Enemy ships Queuing up to take your Ceramic Composites and Bio Waste?

[Iskariot]

It's especially obvious with repair station missions, but no mission makes more sense to stack than trade missions right? If you have 300 cargo space, why would you only take one mission to retrieve 5 Ceramic Composite right, when you're going to the same place to get the Composite, why wouldn't you stack as many of these missions as possible?

Now, if you've done this, you know that Elite Dangerous sends 3-4 of the same ship to interdict your ship and steal this cargo for each mission, almost universally. The only variety is that there's sometimes a time bonus instead of incoming enemies.

If you take 10 missions to bring back a grand total of 90 units of Ceramic Composite at a repair station, expect to see 30-40 Elite Anacondas, Dangerous FDLs, Deadly Vultures just queuing up behind you in supercruise, one after the other, to interdict you, die, then the next interdicts you, dies... then the next... then the next... I feel like I should just sell tickets? Maybe have a cover charge to get in?

On the plus side, it's free high level components, big bounties, and mission bonus for each kill.

On the down side, it really takes you out of game immersion like nothing else. Why would the enemy send 400,000,000 CR ships with ELITE pilots to steal my 5 units of Ceramic Composite? Why would each mission send the exact same type of ships? Why would they keep coming after I killed the first 1, 2, or 3? How do they all manage to appear directly behind me in Supercruise the second I enter Supercruise? Why doesn't evasive maneuvering in Supercruise help? The way enemies come at you on trade missions is like a bunch of people lining up to get punched in the face.

I love this game, and I know Frontier can't fix everything, but here are some constructive suggestions to make this better that would be relatively easy to patch

1 - Lower the number of incoming ships, OR base it on the actual value of the cargo... so 3-4 ships will ONLY come after me if I'm hauling 180 tons of Robotics, not 5 tons of BioWaste.

2 - Add variety to the incoming ships, so that perhaps the first is the Anaconda, and the second is a Krait Mk2, etc.

3 - Add some variety to what can actually happen... besides time bonuses or incoming enemies, what about things like this:

• UNIVERSAL: It's less likely for a faction to attack you if you're on good terms with them, so being on good terms with most of the groups in a few systems where you're trading will lower the likelihood of interdiction.
• COMMON: If you've already blown up 4-5 interdicts in the same system, maybe the next guy radios you and says... "I'm not stupid, I'm not taking on your ship."
• COMMON: Sometimes you deliver the cargo and nothing at all happens, nobody queues up, it's just a normal, uneventful trade mission.
• UNCOMMON: There's a follow-up mission where the station you deliver to asks you to source more of the same item, they didn't order enough.
• RARE: The other faction approaches you and offers to buy the cargo at a higher price, causing success with that new faction, failure/fine/wanted with the original faction.
• RARE: If the port you're delivering to has a black market, a pirate faction approaches you and asks you to try to sneak some illegal goods into the port along with your legal cargo. This'd make it so you'd want to leave 5-10 tons of room in your hold. Then you deliver your cargo and also deliver the illegal goods, which you have to sneak past port-scans. If you refuse, the pirate might attack if your rep with their faction is below cordial.
• RARE: On a similar note, a criminal or spy asks to be snuck into port in a life-pod. If you're caught, you face fines and loss of reputation. If you sneak in, you have the choice of turning the criminal over to authority or sneaking him/her in... and getting and losing rewards and reputation from either faction.
• VERY RARE: For food-stuff deliveries, the enemy faction offers you a counter-mission to contaminate the food but still deliver the food, creating a small chance of causing an outbreak. You will then face bounty hunting and a wanted state from the faction that you delivered this food to.

I agree. This has been an irritating problem for a long time.

I also think it should not be possible to get intercepted by the same ship multiple times in a row, if that ship obviously does not have the jump range to intercept you again after you escaped.

I would like FDev to use a bit more finesse to program these encounters.

 

[The Chairmaker]

I don't think he was aksing for a way to "get around the interdictions". He was commenting on how the whole process is, well, kind of silly!

Oh i agree it can get frustrating, just offering a solution to get round the issue, that also saves lots of time and makes lots of money

 

[Th2GrimReaper]

You know what really grinds my gears is an elite anaconda interdicts me then when its about to die it warps out then the same one shows up a minute later will full health GG. fix your game can't be that hard

 

[YRM_DM]

So the cargo missions act like an Anaconda magnet. Fun!

I wonder. Does accepting the mission automatically load your cargo hold? Do NPCs interdict even if you don't have the cargo in your hold?

Maybe this is a good way to gring/farm mats. Accept mission, swich to combat ship, get interdicted by Annies?

I do my trading in a fully engineered Federal Corvette with an Elite Fighter... so, yeah, it's free high grade materials every Elite Anaconda that lines up to get punched in the face... none of the pirates have a chance and they each jump in over the Signal Source of decaying emissions from their buddies that I've just killed.

1 - Enter system.
2 - Get message from Elite Anaconda telling me they want my juicy cargo. Mailbox alerts me to bonus for mission if I kill 1/4 enemies.
3 - Slow down to nothing, put on weapons and wait.
4 - Get interdicted. Launch fighter, deploy hardpoints, kill the Elite Anaconda (which takes about 30-60 seconds)
5 - Farm the engineering materials as shields recover.
6 - Recall fighter, retract hardpoints, enter supercruise....
7 - Get message from next Elite Anaconda telling me they want my juicy cargo... GOTO #3... repeat as many as 30-40 times if I've stacked 10 missions.

Sometimes it'll be a Fer De Lance or Vulture... one time I got lucky and it was a group of Type 10s... but it's always a group of 3-4 of the same ship. If the next group is Vultures, then that group is all Vultures.

Usually it's Elite Anacondas.

The payout + bounty + engineering mats are great... but I kind of wanted to feel like I'm playing a game that feels like it makes sense. If I wanted to just pull a lever on a slot machine I'd go to a casino.

 

[YRM_DM]

Your doing it all wrong.

What you should do is as follows.

Check the mission board to see if multiple factions want specific products.

Visit a station that sells specific products.

Fly back to originating staiton.

Accept missions, then complete them, with the goods you have just purchased.

Jobs a good un, few or interdictions and lots of money made.

Ceramic composites missions are pretty much guaranteed from my experience to generate on repairing stations.
Also i find Polymers and Superconductors also tend to be in great demand.

I actually have been doing that... I'll grab 120 tons of Ceramic Composites, and about 40 tons each of Polymers, Super-Conductors, Semi-Conductors, and Synthetic Fabrics (all of which can be purchased on planets that sell Ceramic Composites). Land and auto complete 12-16 missions, then re-load or do it at the end of a session, and when I come back in, the refreshed mission boards will take the rest of my stuff. It's an easy way to grind ranks.

But it sort of does beg the question of game design.

So... these pirates will queue up in groups of 4 to take Ceramic Composites if I've taken a mission, and they'll do that 30 times over if I take 30 missions. I guess they really don't want the station to be repaired. But if I just show up in the system, flying past those exact same pirates with a cargo of 300 tons of that same stuff, they don't bother with me.

Like other's have said... a little finesse in development/game design would breathe life into this situation.

I'm not sure how they've programmed this under the hood, but I promise, if I had that knowledge, there's 2-3 easy suggestions to make this better, regardless of how they're doing it.

 

[Schmack]

As folks have said, You stack the missions be aware of what you are getting yourself into.

Regarding if Fdev will fix it, I believe they will eventually try.
IMO:
Be careful what you ask for. Many of us "asked" to get the pirate massacre missions fixes. Fdev tried and IMO failed misserably. It was asked to improve how wars were faught and again, IMO this "fix" is worse that what we had before.

The whole mission structure to me needs to be reworked. It has got to the point for me that I look at the missions being offered in the stations I have Allied status with most of the factions and I like, MEH! Unless I need the Mats the credit rewards are pawltry as I have billions from Opal mining. I am looking for fun but that is just not there. I'll take a kill the pirate lord and even stack a few of those for the fun but lately those are dorked up. i.e. Mission Target USS found 3kls away, Target and fly towards it. Then, mission target interdicts me from behind! WTH?

I've taken to just running cargo in my Anaconda not really making a lot of credits hoping I get interdicted just for the fun of poppng a few pirates.

Same here, I'll take those missions just to get the interdictions more so than the mission rewards.

 

[Schmack]

Right... but seriously? You're in an Imperial Corvette that can carry over 300 tons, and there's a repair mission for 5 tons of Ceramic Composite. There are 20 more missions just like that, and a bunch more for Polymers and Super and Semi Conductors. Are you really going to take 1 mission, jump over to a nearby system, land on a planet, buy 5 Ceramic Composites, come back... fight the 4 Elite Anacondas that interdict you to get those 5 tons of Ceramic Composites, and then do it again?

Well yes. You don't expect these low hanging fruit missions to just be without risk, right? I know the risk isn't really a risk but a nuisance but that's in part because you want all the missions to function as one mission where you deal with one set of bad guys. You chose to deal with multiple sets of bad guys by taking multiple missions. The missions in this game never affect other missions you've taken.

I wouldn't take just 1 mission only, unless I wanted to avoid interdictions. Bringing goods to the station to sell is the key, but if you choose to take the mission and run the gamut, that's there too. Doing that with a wing of escorts would be pretty sweet actually.

I'm not asking for a player driven solution really. I could just uninstall the game, or throw my PS4 out the window and go work out. Those are both solutions that also solve the problem on the player side. I could just never take another merchant mission. Lol.

Give me your stuffs before you do.

It sort of seems like the creators of Elite do, to some extent, care about this game. Progress is slow, the story is slow... but there are a ton of details that they do get right.

In No Man's Sky, I had to fight off friendly aliens trying to hand me all the best stuff in the game for free, and there was nothing to do with that stuff. Hello Games went and improved this quite a bit, but it's still not the "feel" of Elite Dangerous where I can be killed just trying to dock my ship if I'm not careful or if I forget to request permission to land. I like the feel that "something" might happen that is actually dangerous. I like the way the ships handle, and the way the weapons work. I've enjoyed engineering my ship (but not some of the grind)

So let's assume for a minute that occasionally, someone scours these forums and suggestions are brought up in a scrum, and maybe they're added to the list and land in a patch 3 months from now.

It'd be a pretty easy thing to improve the way these missions are handled. One developer spending maybe a day coding, at most... then playtest... and these missions would be 100x improved. Let's assume there's a chance Frontier cares... I am, and that's why I made this post.

The way they'll do that though is to reduce these to no more than 5 missions stacked. You'll still get interdicted by 20 pirates.