A question on mission generation

[PerchyPanther]

In broad terms, should the mission board in a station be throwing up the same type and value of missions for all commanders who visit at the same time, assuming that they are all in equal standing with the factions in that station?

I am in a squadron of 10 CMDRS across all 3 platforms and in one of our home systems, over the last couple of days, the mission board in one of the stations has been pretty consistently generating high value wing mining missions for purchasable commodities for me but no one else in the squadron is seeing them on the boards. All commanders are fully allied, with all factions.

I had always assumed that, a little sprinkle of RNG aside, the type, values and commodities for the generated missions were fairly consistent between CMDRS and were influenced by station type, faction states and the individual CMDRS faction reputation which, in this instance, should be the same across the whole squadron.

Have I just been blessed by RNGesus?

 

[Factabulous]

Are all the CMDRs the same rank? That's the main other discriminator, other than Allied-ness that I can think of.

 

[PerchyPanther]

All CMDRS are the same trade rank and mostly the same in explo and combat.

I hit six of these missions in two hours last night and logged on for five minutes this morning to do a random check and hit another one. Nobody else has found one.

 

[Factabulous]

No idea then - according to the guy who actually writes the missions only ranks, reps and engineers (?) can affect missions. Maybe your playmates are lying to you about their ranks

The mission system is not and has never been aware of your ship or cargo while generating missions.

All it knows about any particular player before the mission list hits the client is their ranks, reputations, and unlocked engineers.

After it hits the client, it makes missions available or unavailable due to the player's ship, but it doesn't typically hide anything, it just stops you from accepting the mission (e.g because the ship is too big to land at the target market).

 

[PerchyPanther]

Maybe your playmates are lying to you about their ranks

....or maybe i'm lying to them about mine

 

[Dominic Corner]

Hi there,

Broadly speaking it should be the same missions for everyone, with a little scaling for rank and reputation.
Whilst most missions cannot fail generation at scale stage, scaling for rank and reputation scaling can sometimes end up invalidating missions, which can mean your list is slightly different to theirs.

Eg. of the missions which would have been sent, 5 are invalid for you because the system was unable to find an appropriate target (generally settlement hack and disable missions) so they are replaced by another 5 missions. Your friends, however were able to have missions scaled successfully and so got those 5 missions you were lacking.

Additionally, it's possible you're just contacting a different missions server, which for some reason likes these missions. The procedural systems which determine mission generation do make an effort to synchronise with each other, but they can drift slightly and end up with different results.

Thanks,
Dom

 

[dekot]

Hi there,

Broadly speaking it should be the same missions for everyone, with a little scaling for rank and reputation.
Whilst most missions cannot fail generation at scale stage, scaling for rank and reputation scaling can sometimes end up invalidating missions, which can mean your list is slightly different to theirs.

Eg. of the missions which would have been sent, 5 are invalid for you because the system was unable to find an appropriate target (generally settlement hack and disable missions) so they are replaced by another 5 missions. Your friends, however were able to have missions scaled successfully and so got those 5 missions you were lacking.

Additionally, it's possible you're just contacting a different missions server, which for some reason likes these missions. The procedural systems which determine mission generation do make an effort to synchronise with each other, but they can drift slightly and end up with different results.

Thanks,
Dom

Please fix megaship and installation looting and DBS cockpit

 

[Sir.Tj]

Hi there,

Broadly speaking it should be the same missions for everyone, with a little scaling for rank and reputation.
Whilst most missions cannot fail generation at scale stage, scaling for rank and reputation scaling can sometimes end up invalidating missions, which can mean your list is slightly different to theirs.

Eg. of the missions which would have been sent, 5 are invalid for you because the system was unable to find an appropriate target (generally settlement hack and disable missions) so they are replaced by another 5 missions. Your friends, however were able to have missions scaled successfully and so got those 5 missions you were lacking.

Additionally, it's possible you're just contacting a different missions server, which for some reason likes these missions. The procedural systems which determine mission generation do make an effort to synchronise with each other, but they can drift slightly and end up with different results.

Thanks,
Dom

Thanks for taking the time to explain. @Dominic Corner

 

[Quantis Trap]

I wish the mission system in Elite Dangerous had more depth like the one in No Man's Sky and/or the one in X4!

Personally, I'd give up many of the features we know about in Odyssey to have a better mission system in this game!
Would have definitely given up PowerPlay for it!

 

[Mrc_NorthEast]

I have seen a few great delivery missions over the last two weeks. But it is 1 or 2 a day, with an Allied faction. I am only Novice - Entrepreneur - Trailblazer - Helpless. I usually check 5 different stations to find these missions as well, it is usually worth it. Last night it was Deliver 81 units Palladium for 21million, night before was Source some meds for 11million. So if you are willing to search around you can find those missions, but they are rare.

 

[d8veh]

I might be mistaken, but I seem to remember something in the past about wing missions, where the missions were limited if someone in the wing already had one. Try de-winging to see if that fixes it, then wing-up after you get the missions.

 

[Dominic Corner]

I might be mistaken, but I seem to remember something in the past about wing missions, where the missions were limited if someone in the wing already had one. Try de-winging to see if that fixes it, then wing-up after you get the missions.

Hi there,

Other people having missions will not affect your mission list at all.

Thanks,
Dom

 

[dannysquid]

My main complaint about missions is that if I'm flying through the bubble with a specific destination in mind, it's very rare that I find a mission going to the next waypoint on my route. Perhaps a few missions could be generated that take into account the direction you're heading. Or perhaps there could be hitchhiker missions where you just have to take them CLOSER to their destination (for a reduced fee). Would make things seem a bit more alive. And they could offer big cash along the way to take them all the way there.

 

[Jmanis]

Eg. of the missions which would have been sent, 5 are invalid for you because the system was unable to find an appropriate target (generally settlement hack and disable missions) so they are replaced by another 5 missions. Your friends, however were able to have missions scaled successfully and so got those 5 missions you were lacking.

That's very interesting that target/system gets set as part of "mission scaling ".

Keeping up with your example of settlement hack and disable missions, i got triple elite a couple years back now. A long term trend I've noticed is that not all facilities which could be hack targets, are hack targets. I can't give an explicit example right now (on phone) but I've got an example i can post later.

Anyway... is it possible that i never see some facilities come up as targets because, as triple elite, those missions get scaled up in such a way that those facilities will never pair to a mission at my rank/ in vicinity of my rank?

 

[varonica]

My main complaint about missions is that if I'm flying through the bubble with a specific destination in mind, it's very rare that I find a mission going to the next waypoint on my route. Perhaps a few missions could be generated that take into account the direction you're heading. Or perhaps there could be hitchhiker missions where you just have to take them CLOSER to their destination (for a reduced fee). Would make things seem a bit more alive. And they could offer big cash along the way to take them all the way there.

That's a bit....magicy isn't it? How would the mission board know where you were heading? Ok yes it's a game and of course that data is stored on your PC as the route you are flying, but there's really no way for the mission board, realistically, to know where you are heading, unless you post that information publicly to see if any mission givers are interested. I do have a problem with information being supplied that couldn't possibly be known outside the gaming reference, I guess it's from my time playing D&D.

What I would like to see is the ability to post your route to the mission manager and then see if anyone will give you missions to take that way, with the added negative that since you are posting it publicly carrying valuable cargo may attract more pirates, more dangerous than the usual pirates. Basically if you just take missions anonymously then no-one except the mission giver knows where you are going and what you are hauling, but if you advertise it publicly as in posting to the mission board, "hey I am heading to Pareto, anypne got anything they want delivered that way?" then everyone else know exactly where you are going and increases the hazard of the trip.

 

[Jmanis]

That's a bit....magicy isn't it?

And exploitable.

 

[PerchyPanther]

OP here - Thanks to @Dominic Corner for the explanation.

Based on that I think it might be that we were contacting different mission servers. Tried again last night and compared mission boards between CMDRS and there were broadly two sets of missions being offered at the same station.

So, working as intended with a bit of good luck on my part that I just had a run of hitting the jackpot missions. Praise be to RNGesus!

Thanks again.

 

[EidLeWeise]

Please fix megaship and installation looting and DBS cockpit

A Dev is going out of his way, well outside of office hours to answer a question about mission generation in a pretty damn informative way. How self entitled are you to (politely) demand that he fixes some vague statements... I for one never knew that Megaships looted installations, and my lord I am glad to know that the DBS cockpit doesn't hold a vacuum... imagine how embarrassing it'd be if I took my Remlock off to scratch my nose.

Dom... thank you for 'being one of the good ones', thanks for caring about the game you work on and thanks for caring about us...

Eid

 

[Brrokk]

Hi there,

Broadly speaking it should be the same missions for everyone, with a little scaling for rank and reputation.
Whilst most missions cannot fail generation at scale stage, scaling for rank and reputation scaling can sometimes end up invalidating missions, which can mean your list is slightly different to theirs.

Eg. of the missions which would have been sent, 5 are invalid for you because the system was unable to find an appropriate target (generally settlement hack and disable missions) so they are replaced by another 5 missions. Your friends, however were able to have missions scaled successfully and so got those 5 missions you were lacking.

Additionally, it's possible you're just contacting a different missions server, which for some reason likes these missions. The procedural systems which determine mission generation do make an effort to synchronise with each other, but they can drift slightly and end up with different results.

Thanks,
Dom

Absolutely brilliant to have an actual programmer responding to a question on here. Thanks!

 

[dannysquid]

What I would like to see is the ability to post your route to the mission manager and then see if anyone will give you missions to take that way, with the added negative that since you are posting it publicly carrying valuable cargo may attract more pirates, more dangerous than the usual pirates. Basically if you just take missions anonymously then no-one except the mission giver knows where you are going and what you are hauling, but if you advertise it publicly as in posting to the mission board, "hey I am heading to Pareto, anypne got anything they want delivered that way?" then everyone else know exactly where you are going and increases the hazard of the trip.

Excellent idea!