News Implementation of a dedicated mission server

[fu9ar]

IMO the reason people board flop, log in and out, is not so much because of the reward as much as the missions available. IE if I’m running transport missions and I only want transport missions and nothing but combat spawn I’m most likely going to board flip a few times. Same thing with passenger missions, if I’m running bulk passenger missions and nothing but long range missions spawn again I’m going to flip a few times. I hope when you have this dedicated server and sort the missions board it will be full of the missions I desire to run. If I sort the missions board say legal, each missions giver at a station should give me say 10 options, if I switch it to illegal I should get 10 more option, sort to transport and bam 10 more from each missions giver. That would be 70 in total from each station that has a full line up of missions givers per type of missions. So there is no confusion. Legal 70, illegal 70, transport 70, combat 70 and the list goes on. In closing I’m saying I should never log on and have to wonder what I’m going to do and where I’m going to do it. If I desire to run missions out of my “home system”.

That isn't ever how you were supposed to play the game and that behavior is what FDev is trying to stop. Diversify. Branch out. When I am playing delivery fu9ar, which isn't often these days because I do exploration and CGs most often, I grab a couple or three missions from my first station, enough to get me flying. I ain't some prima donna who "won't even undock for less than a billion credits", and then I check every destination station of those three in the same way, sometimes I'll even stop on the way. My mission fit ships generally run a mix of passenger cabins and cargo bays so that I can grab what is available. Heck, I'll even grab some high dollar salvage contracts if the money is right, and if enemies come after me, I can often fight them.

On my new alt, I got a mission to transport a criminal mastermind on a little joyride, and on the way some of her enemies sent a hit on her. I killed 3/3 and kept from getting scanned on 2/3 (which made the mission surprisingly difficult because those little scans mattered), which kept her happy enough to pay me. It was a fantastic and I made a big chunk of credits, especially for a new character that only just hopped into an iCourier.

You're doing it wrong.

 

[SentineI]

ObsidianAnt makes many good points, all of which I agree with:
https://youtu.be/a7vvu5a3edY?t=228

While I rarely use board flipping, sometimes it's *necessary* to work-around ED's terrible mission generation system:
* The board is full of Wing missions that many people have no interest or use with, meaning there are few missions of interest. At least don't show Wing missions to Solo users!
* The board often contains many near-identical missions, rather than an interesting variety. Fix mission generation, so once a mission is generated, the probability of another one like it being generated is reduced.
* The board SHOULD offer a variety of missions unrelated to the system state - even if they have low Influence (and so won't affect the minor factions power in a system aka BGS).

Why is the mission system not being fixed? And instead you are nerfing what we sometimes use to work-around it being rubbish?

 

[fu9ar]

Or you can undock and fly to another station, which has been working just fine for me the entire time?

In Spring this year I wiped my main, mostly to enjoy the fun of an early character again. My new commander already feels old, really miss these early hours where credits really matter. Nothing beats the moment where I can buy my first Cobra. Sometimes I wonder what's wrong with the game when the beginning feels so much better than all the rest (my very own opinion of course)...

I think missions are intended for early->midgame. Community Goals are the endgame mission-like content and are generally what I do with my main.

 

[CMDR _BigJay_]

Or you can undock and fly to another station, which has been working just fine for me the entire time?



I think missions are intended for early->midgame. Community Goals are the endgame mission-like content and are generally what I do with my main.

So which is it? You undock and go to another station? Or you don't do missions?

I do tend to agree.. Currently once you get close to end-game it becomes relatively pointless to run missions...........unless you flip the board, stack them and MAKE it worthwhile to run missions. Would be nice if FD fixed that.

 

[El_Hefe]

So no board flipping and 10% raise in mission payouts.....but no word on actually fixing the cause that makes people board flip. No guarntee that if it goes wrong frontier will take time to tune it after Q4 with regular fixes. Like what if it doesnt go great and is actually a disaster,what are frontiers plans?

If the next updates are a substantial amount of time after Q4,and the move to a dedicated server for missions does not go well,will there be a totally broken mission system until the next set of updates?

Have to say givin recent history im not sure frontier can pull this off and players end up with an actual improvement.

 

[Deleted member 38366]

Or you can undock and fly to another station, which has been working just fine for me the entire time?



I think missions are intended for early->midgame. Community Goals are the endgame mission-like content and are generally what I do with my main.

Trust me, nothing beats doing exactly that - and getting nothing out of it
(or the System you support only has one place to dock / with Large Pads)

Community Grinds are meant as PvP hubs with non-Open modes designed to offer... well... V1.1 era Community Goals.
Commonly extremely boring, over-used and old, they also suffer from extremely low payouts, which means they're not worth the time for end-game Players by any means (not even mid-game Players, there's far better income opportunities out there).
Exceptions : occasional Decals if you're into that or their end result is something you wish to donate your effort to

PS.
That 10% payout increase to me sounds like a quickfix "drop of sugar onto the castor oil spoon".
Most missions I've flown I've done for 10% payout due to selecting ++++Inf instead. Had to, since the "bad guys" working against me did exactly the same (BGS).
Credit payout was 100% irrelevant all that time, a purely cosmetic item for an end-game Player like me.

And like in RL, a big Cargo Vessel doesn't leave the port with only 11% of its Cargo hold filled. A Luxury Liner doesn't depart with only 24 people onboard. That's not what these vessels were built for.
But with no fundamental changes to the deeply flawed Mission System, that's the prospect Mission-runners will soon(tm) face.
(wait - they're already facing it since years... that's why mode-hopping was invented as a workaround to the bugged Mission System in the 1st place - and at times not even aggressive mode-hopping was able to fix it)

 

[fu9ar]

If you artificially limit yourself to one system and only use large ships, you're your own problem, dude.

I doubt the implementation of the new mission server alone would fix any of those issues. A greater potential perhaps for future fixes, but that's it at the very best.



No sorry, you totally lost me there. How so? It's a decent source of income especially for new players as it's getting boring all too soon for the more experienced players (I guess?). Except those who seek some PvP excitement via CGs in Open. With this alone in mind I would agree with you of course.

Trade CG's are like a marathon. They are a competition.


---

I think one of the major issues is that you believe income should scale arithmetically to your larger ships without you needing to change your behavior, so it's just a matter of grinding until you level up. I guess that makes it easier for the account sellers.

 

[Turd Ferguson]

SUGGESTION: REMOVE RNG FROM MISSION BOARD?

I see why it was probably necessary to begin with given the low variety of missions, but now with all the different missions how about removing RNG from the equasion since board flipping will not be possible to avoid bad RNG.

so....every mission gets a base price based on the nature of the mission.

that base price is then modified by:
1) quantity (number of cargo units, number of kills, etc)
2) level of mission (harmless rank missions may have a modifier of 0.5 and elite missions can have a modifier of 10...which "normal" difficulty having a modifier of 1.0)
3) distance to target system (both system to system distance and system to planetary body (SC time))
4) modifiers for system state
5) other modifiers like which controlling faction is in power if relevent

that makes all mission payouts for any given mission equally good. now, add a decent spawn rate, remove all arbitrary limits on how many missions can be taken (or just set the limit to 1 and adjust payouts appropriately), and you're in business!

Now mission payouts are predictable and consistent. That makes them easier for the Dev team to manage if payouts need to be adjusted AND gives predictable expectations to players wanting to do those missions.

well? how about it?

this also allows players to scale their own payouts depending on skill and ship level...or control the difficulty of the mission based on if they're in the mood for difficult missions or just relaxing puttering around.

Bonus suggestion:

Make passenger missions and cargo missions per-unit pay! - that is, we have a bunch of "Stuff" that needs to go "over there"....at 10000 cr per unit. take as many as you want. You want to fill your sidewinder? great! Cutter? no problem! payout scales by cargo capacity.

 

[Aaron T]

If you are in a liner there ought to be "Carry 180 VIP's to MEDB for 30 million" etc, instead of, carry VIP to Hagadore for 300k.

 

[fu9ar]

No not really anymore, once you said that community goals was content for noobs, I just blacked out and I don't know what is going on anymore.

 

[NeilF]

Are you moving the mission servers to use TCP for retrieval in the process, thus hopefully eliminating the current issues on lossy connections?

I'm hoping there's a more fundamental reason for a dedicated server. eg: Improved missions maybe with more of a state/"life" to them etc... Hence them needing to be on a single server.

 

[Munster26]

I'm hoping there's a more fundamental reason for a dedicated server. eg: Improved missions maybe with more of a state/"life" to them etc... Hence them needing to be on a single server.

It's just to stop board flipping IMO.
And it's worth the effort because being able to make 100mil an hour breaks the game. The skimmer mission thing was a joke tbf.

 

[who?]

I'm hoping there's a more fundamental reason for a dedicated server. eg: Improved missions maybe with more of a state/"life" to them etc... Hence them needing to be on a single server.

I hope so too, I think it's a positive change - and not just because board-flipping is going. I hope it'll allow them to do more with the missions - I reckon the treasure hunts they ran in the game some time back might have been - in part - infrastructure tests to see how well the P2P architecture can handle a shared mission across many Cmdrs and instances. Being on a single server with one state across modes should definitely make it easier.

 

[Marc_Hicks]

That's not a bad trade-off, it would still return agency to the player but, would also require a rework of the GUI to fit all the options.

Perhaps something that removes obvious issues, like you can't refine without a refinery, so offering mining missions is a bit pointless.

You have to leave the board to fit one, or change to a ship that has one and come back. Mission availability changes make sense.

It's also relatively simple to resolve the tickets: "Why can't I see mining missions?" Reply: "Are you sitting in a ship with a refinery?"

Meh, I still think a Mission Filter system might work better. At the very least a filter by broad mission type (Combat, Exploration, Trade, Mining) & Mission Rank would be good. Destination could be a 3rd filter type-where applicable. The filter could also act as a de facto "refresh" button as well.

 

[Marc_Hicks]

Oh, & Passenger Missions could be filtered by Deztination, Mission Type (Point A to Point B, Round Trip etc) & Passenger Type (Tourists, Rebels, Scientists).

For non-board missions, I feel that the Commanders Log and, if applicsble, the Codex they are giving us in Q4, should have a significant impact on what kind of "semi-random" missions the player picks up whilst going about their normal business.

When it comes to Client Side storage, I confess that I would initially prefer thrm to focus on 2nd tier NPC's & certain PoI's discovered by players. That said, these two items could easily be the focal point for missions as well (a Factional Ally might ask you to do some important work for them, whereas a mission might pop up directly aimed at harming the plans of your long time nemesis).

 

[Grimforce]

Oh, & Passenger Missions could be filtered by Deztination, Mission Type (Point A to Point B, Round Trip etc) & Passenger Type (Tourists, Rebels, Scientists).

For non-board missions, I feel that the Commanders Log and, if applicsble, the Codex they are giving us in Q4, should have a significant impact on what kind of "semi-random" missions the player picks up whilst going about their normal business.

When it comes to Client Side storage, I confess that I would initially prefer thrm to focus on 2nd tier NPC's & certain PoI's discovered by players. That said, these two items could easily be the focal point for missions as well (a Factional Ally might ask you to do some important work for them, whereas a mission might pop up directly aimed at harming the plans of your long time nemesis).

i would so bad love to have passenger mission filter. since i dont do long distance ones, i want to filter by type like transport or adventure sightseeking etc. we definitely need more filters.

 

[jonesskill]

Right now, from the Yamiks Channel:

https://www.youtube.com/user/TheYamiks/community

1.000 people answer:

53% Used and want it to stay.
15% Used, but want it gone,
5% Don't use it and want it to stay.
3% Don't use and want it gone.
24% Don't care.

Just a few detais: Almost all people that voted on "Used, but want it gone," replied that they want it gone IF there is a better generation system, that IS NOT THE PROPOSAL. (I think some people are trying to draw the public atenttion to this - But common, they can fix this already if they want, they don't need to remove flipping to apply a fix now.

So,

3% of the people want it really gone. <-- Really close to 2.8% ugh?
24% don't care;

The rest 73% want it to stay. (Or accept if the flip gone IF they Fix the PROBLEM)

 

[Genus]

3% of the people want it really gone. <-- Really close to 2.8% ugh?

Yup, as usual, the reverse of everything FD actually releases as "reasons", is true.

 

[fu9ar]

I mean cool poll and all, but Yamik's fans are way more likely to be the sort of edgy ****lords that would vote that way in a poll for the lulz.

 

[jonesskill]

I mean cool poll and all, but Yamik's fans are way more likely to be the sort of edgy ****lords that would vote that way in a poll for the lulz.

yeah, 1.200 of "edgy ****lords"

The pool are exacly what we see in this thread: More of the people against, who are in favor are in favor if they fix the problem that make the flip and sure, that 3% of "Smart" people that think that everyone should play like they want (And they keep posting in this thread to fake a volume of people in their favor, or trying to convince people to play like they want)