Does Anyone Else Find Bulletin Board Combat Missions Terribly Nonsensical?

[Titler]

A little background; I'm trying to raise Empire Naval Rank, but it seems now that in RES zones, the NPCs can be from any local faction at all, so your Bounty Hunting there can often leave you worse off than when you entered the system. This may be due to Powerplay and taking a side, or just a change in a recent patch, I'm not sure. So I tried to get back into the Bulletin Board hunting as a way to become locally liked. However...

I'm increasingly finding that the missions offered not only make no sense, but also screw you over regarding Naval progression. It seems to be that the Faction generates a random mission, from any of the potential target types, so to give an example;



So that group wants me to destroy Authority ships. What's wrong with that? Well as you can see...



The faction is Empire, it's asking me to go to another Empire system and commit murder multiple times against their fellow Authorities...? You can imagine the hit to your overall Empire reputation if you did that.

That one I could easily ignore, but it gets more complex. Sometimes the faction isn't on the list at all, and you have to look in the Associated With line to work out who is really offering you the mission. For instance, I got one that was labelled "Public Relations Officer" or similar, it said an NPC nearby was ruining the good name of the Station I was at so it looked like it would be an official, Empire related mission... but it was being offered by (associated with) the local pirate faction instead. Fortunately when I arrived the NPC was also Wanted so I could kill him without harm.

And then you get missions like this;



That faction (Netcom Systems) is Independent, so irrelevant here, but it's the text you need to look closely at. This "Celebrity" has turned out to be a civilian when I've taken the mission in the past; I've also seen Empire factions ask me to remove "Heroes of System X" and "Generals" who were all innocent and belonged to the Empire faction in that system... and there's no way to know, from the mission text alone, whether you're going to harm your progress in the wider Empire by chasing that target. It's possible they'll always be aligned with the local faction, if they're a General, so for now I'm too terrified to actually try and earn reputation this way. The only missions I dare take are ones with Pirates as targets, or donating to a faction I can see in system are loyal.

Anyone else find this massively frustrating, and against the lore of the game on top?

 

[Arry]

Some of the board missions will just get you in trouble. From; as you say, 'go kill good guys' to 'smuggle these slaves', etc. The trick is, you don't have to do any of them, just wait and better ones will turn up.

 

[Ozmodion]

Yes......

 

[salad]

Well, usually when doing BB missions there's always that system nearby where you end up being wanted for doing Assasination missions, so when I get the Authority Missions I just check if its in the same system I am already wanted, if it is and it pays well, I do it.

 

[Commander Dave]

Some of the board missions will just get you in trouble. From; as you say, 'go kill good guys' to 'smuggle these slaves', etc. The trick is, you don't have to do any of them, just wait and better ones will turn up.

Ding! Ding! Ding!
We have a winnah.

Pay attention to the missions and do the ones that fit what you want to do. Or do none of them. Or do all of them. It's your game. Play it how you want. If something doesn't fit with what you want to do, don't do it.

 

[Ruskodisco]

yeah ive seen those types of missions before, im not sure whether its a bug or actually suppose to do that because of some conspiracy or something

 

[gary.brain]

i prefer these....

 

[Arry]

yeah ive seen those types of missions before, im not sure whether its a bug or actually suppose to do that because of some conspiracy or something

Definitely a pixel conspiracy. Just as soon as you think things can't get any worse, the pixels will show you otherwise.

 

[Titler]

Ding! Ding! Ding!
We have a winnah.

Pay attention to the missions and do the ones that fit what you want to do. Or do none of them. Or do all of them. It's your game. Play it how you want. If something doesn't fit with what you want to do, don't do it.

I think you've missed my point; you can't easily tell which ones are asking you to kill "Good" guys.

You know the faction that is sending you, if only from the "Associated With" line, but the faction they're asking you to kill is hidden, unless it's in the flavour text, and if so it's not clear except from experience which ones those are. Are "Generals" always going to be Imperial Navy? As I'm in Imperial space, I'd guess so, because the mission will spawn in said space too; but the mission itself doesn't make that clear.

And quite apart from the nonsense it makes of in game fiction, it's also atrocious game design; I know some people here mistake masochism for challenge or pleasure, but forcing players to spend 5-10 minutes downtime just for a new set of missions, and then have them second guess the meaning of vague text before knowing if they can make any progression right now for their chosen goals is just really, really alienating.

 

[Queze]

I only take the ones that say target type Pirate. My method is, I start off trading and take any combat missions from my trade destinations. After a few round trips I typically have two - five "destroy pirate" missions in each system (or surrounding systems). The nice thing is a single kills counts for each of missions that are in the same system.

 

[Darth Ender]

I almost always only get offered missions from the minor factions of a system and they always ask you to kill clean ships. I rarely get a mission to kill anyone I can legally kill, much less wont damage my standing with the major factions (dont care about empire standing)

It's extremely annoying. I dont really get caught up with having to do research per-mission, i just go by the faction offering the mission listed on the bulletin board. I almost never see anything good from the controlling faction and that's the only faction I really care about doing missions for most of the time because everyone else wants me to be wanted in the surrounding systems. When I do find a pirate killing mission it's cookie cutter predictable behavior each time. I could probably count how many missions i've done on two hands since January and so far with the overhauled mission system that doesn't look like it'll be changing anytime soon. It looks like some "place-holder" type missions were created for the new mission system and nothing really final has been implemented for it yet.

 

[Arry]

I think you've missed my point; you can't easily tell which ones are asking you to kill "Good" guys.

You know the faction that is sending you, if only from the "Associated With" line, but the faction they're asking you to kill is hidden, unless it's in the flavour text, and if so it's not clear except from experience which ones those are. Are "Generals" always going to be Imperial Navy? As I'm in Imperial space, I'd guess so, because the mission will spawn in said space too; but the mission itself doesn't make that clear.

And quite apart from the nonsense it makes of in game fiction, it's also atrocious game design; I know some people here mistake masochism for challenge or pleasure, but forcing players to spend 5-10 minutes downtime just for a new set of missions, and then have them second guess the meaning of vague text before knowing if they can make any progression right now for their chosen goals is just really, really alienating.

OK, all i can add is, what i have worked out over the last few months. Which is not a lot, this is Elite, after all. However: Forget station faction and look at dominant system faction. Left panel, so you only take missions from them. But you don't have too, you can only get a sense of what they offer you. Kill a general, means to me. Big powerful ship to take on and with SJAs new minions, not a good idea for me in my Cobra. Also means, politics and in this game, anything involved in politics, means rep can go anyway. If rep clean killing is what you want, go CZs, just check your local major factions, just in case one is involved, that is you side if you want to be in with local. If indy lower factions, pick what you like.

As to the missions. If it says pirates, go for it. If you then see a wanted, but local major faction, let him fire first. 9 times out of 10, he won't if you are of a freindly faction, even if you take out 3 or 4 others 1st, as long as they are not the faction you are both in.

I have to say, that having to think about these things; I seem to play by instinct now, more than anything else. One thing, no matter where you are, if you start neutral, all the missions, follow that same kind of format. You can, if you wished to, go to another factions space, get very similar
missions and test the water, without, loosing rep with the faction you want to keep.

 

[FrogsFriend]

It's all shades of grey. The good guys don't all wear white hats and the bad guys black hats.

And then there's the local politics. Just because your neighbours are also part of the Empire, doesn't mean they're not rivals, or even enemies, to your local system factions. If you hang around an area for a while you start to see who's friends or enemies with who, but to start with it pays to be cautious when a stranger in a white hat asks you to do him a favour and please go and kill some stranger in the system next door

Find an Empire system that offers missions in an Independent or Federal system next door and you're probably on safer ground with regard to your Empire standing.

 

[tetra]

i prefer these....

View attachment 46485

Actually pirate kill missions and even pirate assassination missions can also generate negative rep if you're not careful.

If the pirate is a member of one of the sub-factions of an Empire/Fed party even if he is wanted and marked as such and marked as mission target killing him inside the system can often lead to negative rep with the faction he is a part of and if that sub-faction is an Empire/Fed sub faction (depending which side you're trying to rank up) you will get negative rep from killing him EVEN though they will pay you the system bounty on his head.

Entire mission system is totally borked for ranking at the moment, it is still more than possible to do so but some of these changes recently are making it incredibly tricky to stay on the straight and narrow path of positive rep.

As an example:

• Skywolf in this case is a member of Alacagui Holdings
• Alacagui Holdings are an Empire aligned sub faction
• I assassinate Skywolf
• Alacagui holdings becomes negative with me and also generated Empire faction negative rep for killing him
• However Alacagui Holdings are also more than happy to pay me the 264k system bounty on his head.

Of course to add insult to injury, even once you find out you are going to drop rep for this, abandoning the mission will also do the same, so lose/lose situation.

 

[Arry]

Actually pirate kill missions and even pirate assassination missions can also generate negative rep if you're not careful.

If the pirate is a member of one of the sub-factions of an Empire/Fed party even if he is wanted and marked as such and marked as mission target killing him inside the system can often lead to negative rep with the faction he is a part of and if that sub-faction is an Empire/Fed sub faction (depending which side you're trying to rank up) you will get negative rep from killing him EVEN though they will pay you the system bounty on his head.

Entire mission system is totally borked for ranking at the moment, it is still more than possible to do so but some of these changes recently are making it incredibly tricky to stay on the straight and narrow path of positive rep.

As an example:

View attachment 46527

• Skywolf in this case is a member of Alacagui Holdings
• Alacagui Holdings are an Empire aligned sub faction
• I assassinate Skywolf
• Alacagui holdings becomes negative with me and also generated Empire faction negative rep for killing him
• However Alacagui Holdings are also more than happy to pay me the 264k system bounty on his head.

Of course to add insult to injury, even once you find out you are going to drop rep for this, abandoning the mission will also do the same, so lose/lose situation.

Apart from the credits and I find, a very simple quick mission, will fix that loss.

 

[Rick Venus]

I like money.

 

[Arry]

I like money.

It is like muscle, you can never get enough?

 

[rebelredneck]

I love the smuggling mission to outposts

So much easy money

Though I did get caught going into a station and fined 14k (which was fine I was hauling 120K worth of illicit cargo) but what cheesed me off was I was on silent running but still got scanned

 

[Rick Venus]

It is like muscle, you can never get enough?

Precisely.

I noticed the odd faction selection with offered missions and assumed that it was either a rough edge to this game or intentional and something I can avoid stepping in.
The rep decay is kind of nerve-wracking but i'm not doing the PowderPlay stuff so I don't have to be so picky with the offered missions.
Or maybe I do and I'm just Doing It Wrong™.

 

[Terry Bruge-Hiplo]

I agree with OP. I still find the mission rep system to be confusing and producing unanticipated results more often than not.