Prefer? Meh, I take what's on offer... and I accept my insignificance, within a galactic system with trillions upon trillions of people. No matter how you dress it up, we're all left with the scraps that multi-system corporations overlooked, don't care about, or left for small organisation/independent. I do agree that as a (nearly) elite trader with allies in multiple systems, my scraps are better than the early career dregs I started with, but in the grand scheme... still scraps.
In the real world yes, you take what's on offer, as it becomes available. As an organisation providing supply to daily demands you will, obviously have a preferred list of third party carriers you already trust to deliver on time and in excellent condition and you may even have your own fleet of dedicated shipping vessels to supply that one customer who typically props up 70-80% of your business because, efficiency. At the point where you run out of known quantities because they're all busy delivering other stuff, and more orders are coming in where the customer is willing to accept premium service charges due to their urgency and impatience, you start calling the express couriers. I'm guessing this is what the random deliveries offered while in space are trying to simulate but they rarely suit the ship I'm in, due to overly large quantities when really, these types of urgent jobs are often single cargo items, small envelopes, large pieces of artwork that cannot be folded, etc.
The point being, these jobs are highly urgent, unanticipated in the typical daily workflow and often an opportunity for the sales team to secure a new client. Something they would desperately like to ensure, because it makes their KPI figures look good and helps them on the road to promotion. They're not going to risk that on an unknown quantity. And this is the first thing missing from the mission board - a financially motivated sales team with a sense of urgency and pride, or at least greed, fighting over the available ships to get their urgent jobs delivered and thereby impress their clients into spending more money with them.
Sitting there for 20 minutes in the hope another urgent job will appear isn't really a viable option, just take what you've got and come back for more, but wait. There are several other factions here that might also have urgent deliveries, and they're more than likely going to the same high population systems nearby. This is the second thing, the mission board doesn't refresh often enough to simulate the rate at which new jobs become available due to the demands generated by the system population. In a system where there are only three factions and less than 10,000 population sure, make the board refresh every 30 minutes, or more. But, in a system containing billions of people and multiple stations they should generate significantly faster and address the third problem - INTRA-system deliveries to other LOCAL stations and planetary bases with variable timers from the get-go, not the standard default 24 hours with a wrinkle that pops up as you enter supercruise demanding you get there in 0:00 minutes.
Why can we not get URGENT data deliveries that need to be on a planet 30LS away within the next 30 minutes? It's a high paying job that actually rewards you to go deliver it now instead of board flipping because 24 hours, who cares I got buckets of time and the wrinkle won't spawn until I get there. Such missions might be ideal for a brand new player in a Sidewinder with the default jump range and limited cargo space to jet about the local system, make a few quid and practice docking. In the absence of a dedicated story line mission system to introduce new players to the game, something they can actually do in the first place they often look, the mission boards, might be incredibly handy to get them earning right away. And, with a separate mission server, FD might actually be able to address this, the fourth problem as well - The absence of an introductory story line. "Here's a shopping trolley on loan, go find your own bags, and cats..." is NOT immersive game play FDev. Please consider adding content that spawns automatically based on achievement triggers like, your first million credits, buying your own ship and giving back the loan-winder, handing in your first bounty... "Hey CMDR, did anyone mention you can make more cash per kill if you use a Kill Warrant Scanner?" NO! FDev never bothered to tell me that! [When do PC players get achievements, and a list of tourist beacons to work through?]
Based on my earlier posts, where only a couple of each mission type are being offered due to limited board space, lets say you take the best one you can find, a data delivery going 10LY worth 300KCR. You take that one, the board dynamically refreshes and another mission of the same type pops up to the top of the urgency stack. It's only paying 250KCR but it's going to the exact same place. Less cash but much better time efficiency so you take that one too and the board refreshes. The next one in the stack to the same place could pay even less or, based on a secondary timer regenerating new jobs on top of the idle ones lower in the stack it might pay more, or give material options you might like instead of purely cash rewards that can be used to fine tune what the mission system is offering to you. "Oh hey, do you want more CIF? If you do I have these two missions going somewhere else that you might like?" The point here, is that the mission server is watching how you interact with it and offering you more of what you've chosen, instead of a static like it or lump it attitude that doesn't care what you choose.
So, you now have two high speed runs to the same place, you check the other factions and the dynamic mission server has hidden the jobs you didn't want on the last pass underneath some that match the destination you've indicated you're willing to go to. They're not urgent, and only pay 50KCR but hey, efficiency and I still have 16 mission slots. Ok, so now all the other mission brokers can see where I'm going, they didn't think anyone would want the jobs they had that weren't urgent but still need to go to the same place so they didn't bother offering them in the limited space on the job board. That doesn't mean they don't have some, they just didn't know who to offer them to until you showed up and started taking runs to that exact destination, or the same system, or at the very least on your way there in the case of longer range missions.
You might have been focused on cargo missions in the beginning, but now your hold is full, and you still have several mission slots free, so you start looking at the data missions that are now getting priority listing on the board because the brokers know your hold is full. A dynamic system could recognise this, and the greedy little brokers could use their own financial motivations to try and fill you up with stuff they still desperately need delivered, but didn't know who to give it to. In essence, they pull lower priority jobs up from the bottom of the stack that match what the player has indicated they're willing to do by their actions. The secondary "new job" spawn timer could also be linked to the system state, more cargo and data missions while in boom for example. Or, strategic data that needs to be taken to a conflict zone because of the war, and this could be used to more intelligently generate follow on chains. You might even be able to get tips from any given faction trying to encourage you to go to their home system where they have control and the current state is more relevant to them specifically, as you increase your reputation with them.
Theoretically FDev could even modify the way the code works to help and encourage BGS players to use their time more efficiently, which also considers the actions of other CMDR's in the same player faction and prioritises more of the same outcome in terms of influence, spread across a variety of mission types to suit the varied ships the players are turning up in. I can see why limited server availability has hindered the functionality of the mission boards in the past, but it was still playable and fun. I can also see why those limitations have caused some CMDR's to feel that board flipping was the only option to fill their ships to capacity before taking off.
With the new mission server it would be awesome to see the limitations of the current system addressed in a much more dynamic way, even if that means reducing the mission stack from 20 to 15, 12, or even less. Yes, LESS mission slots, for those players with OCD's that insist on filling ALL of them, the extreme psychological drive to board flip is reduced somewhat, and if the system itself is more able to fill what's left without the "NEED" to fill as many slots the board flipping issue could be resolved completely. The board itself doesn't need to be stacked with hundreds of missions that you're forced to laboriously scroll through to find the gems. Just present TWO of each type, modified by the capabilities of the ship the CMDR is currently in and let them pick which ONE they want then regenerate the board based on their CHOICE OF PLAY. It might become important to provide some instructions on how the board actually works (within the game, not by watching youtube please FDev) to anticipate CMDR preferences and explain why missions they might want seem to vanish each time they accept something unrelated but the process could also be augmented with a set of filter options to eliminate illegal or purely combat based work if they know they're not interested in that, and this selection should also be considered when generating chain missions. If I'm in a T7 running biowaste, why on Earth am I being offered a mission wrinkle to assassinate someone? All that's going to do is annoy people.
Most importantly, and I think this is the real crux of the problem, agency is returned to the player. They get what they want in sufficient quantity to enjoy their game without feeling obliged to flip the board out of frustration because they can't find what they want. In a remote system it might be a case of "Bad luck CMDR, we're just not busy enough right now." and that's fine. I'm sure people will cope with that if it's made somewhat obvious by the NPC dialogue, but in a system where you're being told your hold better be full, we're in boom, the onus really should be on those factions to make some effort to actually put their money where their mouth is and take some responsibility for filling your hold, wouldn't you think?
Again, TL;DR...
FDev - Dedicated mission server, good!
Opportunity knocking! Please take FULL, dynamic advantage.
