I've been away from Elite for a few months - I got bored of the repetitive and predictable nature of just about everything I was doing in the game - and have just come back to see if much has changed, doesn't seem like much has but my experience highlighted a rather stupid design flaw / lazy coding in the Elite delivery mission type.
I accepted an Elite delivery mission at Colonia, delivery was to a surface station in the same system. Within about 30 seconds this NPC guy Mr Kavanagh tells me the usual thing about wanting my juicy cargo, but I pull away from him easily because I'm in a Python and he's in an Anaconda... until I start to slow down for my destination, then he zooms right up and interdicts me, but fails because an Anaconda can't manouvre for toffee.
I land, I go to hand in my mission cargo, except it's not there in my hold. Slightly bemused and flumoxed, I realise I must have missed a step back at Jacques Station, so I take off again wondering why that pirate was so keen to get his hands on my empty hold. No sooner have I left the planet then there he is again, like clockwork, wanting the contents of my cargo hold... except it makes zero sense as not only have I reached my mission destination and landed safely, my hold is (still) empty - why is he chasing me? I evade his interdiction easily and land back at Jacques.
So, having clicked on the + to load the full cargo into my hold I take off again, sure enough Mr Kavanagh is waiting for me once I go to supercruice, easily evaded again, land at the destination... but again I am frustrated because my cargo hold is empty! Take off, evade Mr Kavanagh, land, and this time load the cargo AND click the extra button to.. load the cargo. Why must I click two buttons to load cargo? This is just unintuitive and poor design, my hold has enough space for the full load, there should at least be some intelligence behind the mission screen or a single button to just accept all of the cargo without having to load it manually.
I take off, easily evade Mr Kavanagh, land at the destination and finally hand in the cargo (which has to be unloaded manually, no simple 'Complete mission' as there used to be). Funnily enough, Mr Kavanagh has now decided that he has other things to do.
This experience has highlighted two things for me - the first is the very dumb way NPCs are designed / coded for this kind of mission. I could accept that maybe pirates would be able to hack the missions bulletin board system and thus know when there's a ship worth boarding, but for the same guy to always come after me even when my hold is empty? Makes zero sense. Another thing to note is that every time he appeared his ship had a different name - same guy, same ship, different ship name.
The second thing is the uninuitive mission cargo loading procedure - one would expect that simply accepting the mission with sufficient free cargo space should be enough (as it used to be originally for this kind of mission), or at least by clicking the + and 'loading' the cargo should also be sufficient, but no - one has to also click the 'load cargo' button (which doesn't actually look like a button).
I am disappointed to see that not much seems to have changed since I last played (I do now remember this being the same then, I had just forgotten the unnecessarily complicated procedure), it doesn't make me want to invest much more time playing the game when there are newer more exciting games coming out. If things like this were refined so that they work more inuitively and with a bit more randomness and depth to the AI and missions, then it might just encourage me to play more.
I accepted an Elite delivery mission at Colonia, delivery was to a surface station in the same system. Within about 30 seconds this NPC guy Mr Kavanagh tells me the usual thing about wanting my juicy cargo, but I pull away from him easily because I'm in a Python and he's in an Anaconda... until I start to slow down for my destination, then he zooms right up and interdicts me, but fails because an Anaconda can't manouvre for toffee.
I land, I go to hand in my mission cargo, except it's not there in my hold. Slightly bemused and flumoxed, I realise I must have missed a step back at Jacques Station, so I take off again wondering why that pirate was so keen to get his hands on my empty hold. No sooner have I left the planet then there he is again, like clockwork, wanting the contents of my cargo hold... except it makes zero sense as not only have I reached my mission destination and landed safely, my hold is (still) empty - why is he chasing me? I evade his interdiction easily and land back at Jacques.
So, having clicked on the + to load the full cargo into my hold I take off again, sure enough Mr Kavanagh is waiting for me once I go to supercruice, easily evaded again, land at the destination... but again I am frustrated because my cargo hold is empty! Take off, evade Mr Kavanagh, land, and this time load the cargo AND click the extra button to.. load the cargo. Why must I click two buttons to load cargo? This is just unintuitive and poor design, my hold has enough space for the full load, there should at least be some intelligence behind the mission screen or a single button to just accept all of the cargo without having to load it manually.
I take off, easily evade Mr Kavanagh, land at the destination and finally hand in the cargo (which has to be unloaded manually, no simple 'Complete mission' as there used to be). Funnily enough, Mr Kavanagh has now decided that he has other things to do.
This experience has highlighted two things for me - the first is the very dumb way NPCs are designed / coded for this kind of mission. I could accept that maybe pirates would be able to hack the missions bulletin board system and thus know when there's a ship worth boarding, but for the same guy to always come after me even when my hold is empty? Makes zero sense. Another thing to note is that every time he appeared his ship had a different name - same guy, same ship, different ship name.
The second thing is the uninuitive mission cargo loading procedure - one would expect that simply accepting the mission with sufficient free cargo space should be enough (as it used to be originally for this kind of mission), or at least by clicking the + and 'loading' the cargo should also be sufficient, but no - one has to also click the 'load cargo' button (which doesn't actually look like a button).
I am disappointed to see that not much seems to have changed since I last played (I do now remember this being the same then, I had just forgotten the unnecessarily complicated procedure), it doesn't make me want to invest much more time playing the game when there are newer more exciting games coming out. If things like this were refined so that they work more inuitively and with a bit more randomness and depth to the AI and missions, then it might just encourage me to play more.
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