They did indeed.
Codebase Refresh - Can we get a Mission System Refresh?
- Thread starter Chaparral
- Start date
It annoys me to no end that I find a system that I want to call home, and can't find the missions/career to pursue in that system.
Yeah - that is not my experience. My home system LTT 7488 is relatively peaceful, possibly because I knockout every single assassination, massacre, wetwork mission that ever pops up. I literally log in check the board, and say, "well, nothing to do today" and go play something else. My preferred faction is the Illawarra Freelancers, but really - I just want to kill stuff. Always courier and shipping tasks...
Like the time I moved somewhere that had good outfitting and good mining in-system, a really short cruise from the star, even a pristine ring with a void opal hotspot - and the mission board was pirate lord assassinations and massacres in a system that put the mission targets 100kls from the star (yuk) or else mining missions (double yuk)
Great. I work as a programmer, and no one re-writes the code base without a damn good reason.
The only reason to do that is if they are planning for the future. Hooray, that.
Realistically a lot of those missions should come from other sources. Anonymous protocols should be an option in all stations all all times to get certain missions from with other mission contacts, such as a Fence contact for theft type missions, a black market contact for smuggling type missions, a faction contact which only become available after you have gained a certain rank in a faction for illegal/war faction based missions such as massacre, assassination and any other type of illegal faction based mission. Within those missions would be illegal passenger missions too.
There is no way any of the above would be on the main mission board even in an anarchy. You don't advertise to your rivals what your plans are. These missions would increase your rep with that contact and get better jobs and can in some cases increase the faction influence dependent on the job (but not your rep with a faction).
As for bounty hunting, there should be a security contact in station services for bounty hunting contracts, where you are allowed to take a few at a time (wouldn't be fair for other players if one person can take all the contracts). These would also raise your rep with the security contact and can increase the influence of factions depending on the job.
The rest of the mission types on the mission board would be for legal faction activity, mainly cargo and courier services and passenger missions.
That's how I would do it and in my eyes would make much more sense.
Last edited:
Not that I can find, other than speculation about it on this forum. The nearest to that in an official statement I could find was this:
"The future for Elite Dangerous is also exciting. Frontier is developing a major new paid-for release for the iconic space simulation which will dramatically expand gameplay and mark the beginning of a new era for Elite Dangerous. This will be characterised by significant new features to appeal to existing commanders, whilst being specifically designed to be a compelling, attractive and welcoming entry point for new players. Targeted for launch at the end of 2020, this major new release on multiple platforms will fall into financial year 2021 (the 12 months ending 31 May 2021)."
Maybe somebody else can point to an actual source for the rumour
So, this is where I've insisted that, at bare minimum, there needs to be a criminal mission board, if only to address the lack of famine and lockdown occurring as a result of normal gameplay, and not trash mechanics like "sell cargo for a loss herp derp"
Basic function is it's broken down by faction like normal, but instead of missions which support that faction , offered by a representative of that faction, the missions target that faction, and are offered by an "anonymous contact". Of course, the side effects are becoming wanted/ losing rep etc, but that's also why unlike the normal mission board, the criminal one is available when entering with anonymity protocols.
Yeah, missions need an overhaul, thats for sure.
What I like to see is
-Difficulty missions. Not just bigger ones, not haul 10000t instead of 5000t, or kill 200 npcs instead of 50. Give us missions that are actually hard to complete, that require efford, skill and a proper ship build, but that pay sufficient to make it worth for us. Why is 'deliver this random load of cargo to the system one jump away within the next 24 hours' an elite-ranked mission? I'd like to have: Deliver these 500t of weapons to the rebels in the xy-system 300ly away. You have 2 hours. The system in undergoing civil war, and the authorities know you are coming. They will send out assassins to stop you before you even reach the systems, and if you make it there, expect a whole military fleet will try to stop you. You will have to land on a high g planet (have to locate the landing zone first) while two wings are trying to shoot you down. Reward on success: 80MCr.
What I like to see is
- General rebalancing of rewards. There are so many missions that just don't pay enough for the efford and time it takes to complete them. Best examples are the bulk hauling wing missions next to the regular hauling missions. Hauling 180t of cargo to a station often pays more then hauling 5000t of the same cargo to the same station. At least half of all missions are a no-go simply because the pay is far to low. This clutters up the mission board
- Give us specialiced mission boards. You can keep the one we have now as default, but add a set of faction and profession specific sub-boards. For example a combat mission board, where only combat missions are offered. Access limitied by combat rank. Or a mission board for a specific faction, access limitied by faction reputation. You could add an admission fee for those. This way we had a chance to actually find the missions we are looing for and that we can take in the ship we have. If I'm sitting in a mining ship I'm not looking for a combat mission. So I would check the minning/trading board.
-Difficulty missions. Not just bigger ones, not haul 10000t instead of 5000t, or kill 200 npcs instead of 50. Give us missions that are actually hard to complete, that require efford, skill and a proper ship build, but that pay sufficient to make it worth for us. Why is 'deliver this random load of cargo to the system one jump away within the next 24 hours' an elite-ranked mission? I'd like to have: Deliver these 500t of weapons to the rebels in the xy-system 300ly away. You have 2 hours. The system in undergoing civil war, and the authorities know you are coming. They will send out assassins to stop you before you even reach the systems, and if you make it there, expect a whole military fleet will try to stop you. You will have to land on a high g planet (have to locate the landing zone first) while two wings are trying to shoot you down. Reward on success: 80MCr.
![[VR] Mad Mike](https://forums-cdn.zaonce.net/data/avatars/m/27/27910.jpg?1553527108){kind=avatar}
Whilst I think 80mil is OTT and whilst I also think you ignore the other side of the coin (yes some missions pay too little but some also pay too much and it pulls the rug out of actual large haul trading) the rest of your post I do agree with.
Some say interesting missions is simply impossible in ED. I simply do not buy that at all. The mission board and all that surrounds it is a massive part of the game for many players so spending some proper time fleshing it out and gi iving it some love is justified imo (even the alpha 1.0 missions felt more connected to the game).
Yes a lot of the improvements would just be more flavour text variants of the same thing but FD have at least 2 recognised authors working for them. I have to believe they could write dozen different branching missions each month with 6-10 branches on with a random chance after each branch of the next branch spawning or not and inject them into the game.
Exact system and faction details would be added by the mission generator , and the missions would only be allowed to generate in the correct security and faction states. I refuse to believe that FD are incapable of that,
80 MCr is much, but I think its justified for a mission that is actually challenging. A mission that is so hard that you cant just stack 10 of them and complete them one after another on one evening. A mission that requires carefull planning, decent piloting skills and even then will fail 3 out of 4 times. And that should be worth it.
If I can earn 10MCr per hour bulk trading without any risk, then 80MCr for a difficulty two hour high risk mission that will fail often sounds quite reasonable for me.
Have you ever soloed a basilisk? Thats hard. Requires a carfully planned build. Lots of engineering, guardian weapons. The right technique. And good piloting skills. Took me at least 10 attempts to succeed. The reward didn't even cover the repair bill for one of these attempts. It shouldn't be like that. High risk, high reward. But thats just my oppinion.
(And yes, some missions pay to much for the efford. "You want to pay me 8Mil for a single hop delivery that I can finish in 5 minutes? Okay, I guess")
This would be awesome - so much more consistent with career orientation.
Braben quote, "codebase needs to be rationalised"Maybe somebody else can point to an actual source for the rumour
That's a quote from the Twitter poster about his 'feeling' rather than from David Braben or someone at Frontier. But either way, that certainly looks the source of the rumour. Thanks.