BBS Refreshing Idea / Live Mission Board

[CMDR Cosmic Spacehead]

Hey all, this is taken from a post I made in another thread.
I'm not entirely sure what effect mode switching has on EDs servers, but i believe a vast majority of players don't find it a fun way to find a mission they want.
So this may solve those issues, and add some artificial life to the galaxy.

Live Mission Board
Now, when you load the BBS for the first time, it does what it always does and populate it with missions.
But, now each mission, now has a hidden expiration timer, something between 60-120 seconds, when it expires, that mission is removed, and is replaced with another, which also has a timer. And so on.
If you happen to be browsing that faction representatives missions when one (or more) expires, it will tag the mission as expired, then dissolve using the funky hologram loading animation, then all the missions below it move up, and the new one(s) is placed at the bottom.

Missions should never expire while you're reading them(because that would be annoying,), but may expire as soon as you return to the main board. And to prevent all the mission expiring at the same time, only a certain %(30%?) of all missions timers can be running at any one time.
Occasionally, missions may not be replaced when they expire, or even be replaced with 2 or more, just to add variety.

This would simulate NPCs(and players I suppose) taking on the same missions you are looking at, by making the BBS feel shared, even though it is not.

So you could sit back, with a cup of coffee, and wait for faction representative to refresh the board, a bit like those boards at airports, and train stations.
Not exciting gameplay by any means, but it's quite realistic.

For added effect, you could even tie the mission timer to the BGS state, higher populations spawn more missions, but with shorter timers. Lower population spawn less missions, but their timers are much longer.

Let me know what you think, and feel free to ask questions, it's kinda hard to explain.

CMDR CosmicSpacehead

 

[DocLooshkin]

Hello, CSH.

I can see a couple of issues with this one.

As is, I think this suggestion might put a lot of extra and unnecessary load on the servers. Mode switching presumably does that already, but it's not a practise that's universal among players and not connected and running continuously when someone's looking for missions, as this seems like it would be.

I also think that 60 - 120 seconds is more than a bit on the rushed side. The game should give players the time they need to make an informed decision - and ideally, they should have enough time to properly absorb the mission details, viewing the galmap and local maps as part of that process, before returning to the mission screen and making their decision. For some players, just loading the galmap can take two minutes on its own.

Perhaps generating more missions in the first place would mitigate much of the problem - and much of the need for this suggestion, in any event. Running four to five minute timers would seem more practical for browsing purposes - and locking a mission so it can't time out, while it or the maps are being viewed, would help even more.

 

[CMDR Cosmic Spacehead]

Very true, I think a longer timer would be better. I'm not sure why I picked such a short time, after all, I'm probably the slowest reader on these forums!

For behind the scenes work, I kind of implied, but never explained, that the system would generate around 50(or whatever) missions, but only show you a small number, similar to the amount we see now.
Then it just switches the pre-loaded missions out, and doesn't need to ask the server until a big refresh happens.
If you wait long enough, you may see the same missions pop up again. But other than the initial loading from the servers, the rest is kept locally, unless you mode switch or undock of course.