Complete confusion regarding accepted mission and alternative mission !!

[SirScarecrow]

Hey all

It is the 5th time now I start to do a mission, then I go to some USS and some other NPC tells me to abort the mission if I want better or worse reward... ok, the problem starts right here:

1. As soon as that NPC speaks to me, his new mission request, overlaps my old mission (that I want to do), in my UI.

2. I have now no idea what station (many stations in my system) I accepted the original mission from, as I fly multiple missions, but I am time limited, so now I have to start use a pen and paper to write down where I got missions from or is there a way to cancel/eliminate this new NPC side quest or alternative mission that I am not even interested in?

3. Abandon Option... ok, I see it now as well the abandon option, but this is fooling you to believe that if you click abandon, the current new NPC mission (the one from the USS encounter) is abandoned, but that is not true !!!! Last time I hit abandon after the encounter, it abandoned my original mission (lost standings and reputation), and then it forced me to hand in the new mission that I was not interested in, or it wont disappear from the UI, because there is no time limit to it. So after turning it in, I again loose standing/reputation....

This is frankly really annoying, so the questions:

1. Is there a way to see where I got the original mission from even after some random NPC at a USS told me not to do it and the new mission overlaps my old original one?
2. Is there a way to cancel the current new NPC mission without loosing standing?

Thanks in advance

 

[dementia]

Hey all

It is the 5th time now I start to do a mission, then I go to some USS and some other NPC tells me to abort the mission if I want better or worse reward... ok, the problem starts right here:

1. As soon as that NPC speaks to me, his new mission request, overlaps my old mission (that I want to do), in my UI.

2. I have now no idea what station (many stations in my system) I accepted the original mission from, as I fly multiple missions, but I am time limited, so now I have to start use a pen and paper to write down where I got missions from or is there a way to cancel/eliminate this new NPC side quest or alternative mission that I am not even interested in?

3. Abandon Option... ok, I see it now as well the abandon option, but this is fooling you to believe that if you click abandon, the current new NPC mission (the one from the USS encounter) is abandoned, but that is not true !!!! Last time I hit abandon after the encounter, it abandoned my original mission (lost standings and reputation), and then it forced me to hand in the new mission that I was not interested in, or it wont disappear from the UI, because there is no time limit to it. So after turning it in, I again loose standing/reputation....

This is frankly really annoying, so the questions:

1. Is there a way to see where I got the original mission from even after some random NPC at a USS told me not to do it and the new mission overlaps my old original one?
2. Is there a way to cancel the current new NPC mission without loosing standing?

Thanks in advance

It is already there. If you read the description of the altered mission, the top half of it describes what it was whereas the bottom half describes the alternative including the reward. I've yet to have an alternative that offers any significant reward over what the original mission was though.

 

[SirScarecrow]

strange, it only says now alt. starport and the name of new station. Same yesterday. original starport I see the name but it is blank on the right side... odd

 

[Allant Doran]

I've experienced this too. Sometimes it will overwrite your mission entirely, showing you only the new options offered by the guy in the USS.

The other thing I get happen is incredibly annoying. I'll get given a mission to kill 7 pirates and manage 6 of them. Then I meet this guy who offers me more money for 3 authority vessels instead, at which point I get the two objectives side-by-side.

The problem is that this addition of an objective resets my killed pirates down from 6 to 0, meaning I have to kill all 7 again. I don't mind too much because more bounties means more bounties, it's just a tad frustrating because it does seem like a bug and, on top of that, I tend to then end up with bad USS luck on finding pirates.

 

[Fia]

Yes this whole abandon mission thing is really getting annoying. Any time I take a transport mission now I have to ignore all USS, if it involves killing X number of pirates I am going to have to kill at least twice the amount due to it not counting over half of them and then at some stage I will have to start again because the abandon mission ship is inevitably there at one of the USS. With some mission types it completely overlays the original mission so you loose all the important details. Currently it adds nothing to the game and should be dumped until they are ready to do something more specific with it.

 

[Tyler-Rid]

I've experienced this too. Sometimes it will overwrite your mission entirely, showing you only the new options offered by the guy in the USS.

The other thing I get happen is incredibly annoying. I'll get given a mission to kill 7 pirates and manage 6 of them. Then I meet this guy who offers me more money for 3 authority vessels instead, at which point I get the two objectives side-by-side.

The problem is that this addition of an objective resets my killed pirates down from 6 to 0, meaning I have to kill all 7 again. I don't mind too much because more bounties means more bounties, it's just a tad frustrating because it does seem like a bug and, on top of that, I tend to then end up with bad USS luck on finding pirates.

Yes, had this myself and it is rather annoying.

 

[Jack Schitt]

Early versions of the branching mission code were very bad and would routinely leave the player with no valid means of completing either mission. Things have improved a lot since release but the wording could definitely do with being clearer and more consistent.

There are basically two types of "change your mind" missions, one of which involves taking the goods to a different system (or targetting a different type of ship if it's a kill mission) and another -- labelled "Sabotage" -- which just entails delivering to a different faction at the same destination. There is a third type of mission that rewards you simply for abandoning the original goal, but the payments are so laughably small that you'd have to have serious political leanings towards the third party to even consider them.

I don't have a current screengrab for the "different system" branch but here's one for "sabotage."

Spoiler

​

1. As soon as that NPC speaks to me, his new mission request, overlaps my old mission (that I want to do), in my UI.

It doesn't overlap, but it does re-write the mission title (with a temporary "!" icon on the MFD) and add Alt. Deliver, Alt. System and Alt. Starport details to the parameters.

Because the mission shown here is of the "sabotage" type, the destinations are all the same as the original ones. If it had been the other type, the Alt. details would show a different system. Just to make things slightly more confusing, regular branching missions show the Alts above the originals while "sabotage" missions show them below. Don't ask me why.

2. I have now no idea what station (many stations in my system) I accepted the original mission from, as I fly multiple missions, but I am time limited, so now I have to start use a pen and paper to write down where I got missions from

They should both be shown, but it's not obvious to look for the Alts if you don't know about them.

or is there a way to cancel/eliminate this new NPC side quest or alternative mission that I am not even interested in?

The way to cancel the side quest is simply not to complete it. Complete the original mission as taken and the other one will be forgotten.

3. Abandon Option... ok, I see it now as well the abandon option, but this is fooling you to believe that if you click abandon, the current new NPC mission (the one from the USS encounter) is abandoned, but that is not true !!!! Last time I hit abandon after the encounter, it abandoned my original mission (lost standings and reputation), and then it forced me to hand in the new mission that I was not interested in, or it wont disappear from the UI, because there is no time limit to it. So after turning it in, I again loose standing/reputation....

That's the biggest confusion in this system. The NPC transmission renames the mission's title but adds to the details. If you don't notice the second part it's trivially easy to hit Abandon and lose both. I'm pretty sure we've all done that. The information is all there, but it needs to be clear and consistent.

It's also worth bearing in mind that there's still a bug with the kill missions; if you're offered an alternative target type it will zero your kill records for both branches even if you have one or more kills of the original type. If you're doing a kill mission, don't take out any targets until you've had the alternative offer. Fortunately this is often, but not always, the first USS you encounter.

 

[Rearden]

This is pretty bad for assassination missions as well, after I get the USS "change mission" I find that killing the initial target type (e.g. bounty hunters) no longer counts for my mission although the alternative ("kill pirates") still works, leaving me with no way to complete the missions. Now couple with this that the usual approach to complete these missions is actually going into USS where you risk finding that damn type 9 that will change your mission and you're pretty much screwed if you're trying to grind reputation or change system politics.

Why can't they just remove the branching until they fix it?