thanks.

That post of Adam's really caught my eye, too. Either he was being sarcastic, or he doesn't understand the issue at hand. I'm all good with the sarcasm, but if its because he doesn't understand the issue, well, that's a whole different story.

I know this conversation is about cargo wing missions, but I will say that I spent yesterday running wing Assassination missions and while their payout was only marginally better than solo assassination missions (at best!), their difficulty in comparison is spectacular. So, all "Let's pay them in Limpets tee hee!" humor from the devs aside, maybe we could talk about balance there, too.
 
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That post of Adam's really caught my eye, too. Either he was being sarcastic, or he doesn't understand the issue at hand. I'm all good with the sarcasm, but if its because he doesn't understand the issue, well, that's a whole different story.

I know this conversation is about cargo wing missions, but I will say that I spent yesterday running wing Assassination missions and their while payout was only marginally better than solo assassination missions (at best!), their difficulty in comparison is spectacular. So, all "Let's pay them in Limpets tee hee!" humor from the devs aside, maybe we could talk about balance there, too.

I too think he's being sarcastic. I just chose that reply since it was from a Dev who works on missions and he was commenting about limpets. I wanted to get his attention as I think he's following this thread and may not be following the others (or the bug reports people have filed).

The limpets/junk commodities could be a decent choice maybe 10% of the time - like making a delivery to outpost that takes all your cargo space, and then you can get limpets (and a little less cash), as that outpost doesn't sell them (but the mission source did). However, it's still a huge loss compared to the 4 other options for the remaining 2 reward choices (first is always cash) - extra rep, extra influence, reward commodity (e.g. Modular Terminals, Neofabric Insulation, etc.), or engineering data/mats.

As for balancing the risk/reward for assassination missions, yes, they could use some love. Solo assassinations pay well for the danger involved - around 2 million credits for an Elite mission where you fight a Deadly/Elite Anaconda or Corvette. The 3.5 million for the Elite Wing version - which once gave me a highly engineered Corvette, 2 FDLs, a Vulture, and 2 other ships - yeah, maybe that should have paid a little more.

That said, some solo missions are still out of whack: Why are the Kill the Terrorist mission typically only paying the same or maybe 1 million more than their equivalent Assassination missions when:
  1. Kill the Terrorist missions are illegal actions in the target system, when Assassination isn't
  2. Kill the Terrorist missions first require you to break into a medium/high security base (possibly racking up quite a bounty smashing the defenses), and scan all the data points, just to find the targets location. The Assassination mission just tells you to go the system and scan.
In my opinion, with all the extra work and headaches the Kill the Terrorist mission give you, they ought to pay 5 to 10 times as much as a standard Assassination mission.

I'm sure other "illegal" missions could probably use a reward buff - e.g. Wetworks missions, Destroy the Power Generator - since you may need to do a lot of criminal action (including murder, which gives notoriety) to complete them. Doesn't seem right that a legally sanctioned execution of a criminal pays nearly the same as an espionage mission where you end up being hot to very hot for only slightly more pay.

At least solo cargo delivery missions seem to be balanced now - pay out not only reflects state (e.g. Boom) but also the cargo being carried. Hauling Biowaste won't make you the same kind of profits as hauling Palladium, which is how it should be. So they're making progress! ;)


As a side note, they could INSTANTLY fix the major road block of no Neofabric Insulation/Articulation Motors/Microweave cooling hoses no longer being offered, and thus locking us out of Tech Broker recipes, by just removing these "reward only" commodities from the requirements OR replacing them with ones that can be bought (e.g. CMM Composites, which is used for one of the other unlocks). Some action on this would be nice.
 
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I thinks I missed the delivery wing missions going completely wrong. They used looked like an OK way of making a few credits. Now the only wing missions I can find want 7500 to 8000 unit of something to some where. BORING! If I was to try to get any one else to do that kind of grind they would unfriend me and I wouldn’t blame them. I haven’t mentioned the pay out because I don’t care, not going to do it, not going to be nasty enough to try and get a friend to join me in that kind of drudgery.

Frontier please stop listening to the whingers and let people play the way they want to instead of the way the few want them to.
Can we have rewarding play kept in the game. As it is the Delivery wing missions are just another trash mission blocking up the mission board.

PS: What is so wrong with being able to do a multiple delivery mission solo? It’s not like the pay out was out of proportion to the load carried and at least you could fill a large ship. If solo players are going to be blocked from aspects of Elite game play could you at least put in delivery missions that can fill the bigger ship and give a proportionate pay out for the extra load.
 
Hello everyone,

A quick update on the status of Wing Delivery Missions: we are going to be reducing the units of cargo that these missions can require to 320 – 6120. In addition, we’ll also be increasing the payouts of these missions slightly.

Thank you for your feedback and we’ll continue to observe and balance missions if required.

Per my example, could we talk about extending the 'time' for the mission?

If we're talking x000 units, and with people having real lives, it's not always practical to get it completed in 24 hours or less. And I'm hopeful that peeps won't complain that this would be unfair for wings... it's nice for friends who play together, with work, kids, and the like, not to say "Sorry, can't IRL tonight - I promised I'd deliver 1000 units of widgets with a mate".
 
Just an advice on soloing wing assassination missions; don't take wing missions to assassinate someone in an anarchy state system. The NPC wings can get pretty severe with engineered ships and police help is a great deterrent to keep at least some guns away from your ship. Naturally, you need to be a bit mindful not to shoot recklessly at anything that comes by. Otherwise these missions are really fun and challenging.
 
Hello Adam,

Just continuing after today's changes. Thank you for the willingness to listen and hope you can explain the goal you were going for as I don't understand.

Have a look here please for some examples: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...ased-and-the-cargo-requirement-decreased-quot

Single missions have been increased in distance; fine I can see that. But by moving the goal post on the wing missions the credit / hour is way below normal trade or just doing several single missions.

I got this off of reddit:
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Working out the cr/hr is disheartening for this change.

My Cutter is 720 tons (but will need scoop so move that to 650 I guess? have to check it out). 6000 tons to go 200ly will take 11 round trips each taking 25 - 30 minutes (10 jumps each way plus docking twice) for a total mission time of 300 minutes.

For a payout of 10 million.

Even if you had 4 Cutters that is 75 minutes each for the same 10 million. Can commodity loop trade for a lot more than that.

Why would anyone take these missions? I just don't get it.
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And I see his point. So I feel I am missing something. In conclusion, the single missions are great; long distance for a decent reward. But the wing missions now I just don't see worth it.
 
Hello Adam,

Just continuing after today's changes. Thank you for the willingness to listen and hope you can explain the goal you were going for as I don't understand.

Have a look here please for some examples: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...ased-and-the-cargo-requirement-decreased-quot

Single missions have been increased in distance; fine I can see that. But by moving the goal post on the wing missions the credit / hour is way below normal trade or just doing several single missions.

I got this off of reddit:
--------------------------- ----------------- ----------------------
Working out the cr/hr is disheartening for this change.

My Cutter is 720 tons (but will need scoop so move that to 650 I guess? have to check it out). 6000 tons to go 200ly will take 11 round trips each taking 25 - 30 minutes (10 jumps each way plus docking twice) for a total mission time of 300 minutes.

For a payout of 10 million.

Even if you had 4 Cutters that is 75 minutes each for the same 10 million. Can commodity loop trade for a lot more than that.

Why would anyone take these missions? I just don't get it.
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And I see his point. So I feel I am missing something. In conclusion, the single missions are great; long distance for a decent reward. But the wing missions now I just don't see worth it.

My hobbyist game developing experience makes me want to tune solo/wing missions like this:

- solo haulage are long distance but one run only required
- wing haulage is short hops but high total tonnage moved, requiring many short runs to complete.

Making wing missions pay only 10% more but require many times the work at the same long distances seems rather ill planned...?
 
My hobbyist game developing experience makes me want to tune solo/wing missions like this:

- solo haulage are long distance but one run only required
- wing haulage is short hops but high total tonnage moved, requiring many short runs to complete.

Making wing missions pay only 10% more but require many times the work at the same long distances seems rather ill planned...?

This is exactly how it should be.
 
My hobbyist game developing experience makes me want to tune solo/wing missions like this:

- solo haulage are long distance but one run only required
- wing haulage is short hops but high total tonnage moved, requiring many short runs to complete.

Making wing missions pay only 10% more but require many times the work at the same long distances seems rather ill planned...?

Yes! Very good way to explain it. Thanks.
 
Again I will just re-iterate my desire to see a focused feedback session on the missions system. This to me is the part of the game that desperately needs the most attention now.
 
Hello everyone,

A quick update on the status of Wing Delivery Missions: we are going to be reducing the units of cargo that these missions can require to 320 – 6120. In addition, we’ll also be increasing the payouts of these missions slightly.

Thank you for your feedback and we’ll continue to observe and balance missions if required.

I don't mean to be rude, but these very minor changes seem to be woefully out of touch with the reality of what CMDRs are doing to earn credits.

Here, let me explain my reasoning using this post as an example - since it's the same CMDR in the same system comparing a wing mission from the same faction to the same destination. Rank and rep can therefore be ignored in this since they are the same. It's not an isolated incident though, here's the very next thread I read after the 'balance' pass.

Wing mission (best-case scenario):
7,200 units, 6.9M reward, 4-man wing, everyone using 720T cargo unshielded iCutters means 10 trips, so 3 trips as a wing of 4.
6,900,000 / 7,200 * (1 mission / 3 trips) = 320 credits normalised by unit per trip.

Wing mission (more likely scenario):
7,200 units, 6.9M reward, 2-man wing, both using 292T Pythons because it's an outpost so 13 trips
6,900,000 / 7,200 * (1 mission / 13 trips) = 74 credits normalised by unit per trip.

Single mission:
120 units, 2.1M reward, iCutter can stack six of these missions in its 720T cargo configuration
2,100,000 / 120 * (6 missions /1 trip) = 105,000 credits normalised by unit per trip - that's around 330x more than the best-case scenario for the wing-mission.

Wing missions require more effort and coordination;
Why are payouts for normal missions 330x higher?!!


Somebody please check my maths or explain my understanding failure. If I'm not being dumb then FDev are instead. The 25% drop from 8100 to 6120 and a payout increase of maybe 40% in no way scales up enough to offset the fact that you need to make 330 trips in a wing mission to match the earnings of a single stacked-mission trip in a large ship.

I kind of figure that I'm being dumb but a quick sanity check confirms there's a huge multiple-orders-of-magnitude disconnect here:
Maximum size solo delivery mission = 180 units.
Maximum size wing delivery mission = 6120 units.
Wing delivery missions require 6120/180 = up to 34x more cargo to be moved

4x more people need to do 34x more work (8x more work per person)
You cannot stack multiple wing missions in one trip, robbing you of the potential to stack 20 missions at once.

Those last two statements combined multiply into a phenomenally ridiculous disparity that needs to be addressed. Obviously you're not going to find 20 missions small enough to fit in one iCutter, but you will find at least 4 and probably more like 6-8 if you take the 96-180T missions.
 
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Multiple the reward by the number of pilots in your wing examples, that's really the only issue here. Wing cargo missions don't pay credit per ton. They pay credit per ton per pilot.
 
I don't mean to be rude, but these very minor changes seem to be utterly insignificant unless "increasing the payouts of these missions slightly" actually means "order of magnitude increases to these mission payouts"

Here, let me explain my reasoning using this post as an example - since it's the same CMDR in the same system comparing a wing mission from the same faction to the same destination. Rank and rep can therefore be ignored in this since they are the same.

Wing mission (best-case scenario):
7,200 units, 6.9M reward, 4-man wing, everyone using 720T cargo unshielded iCutters means 10 trips, so 3 trips as a wing of 4.
6,900,000 / 7,200 * (1 mission / 3 trips) = 320 cr/unit for one trip.

Wing mission (more likely scenario):
7,200 units, 6.9M reward, 2-man wing, both using 292T Pythons because it's an outpost so 13 trips
6,900,000 / 7,200 * (1 mission / 13 trips) = 74 cr/unit for one trip.

Single mission:
120 units, 2.1M reward, iCutter can stack six of these missions in its 720T cargo configuration
2,100,000 / 120 * (6 missions /1 trip) = 105,000 cr/unit for one trip.

Wing missions require more effort and coordination, yet payouts for normal single-CMDR missions are 330x higher.

Somebody please check my maths or explain my understanding failure. If I'm not being dumb then FDev are instead.
Fully agree. But how about posting this in the thread I linked above your post. I think FDev covers the Suggestion forum more than the crowded discussion forum.
 
Before nerf this missions, I never did a mission of this kind in wing. Transporting 2700-3700 ton on a ship of 720 tons of cargo was too easy.

In my case, I was just doing this quest for rewards in materials. Now, that you need to transport 3 or 4 times more ton, I just don't do them.

If you want to keep this transport ratio, you should raise the rewards of materials -how two or three times more- to make it worthwhile. If not, people who can't -or don't want to do a wing- simply won't make them because they don't compensate economically.

EDIT: When I refer to "raising the reward in materials" I mean Category 5 materials: Cracked Industrial Firwware, Modified Consumer Firmware, etc etc
 
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