So, to your point: the source or fetch mission uses the standard commodity by/sell screen. It does not use a special source/fetch screen or new clicky mechanic. So why shouldn't the delivery mission use the standard commodity buy/sell game mechanic? This would be matching game design elements with one for delivery, the other for fetch. This would be good game design. Or maybe the fetch missions needs to change to some sort of time-wasting, mouse-click-fest panels like the updated delivery panel.
Sorry, I don't understand what you're trying to say?
Fetch/Source missions work as follows:
- Go to anywhere you can source the cargo
- Go back to where you took the mission, go to the boards, hand in the cargo using the missionboard delivery interface.
So, yes... It does use the "special screen clicky mechanic" ? (I guess, since I don't understand the point you're trying to make there?)
The only thing the updated delivery mission 'mini-game' click panel brings to the game is a change for change sake adding a bunch of mouse clicks to add this 'special' cargo to make it feel like you're actually doing something more or 'new' or different. But you're not. It's another time waster like so many of changes / additions that have been made to this game since release. The delivery menu change was ridiculous IMO adding nothing other than confusion as we've seen countless times ever since it was introduced.
It's bad game design. There's no excusing this. This thread wouldn't exist if this simple game mechanic was properly thought out and implemented simply left alone and the time spent on developing something actually needed in the game.
I'm not sure why you're so focused on this new UI aspect in your response to me, since I'm not discussing that at all. The OP's problem seemed to be with having to take the mission-specific cargo to a destination, rather than just any generic cargo sourced from anywhere. You do seem to think that not allowing that in a mission specifically billed as a delivery mission "Bad game design" though, and I entirely disagree. Like the postal analogy I mentioned, if I did something like contracted a shipping company to ship 400t of iron to a customer in a different country, and after the delivery was made I found out they
didn't ship my 400t of iron... instead they just sold it to some other rando company, bought 400t of iron from somewhere closer and gave that to them, I'd have that company in court faster than you can blink for a variety of reasons. It's totally non-sensical.
Let's look at this from a grass-roots perspective though. I want to introduce two mission types.
- One type where someone is looking to buy goods, and so you accept their contract, find the goods anywhere you can, and bring them to them; and
- Another type where your goal is to ship goods from A to B.
Clearly, the gameplay hook in the first type revolves around finding a source of the requested goods, and bringing it to the requestor. Simple enough.
In the second, the gameplay hook in my opinion
clearly revolves around delivering some goods from A to B. And if that's what the gameplay hook is meant to be, then being able to just dump the goods and source them from anywhere blatantly circumvents that intended gameplay mechanic.
This actually used to be the case in EVE Online. They fixed it by changing all hauling missions to require the delivery of cargo which could not be obtained anywhere else in the game; the only source of the cargo was the mission provider. The problem with this implementation was that when you did leg it with the cargo, you had a bunch of useless junk which you couldn't sell or use. FD had to make the same fix, and their choice was either going to be that, or use normal cargo types and make them mission specific.
Just FWIW, since you seemed so focused on it, the mission UI change was well needed and fixed some "Bad game design". In actual fact, it was something I requested indirectly
back in 2015. It fixed the situation you'd see very often which is getting to an outpost (where your max capacity is going to be 250t-odd) and seeing a half-dozen 180t delivery missions with a 24 hour timeframe for delivery, and only being able to accept one of them. Or what happens more often, you see a delivery mission you want to do (but couldn't accept it), switch to your hauling ship which is literally in that same station, come back, and the mission is gone no more than 30 seconds later.
Ostensibly, FD need to stick to what they said they'd do and apply the cargo depot UI to
all missions which use cargo. That is:
- Donation missions
- Non-wing mining missions (Wing missions use it?!?)
- Salvage missions
- Hijack Missions
Maybe there are some fixes here though. Maybe we can introduce a button next to "Accept" which is "Accept and load cargo" which moves the whole load to your ship, but it's only available if there's enough space. But nonetheless, the requisite to deliver
that cargo and not just any randomly-bought cargo is fine, for a mission whose express gameplay intent is for the player to deliver cargo from one station to another.
