A question on mission generation

Dom, i frequently see wing source palladium missions that pay 50,000,000 but require close to or more than 50,000,000 credits in actual product. This led me to believe that a hard cap of 50,000,000 was placed on missions. Recently though i saw a massacre mission for 51,490,000 million. I found it interesting that massacre missions seemed willing to exceed the 50 million mark but source and return missions would rather have me operate at a loss than exceed 50 million.
Wing source missions for high value goods are best done in a wing... (preferably of 4 to maximise profits)
But some of the lower goods value wing missions can be profitable, not by much though.
 
I understand how to get the best results from wing missions. What i would like to know is why the mission generator is willing to exceed 50 million for some missions but not for others. Whether you trying to kill 91 ships or source 1800 palladium, obviously having wingmen will help. I just dont think missions should be programmed to punish you for accepting them even if you complete it.
 
Dom,
Contrary to my earlier post regarding inane comments and our expectation that they will be answered. Why is the mission bubble range set so low? why can't it be two systems set much further apart, is there a technical or programming reason for this? regardless of mission type or system state.
Pug
 
Dom,
Contrary to my earlier post regarding inane comments and our expectation that they will be answered. Why is the mission bubble range set so low? why can't it be two systems set much further apart, is there a technical or programming reason for this? regardless of mission type or system state.
Pug
My guess is the query response times to find candidate systems being a limiting factor for optimisation. Assuming an even distribution of systems (which is fairly safe for the bubble), volume of a sphere is 4/3π r^3, where r (radius) being cubed means a dramatic increase in the potential number of systems.... just doubling the search radius would octuple the number of potential systems.

You then need to consider that for each mission you'd need to consider: State, Economy, Faction Governments, Distances of stations in system, just to name a couple variables. I doubt most of that could be retrieved with a single query (and if so, heaven help the person maintaining that single table of spaghetti)

Maybe the mission generation has been optimised, and no changes to use that put in yet, but notwithstanding that, the mission board generation was already at it's limits last time it got tested.
 
My guess is the query response times to find candidate systems being a limiting factor for optimisation. Assuming an even distribution of systems (which is fairly safe for the bubble), volume of a sphere is 4/3π r^3, where r (radius) being cubed means a dramatic increase in the potential number of systems.... just doubling the search radius would octuple the number of potential systems.

You then need to consider that for each mission you'd need to consider: State, Economy, Faction Governments, Distances of stations in system, just to name a couple variables. I doubt most of that could be retrieved with a single query (and if so, heaven help the person maintaining that single table of spaghetti)

Maybe the mission generation has been optimised, and no changes to use that put in yet, but notwithstanding that, the mission board generation was already at it's limits last time it got tested.
Surely that equation just potentially simplifies the potential? as there are multiple systems where other systems are within the volume of a given sphere. Take 21 Eridani for example as Ceti sector XJ-Z B2 is within a half light year distance with other systems inside a reasonably sized 'bubble'
(A Good place for Samarium and Osmium, as an aside)

I'm not talking about a 300 or 3000 system option here, although that could be the case if you set the sphere diameter to 250ly as I mentioned but it could be better or slightly expanded on.

I do get your point though that it is very exponential and would need to be limited, surely there is a better way to set the parameters than is mentioned above?
Pug
 
What i would like is the mission board to return back to 2.1 to 2.2 days. The basis being there was real diversity in the outliers and there was a very valid and lucrative bubble exploration game.

Thinking back, what made it good was:

  • Opportunities to stack missions of many types were available all throughout the bubble.
  • In the later stages they seemed increasingly tied to the bgs, if you went in an non active state the mission boards would be empty, but in an active state, you would have a packed to the brim board of data delivery, skimmer, massacre missions etc.
  • It felt like it was the lower pop / low wealth systems that were sensitive to this.
  • While the experience of new players is a valid concern, such removal of depth was a very high cost.
  • Stacking was enabled, i think what sandro said was the range at which destination systems could be chosen was less so that there would be more cases were a system only had one or two valid targets.
  • Instead of allowing players to find one mission of their choice at every station, it was a much more satisfying arrangement to expect to go to a station of a certain economy type to find a majority of related missions. Combat from military, delivery from industrial etc.

New players follow guides these days.... is it really still worth it to make it dumb so that new players are prevented from seeing any "interesting" scenarios over creating a valid bubble exploration game? You can spend hundreds hours doing it. Was the most fun i had in elite.
 
I understand how to get the best results from wing missions. What i would like to know is why the mission generator is willing to exceed 50 million for some missions but not for others. Whether you trying to kill 91 ships or source 1800 palladium, obviously having wingmen will help. I just dont think missions should be programmed to punish you for accepting them even if you complete it.
Because doing a wing mission on your own means you foot the entire bill. In a wing, the purchase cost is split making it more profitable.
 
Surely that equation just potentially simplifies the potential? as there are multiple systems where other systems are within the volume of a given sphere. Take 21 Eridani for example as Ceti sector XJ-Z B2 is within a half light year distance with other systems inside a reasonably sized 'bubble'
(A Good place for Samarium and Osmium, as an aside)

I'm not talking about a 300 or 3000 system option here, although that could be the case if you set the sphere diameter to 250ly as I mentioned but it could be better or slightly expanded on.

I do get your point though that it is very exponential and would need to be limited, surely there is a better way to set the parameters than is mentioned above?
Pug
Not sure I get what you're trying to say?

In this circumstance, States/Economies/Governments and other variables don't cut down or simplify the process, they complicate it. Without getting too nitty gritty, I understand how you might think it simplifies it, and while I don't know exactly how the mission generation works (only dom would know that), based on the variety of options available it doesn't work in a way where those conditions simplify it.

Assume you have a.colour = red, b.colour = blue, c.colour = green, it's not a case of going "get me all the things where colour=red", rather it seems to be a case of going "get all the things, get me this one, what's it's colour, what can I do with that?" for everything.
 
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