Kill civilians mission

zikolach

zikolach
Could anyone explain the "physics" behind this POI generation? At once it spawn 4 targets per signal source which are trying to flee as soon as you start shooting them. And next signal source (despite the fact is is "aligned" to exact same planetary body) is spawned at 120kLs.

Is it like the D star is changing it's position (together with all planets) while you are in normal space killing civilians?

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zikolach

zikolach
Northpin said:
Never pick these type of missions in multi-star systems
The POI generation always seem to send it at maximum distance possible

And as usual, it's hard to discern if it's a bug or a feauture
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I guess there is some sort of formula for this "distance to POI" x "number of targets" = reward.

It would be better in my opinion if such missions were more like:
  • go to destination to locate your target (e.g. one of ouposts or planetary space ports)
    • it may spawn as docked ship if at outpost/port/settlement POI
    • or drop out of SC after some time at nav beacon
    • or it may be mining at the ring or asteroid belt
  • let it make a jump and follow by scanning its wake signal
    • you may attempt to kill it immediately (but it will be escorted or you get a fine as criminal reports are not jammed)
  • drop on its new wake signal and attempt to kill
    • the crime reports will be jammed and the target will have no escort
  • when done you get new target location and repeat
  • each subsequent kill could lead to more system authorities trying to catch you
    • especially if your ship gets scanned at public POIs
 

Jmanis

Jmanis
zikolach said:
I guess there is some sort of formula for this "distance to POI" x "number of targets" = reward.
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Nope.

Kill missions are calculated purely on number of targets (and the mission rank). The only missions which do factor in distance are ones where there's a fixed POI (usually a station) at the time of accepting the mission.... Massacres, Salvage, Assassination, Liberation, all missions where you don't know the "body" until you get in the system don't factor distance in to the pay.

Despite whatever the body reports, the mechanic (in my experience) seems to always be, for "origin" being the star you jump in at, "Spawn one near the origin, then another at the maximal distance, then another back at the origin"... maybe it's just a 50/50 chance given a binary system is two clusters of things with a whole bunch of nothing between, but as Northpin says... systems with distant stars are bad for these kinds of missions because it gives a broader spawn distance.

I agree massacres could be much better... tbh I'd rather they become wave-based combat, rather than arbitrary kill counts. Survive all the waves and finish the mission, leave and you need to start from scratch. Why these mechanics in the linked video haven't been used in anger I'll never understand... well... I do.... it's unfortunately just par for the course these days to under-use mechanics.

Also fixes the stacking problem.
 
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zikolach

zikolach
Jmanis said:
all missions where you don't know the "body" until you get in the system don't factor distance in to the pay.
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Couldn't distance be "known" at the time mission is generated and just no shown? I mean actually that the distance at which POI is generated is depending on some (hidden) mission difficulty as well as the reward. But I have no statistics anyway to prove any of my guesses.
 

Jmanis

Jmanis
zikolach said:
Couldn't distance be "known" at the time mission is generated and just no shown? I mean actually that the distance at which POI is generated is depending on some (hidden) mission difficulty as well as the reward. But I have no statistics anyway to prove any of my guesses.
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Nope. It's generated dynamically[1] when you are in system.

I put up this thread a while back which had a fair bit of chatter... I can't recall if we directly addressed massacres in it, but I also recall having done it before as it's a straightforward calculation which prompted me to make that thread, comes out to something like 500k per kill in solo pirate massacres and 200k per kill in wing pirate massacres[2]. Civilian massacres are a bit harder because they pay better, which means they often hit the 50m reward cap, skewing calculations somewhat... as a fairly rare mission it's just more effort to actually get some usable stats.

I'm not saying you couldn't pre-determine the distance at mission-generation time... the game simply doesn't do it is all, and it may not be possible for the game to do it in it's current implementation. I can imagine the information required to do so would bloat generation time for these missions substantially, compared to others.

[1] You can work this out by "forcing" the Mission USS to spawn elsewhere, which is done by forcing an instance change... in binary systems this might be over 100kls difference... given that you could notionally "force" USS to always be close to you. Regardless, while it's definitely no "smoking gun", which would be confirmation of the actual code or it's functions, it's close enough to be an accurate measure.

[2] It's how you can tell CZ massacres are broken... the math for them is back-to-front, with wing massacres paying more per kill than solo missions, while all other solo massacre variants pay more per kill.

EDIT: I should probably add, by looking at missions which do offer range-based bonuses, you can get a feel for what they look like in those missions, and contrast against ones like massacres, salvage and assassinations... that makes it pretty apparent that these don't get any range-based bonuses
 
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Danieros

D
It may be more efficient to just jump out of the system and back to it if the first signal source is at a reasonable distance. The second and third ones can end up in faraway annoying bodies like this. Jumping out and back to the system will reset it.

If the first signal is far then it may be possible to rebuy yourself to a closer station to your target or even just travel by FC if it is THAT far away.

I'd prefer if the root problem was solved - in-system travel for 100k+ ls distances is just a boring wait.
 

Jmanis

Jmanis
Ned Flandalorian said:
As the mission description says you don't have to go to the POIs, any civilian ships belonging to the target faction are fair game...
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Generally, that will take even longer. Most ships aren't "civilians", as distinct from Pirates (wanted), Smugglers (wanted), Traders, Bounty Hunters, Explorers, Security and Military ships, all of which which also appear in other locations (e.g nav beacons).

I'm unsure if "Miners" at belts are their own type or count as civilians, I've never actually checked that... but considering using RES to do pirate massacres somewhat ineffective compared to just using the USS (in most cases).

Unfortunately, it's hard to measure what's "too far to go" with these. The slowing factor is whether you need to transition between deep space and gravity wells or not.

Going 200k ls when you're starting in orbit of a gas giant is painful.... going 200k ls when you're 50k ls from any celestial body is quick and easy.

All that said, yeah, hunting ships elsewhere is viable if you don't want to chase USS
 

zikolach

zikolach
Ned Flandalorian said:
As the mission description says you don't have to go to the POIs, any civilian ships belonging to the target faction are fair game...
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Yes, I did this for couple of targets and if I am not mistaken the crime report signals are not jammed in this case. Does it mean one gets notoriety for the kills? Or just fines, or bounties. This is still a little confusing especially with broken c&p in Odyssey when the information is visible only after logging off and on.
 

Ned Flandalorian

N
You won't get any notoriety for killing mission targets regardless of their legal status - at least for ship missions, one of the reasons C+P is considered broken for on-foot activities is that you can accrue notoriety just for doing the missions the game gives you.
 

zikolach

zikolach
Ned Flandalorian said:
You won't get any notoriety for killing mission targets regardless of their legal status - at least for ship missions, one of the reasons C+P is considered broken for on-foot activities is that you can accrue notoriety just for doing the missions the game gives you.
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Could be you are right. I didn't notice exact moment when I got it - either this kill civilians mission or kill personnel of one of the settlements. It could be that the guards from the settlement were not mission targets.

But anyway how does this "jamming" just "magically" work for all the ships of target faction?
 

zikolach

zikolach
Ned Flandalorian said:
Some sort of bribe from your employer I guess. Not enough to prevent the bounties but enough to stop news of your misdeeds being spread around.
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Is it like these terrorist organization are officially taking responsibility for the act of terror? Wouldn't it be better to clear notoriety and bounties at the time mission is completed/redeemed? So in case you started, but not managed to complete it due to various reasons - you get what you currently have (notoriety/fines/bounties for killing specific ships) + some reputation loss with the faction?
 

zikolach

zikolach
space voyager said:
It just magically does - or nobody would be doing this type of missions. Definitely not worth it with the notoriety.
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Depends on the reward I guess. Some play Elite having constant notoriety - for those it would not make any difference. For others would be limiting factor and probably needed some higher reward to make it attractive.
 

MVBanks

MVBanks
There is another "solution", to avoid long travelling between Mission target SS - QTD. When you are back in the game, mission target is just behind you, and you can continue
again and again. The same mechanics like with HGE.
 
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