My favourite mission type used to be long range smuggling with fail on scan, where you could travel 300LY to or from some remote corner of the bubble but get scanned at the last minute and fail. It was one of the few things left in the game that involved some risk.
+1.
Yeah, exactly! I mean, why aren't there even regular longer range cargo hauling or passenger missions anymore? I remember seeing some passenger transport that sent me 150ly away, but that might've been after the Weekly Tick as well (it was months ago, during 2.4). I've never seen them regularly since 2.4, but back in the day the longer range cargo missions used to be widely available.
The smuggling long range missions were the best, whenever those missions come up on Reddit people get wistful. I'd love for them to be even more challenging, but I remember loads of people writing about how they always got scanned and failed. It was likely a good challenge level, and for me they were my favourite missions by FAR and what got me hooked on Elite.
During 2.4, I'd literally drop whatever I was doing to get in the game after the Weekly Tick just so I could take advantage of long range smuggling missions being available. Everyone liked them, and old Robigo-level money is surpassed by passenger missions for a long time (and skimmers previously) anyway.
Frontier got rid of the exploit where you can sell the goods back to the black market of the station ya got the mission from (I never took advantage of that, I enjoyed the missions too much), and I just don't get why the missions are gone completely.
(And I really hope they keep in mind cargo requirements, especially if they want people to play in Open. You have to carry too much for both regular cargo hauling and smuggling, which often means you can't protect yourself adequately in Open. They got the requirements geared for PVE where you can go without a shield and be fine, it's pretty annoying)
There's a few things that I'm not 100% sure if Frontier knows regarding what missions are generating, and if they DO know, why did they make that decision? Like, there are no long range smuggling/cargo/passenger missions at all. Why remove a fun mission type? While I prefer smuggling, it's fun to take a 200ly mission to someplace I've never been before. Or, do they know that many missions available at Outposts can ONLY be done with a Python? Like, literally the only ship you can use. I assume they DO know that "fail on scan" missions are gone and that it was done on purpose... but why? That was great!
And why do the original 2 factions in Robigo (a system that just got new stations!) not offer missions despite me being long-Allied and they're in boom? They'd only offer missions immediately after the Weekly Tick in 2.4 and now in 3.0 they offer none after several flippings of the board... I just don't get it.
Hopefully they bring back previously successful and fun missions that already got NPC AI and dialogue and structures in place!
Not to keep rambling, but this also ties into an issue I've had since I came back to the game in November-- we get forced into using the larger ships too often if we wanna do anything cargo/smuggling mission related. I'd love to use ships like the Keelback or Cobra or whatever, but if I fly them then I can't take any smuggling or cargo mission. I'd even buy paintjobs and the ship kit for the Keely if I was actually able to use it, but I'm forced to use a Python or larger if I wanna be a smuggler.
There may have been discussions about all this while I was gone, that wouldn't be weird, but I don't see it discussed much and I think it's an easily solvable issue.