This current challenge of flying a certain cumulative amount of lightyears to unlock a paintjob is probably one of the easiest ways to implement and verify the progress for the developers, which is a good thing, especially since it includes all those deep space explorers.
Something a bit more involved might be interesting for the next opportunity to organise:
Similar to the treasure hunts, a few clues could be put in global and local Galnet, or highlighted signal sources (like mission or trading post signals) containing one of those NATO-code satellites that send players towards specific locations to look for more satellites (maybe even temporarily override existing satellite-messages).
Depending on how easy it is to change these messages on live servers, they could even switch between several messages leading to different systems after some time to keep some solutions a bit longer obfuscated. At the end, instead of some containers floating around to make some credits, the last satellites could spell out unlock-codes for paintjobs and after some time redirect to a different location.
I think this would motivate some Cmdrs that are looking for a certain goal instead of "aimlessly" flying somewhere to raise the number on the mileometer. Obviously the way I described it would be more like a personal goal and not benefit all players. But the way I see it, these talking satellites (and the morse-satellites too) are a neat concept more players could be made aware of through encouraging interaction.
(The message should repeat with as little delay as possible, waiting half an hour is probably too much).
Something a bit more involved might be interesting for the next opportunity to organise:
Similar to the treasure hunts, a few clues could be put in global and local Galnet, or highlighted signal sources (like mission or trading post signals) containing one of those NATO-code satellites that send players towards specific locations to look for more satellites (maybe even temporarily override existing satellite-messages).
Depending on how easy it is to change these messages on live servers, they could even switch between several messages leading to different systems after some time to keep some solutions a bit longer obfuscated. At the end, instead of some containers floating around to make some credits, the last satellites could spell out unlock-codes for paintjobs and after some time redirect to a different location.
I think this would motivate some Cmdrs that are looking for a certain goal instead of "aimlessly" flying somewhere to raise the number on the mileometer. Obviously the way I described it would be more like a personal goal and not benefit all players. But the way I see it, these talking satellites (and the morse-satellites too) are a neat concept more players could be made aware of through encouraging interaction.
(The message should repeat with as little delay as possible, waiting half an hour is probably too much).
