So, piracy hasn't had much love, and as such I decided to try bounty hunting. Hey, it did get a huge buff in 1.2, and missions got a buff in 1.3, so why not?
I bought a decent FdL (D/C grade, four gimballed pulse, C3 fixed cannon), and decided to test the waters with a novice assassination mission. I flew to the target system and found my target. He was "mostly harmless", but flew with an elite's skill and equipment, and had a wing with a dangerous Vulture, and a Viper.
You call that a novice mission!?
I could not, for the life of me, complete it in one go. I decided to bunker down and solve this, use intuition. I decided that I would kill the Vulture first, repair, kill the Viper, repair, and then kill the Python. Nope!
After killing the Vulture, I left with about 33% hull left. I repaired at the nearby outpost, and when back into supercruise to find the rest of them. Guess who had used the damned dragon balls! The Vulture!
I dove in again, deciding that with my months of combat experience (including many an assassination), powerful ship and bravery, I should be able to get past this. I just fled again with 19% hull, no kills, and 5 ships chasing me (2 police Vipers appeared). This is ridiculous. A month and a half after 1.3 releases, and a gargantuan issue like this is left untouched!?
I want to trip my hair out! This game had such direction! How is it going to recover? People are leaving left and right, and I might just join them. I'm sickened.
EDIT: So, tried it one last time, the Python had actually lost the Vulture magically, as if the servers took ages to update, and I was able to kill both it and the Viper. Then, i went back to the station where I picked it up, turned it in, and accepted a "Truth will out!" assassination. It was rated mostly harmless.
I traveled to the target system, and it was another Python, guarded by an Eagle and Sidewinder. I easily ignored the Eagle/Sidey, and the Python was actually an easy-ish kill. I don't think an Eagle pilot would be able to do it (probably what most "mostly harmless" pilots fly). He'd probably still get obliterated. Why aren't Harmless/Mostly Harmless mission against Vipers, Cobras, and DBS's? new players won't be able to do that.
EDIT: I'll just keep it a a tiny bit positive. I like what SJA's done with combat.
I have the same experience, and I can testify that doing assassination missions in an Eagle is ... erm ... difficult, to say the least.
I've been playing since last August, mostly enjoying combat. I cleared my save when 1.3 was released. The first assassination mission I tried against the new combat AI, I was in my fully upgraded Eagle.
Before attempting this mission, I had killed a lot of Pirates, and hunted in a RES to make money, killing Pythons and Clippers on my own whitout any real problems. It was long engagements, but I could do it whitout losing shields unless I made something dumb.
Then I tried an assassination mission. I was probably 'mostly armless' or 'novice' at the time, so the mission rank requirement wasn’t higher than novice.
The target was a Novice Python, escorted by a Dangerous Eagle and an Expert Viper (could have been a lot worst, like Elite Vultures...)
I’m probably not the best pilot, but as I said before, I can hold my own even against much larger ships, UNLESS I’m outnumbered.
The Eagle shields are quite weak, and when it’s getting shot at by a Python, a Viper and an Eagle, the shields don’t last long.
I found the target in SC, interdicted, tried focusing the Viper but the Python and Eagle were shredding me to pieces. I couldn’t do anything, I fled to another system, repaired, came back, tried again, got spanked, fled again.
I came back, and instead of interdicting my target, I followed him, and he dropped in a planetary ring. I followed his wing, engaged them while hiding behind asteroids. Killing the escorts was a pain in the behind, because I had to go from asteroid to asteroid in order to get some cover so I could kill the escorts while avoiding the Python’s big guns. After the escort was delt with, the target was relatively easy. The fight in the asteroid ring probably lasted 40 minutes. The mission took me about 1h30 minutes from start to finish. I can't remember the reward, but it was not worth 1H30 of play time..
In the end, my success completing this mission was down to luck. I would never have completed it if my target didn’t go to the asteroid ring.
After that, I stopped doing assassination missions until I upgraded to a Diamondback Scout.
IMO, the difficulty of the mission is good, but the mission reward and suggested rank don’t scale based on the difficulty, which is .
