Deep Space Stations Request

[sandkid]

Just got back from a journey out in the black - made a final pit-stop in the Lagoon Nebula on the way in and dropped off some data while there. Naturally, I went straight to allied with the local research group.

Out of curiosity, I checked the mission board (probably more out of habit actually). I was rather disappointed to see only mining and donation missions.

Now here I am, at a deep space station with lots of traffic in system (probably miners and the odd pirate)...and the research group just wants credits and MORE ore? Surely there is a pirate in need of busting, or local planetary bodies that need to be explored and catalogued for this frontier of humanity. Or a data packet to send back to the bubble on their progress? How about a long-distance supply mission - you've got a week to bring us more food cartridges or medicine.

Nope. They just want more rocks. The base is literally INSIDE of a rock. I think they're good on rocks.

Ok, my rant is over.

The Suggestion: Can deep-space stations at least have more missions than mining and donations?

 

[CMDR Yates]

The Suggestion: Can deep-space stations at least have more missions than mining and donations?

+1

Variety is needed in all aspects of into-the-black exploration. It would be nice if the deep space starports offered more of a break from the space madness, including a more filled out bulletin board, some outfitting, etc. so we could spend a few play sessions running various missions and doing some PVE; things we may not have had the chance to do for weeks, and may not get a chance again for some time.

I would also like to see missions appearing in my inbox while exploring in deep space. For example, someone wants a particular star system scanned and the Pilot's Federation have detected you're the only pilot within 1000ly, or a long-range distress beacon leading to a crashed ship with some scientists in escape pods with valuable data for the Federation/Empire. A little more of the unexpected.

 

[Jimbodiah]

The reason Colonia is dead, there are no missions of any type.

 

[MBaldelli]

The reason Colonia is dead, there are no missions of any type.

I'm beginning to think this game has a definite balancing issue when it comes to mission giving. I happened to have gotten back to Ceos/Sothis last night and saw that Courier Missions there are being handed out hand-over-fist. So much so in fact that I was able to max out all the missions on my account and there were still 20+ more to be had from the mission board.

While these missions don't seem to be handing out Modular Terminals, I didn't mind that too much as I finished unlocking Qwent back in update 2.3. But this is also a definite problem for I thought this issue with 2.4 was fixed when they also fixed the cargo bug -- but it looks like it's either not or the missions have been moved somewhere else. And the latter definitely supports a balancing issue.

 

[sandkid]

I'm beginning to think this game has a definite balancing issue when it comes to mission giving. I happened to have gotten back to Ceos/Sothis last night and saw that Courier Missions there are being handed out hand-over-fist. So much so in fact that I was able to max out all the missions on my account and there were still 20+ more to be had from the mission board.

While these missions don't seem to be handing out Modular Terminals, I didn't mind that too much as I finished unlocking Qwent back in update 2.3. But this is also a definite problem for I thought this issue with 2.4 was fixed when they also fixed the cargo bug -- but it looks like it's either not or the missions have been moved somewhere else. And the latter definitely supports a balancing issue.

Thing is, I would be ok with expiring mission boards (especially in the bubble) in which mission boards only reset every 24 hours - so it really is a 'what you see is what you get'. For deeps-space stations you could apply this same concept since you're either going to stay local (thus, the countdown doesn't matter - you'll be there tomorrow) or you're heading somewhere else (thus, the countdown still doesn't matter unless you're in the habit of making 100+ jumps in one day.)

All in all, it just seems odd that stations that house thousands or more are so niche in what they offer. I would think frontier stations would actually offer MORE missions because their needs are that much greater than civilized space.

 

[MBaldelli]

All in all, it just seems odd that stations that house thousands or more are so niche in what they offer. I would think frontier stations would actually offer MORE missions because their needs are that much greater than civilized space.

This would be common sense if the mission generation were based on niche, supply and demand coupled with player population in the area... The problem is -- with Ceos/Sothis -- it seems to be one of those problems that comes with update code breaking established patches.

As it stands -- the way I was able to generate 7+ million credits last night in an hour of courier missions -- it would appear that Update 2.4 broke that section of space to pre Update 2.2 (as was mentioned here)

It's only a matter of time it'll be fixed, and while I know that gaming code does break with updates (heh, you should see the spectacular way Companion movement has been broken in Warframe); there's a palpable difference between DE patching daily and weekly when something like this happens, and FD taking months to apply a repair. And I think this is causing issues within the player community.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Deep space stations have the problem that most of the mission templates have a very limited range. At least with the changes they made with 2.4 they do get mining and donation, which they weren't before.

I think the problem for FDev is how to introduce some long-range courier/cargo missions to the deep space stations without making - as happened in 2.4 beta and to a lesser extent release - the mission boards entirely full of courier missions to Colonia in the main Sol bubble.

The reason Colonia is dead, there are no missions of any type.

Have you tried visiting a station other than Jaques Station? All the others have missions of a wide range of types (53 available here at Robardin Rock just now) including fixes for the pre-2.4 issues which stopped some systems getting any missions.

I'm beginning to think this game has a definite balancing issue when it comes to mission giving.

It's largely balanced for the Sol bubble case. Systems "detached" from that have always had at least slightly weird mission profiles, because they don't have enough nearby systems for the main short-range mission templates to work properly.

Ceos/Sothis, as a pair of systems in the middle of nowhere, gets the short-range templates ... but all with single destinations.

In fairness, 7 million/hour from courier missions is hardly a problem when a single short range cargo mission can pay over 10 million.

 

[MBaldelli]

It's largely balanced for the Sol bubble case. Systems "detached" from that have always had at least slightly weird mission profiles, because they don't have enough nearby systems for the main short-range mission templates to work properly.

Ceos/Sothis, as a pair of systems in the middle of nowhere, gets the short-range templates ... but all with single destinations.

In fairness, 7 million/hour from courier missions is hardly a problem when a single short range cargo mission can pay over 10 million.

And yet.... there are 1 - 10 million credit supply missions from Ceos/Sothis back to the bubble and they're usually no more than 20 jumps from origin system (~200 LY). I typically do them ...for the democracy missions to get my promotions with the Federation.

Though I do get what you're talking about back in Update 2.3. This was typical as I had to relog for more courier missions to take between Newholm, New Dawn and Sothis Mining. Talking with a friend, he confirmed that what I'm seeing for mission board was like 2.2 is back.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

Just got back from a journey out in the black - made a final pit-stop in the Lagoon Nebula on the way in and dropped off some data while there. Naturally, I went straight to allied with the local research group.

Out of curiosity, I checked the mission board (probably more out of habit actually). I was rather disappointed to see only mining and donation missions.

Now here I am, at a deep space station with lots of traffic in system (probably miners and the odd pirate)...and the research group just wants credits and MORE ore? Surely there is a pirate in need of busting, or local planetary bodies that need to be explored and catalogued for this frontier of humanity. Or a data packet to send back to the bubble on their progress? How about a long-distance supply mission - you've got a week to bring us more food cartridges or medicine.

Nope. They just want more rocks. The base is literally INSIDE of a rock. I think they're good on rocks.

Ok, my rant is over.

The Suggestion: Can deep-space stations at least have more missions than mining and donations?

While I completely agree with you, there are no mechanics for this to happen yet. But there will be sometime next year with the core gameplay updates.

 

[777Driver]

And yet.... there are 1 - 10 million credit supply missions from Ceos/Sothis back to the bubble and they're usually no more than 20 jumps from origin system (~200 LY). I typically do them ...for the democracy missions to get my promotions with the Federation.
.

Are they still around? spent a few days in Sothis/Ceos, didn't see any long range jobs out of there.

 

[MBaldelli]

Are they still around? spent a few days in Sothis/Ceos, didn't see any long range jobs out of there.

They are. Huge amounts too... 35+ ton missions mostly to Li Yong-Rui's sector of space (400+ LY according to distance information).

 

[sandkid]

I get the point that balancing mission generation to be mindful of location (and surrounding systems) would be a very involved process from a coding standpoint. Were the game still being built, one would think all stations generated in the black are given a 'tag' indicating they are deep-space stations. This tag then serves as the principal starting point for generating mission types that 'make sense' in the black.

Assuming such tags don't exist - i.e. the current mission generator is unable to distinguish deep-space stations except, perhaps, by virtue of many of them being built inside asteroids (a type that DOES exist for categorizing) - creating missions in the black as of now would just be copy/paste of the structure you see in the bubble.

Functionally, that works.
Immersion, Story, and General Environment - it doesn't.

You wouldn't expect sight-seeing missions from a deeps-space station - but you WOULD expect research passengers.
You wouldn't expect VIP transports that are demanding (no way to satisfy the demands for hundreds of lightyears) - but you WOULD expect mass transit.
General combat missions, particularly illegal work, makes little sense - but assassinations of lone pirates or smuggling rare data or finds would make sense.


So...we can either 'band-aid' the current situation by just giving general missions to deep-space stations and recognize some mission structures will be 'kinda' broken in terms of immersion or even the actual task. Chances are the pricing algorithms aren't yet built for this beyond the existing courier missions. Heck, maybe they're monitoring them to determine pricing...who knows.

OR...we can start discussing what sort of missions SHOULD be in the black (including new types) for future development. However, we know this isn't possible without the aforementioned tagging system. Because either some poor dev gets to recode tags for hundreds (if not thousands) of deep-space stations...or we pray it already exists and they're just not using it effectively.