Exploration == Combat?

kpmop

K
Was playing last night and I spotted a black retrieval mission with a 5 CIF reward, it was Elite ranked and warned that "hostile ships" would be sent against me. Fine, I'll take my Cobra if it all goes wrong the rebuy is peanuts. So yes it went badly, i dropped into the USS located the black boxes, scooped the first one, wooshing sound as five ships jump in, the familiar sound of incoming fire, so far so normal. Anyway I messed up and got vaporised in about 10s (I forgot to set a high wake target and lost precious seconds fumbling around setting that up) yeah fine, my fault ...

HOWEVER, as I double checked the mission after the restart I noticed that the Elite rank was actually Exploration Elite (I'm not sure why I thought it was Elite combat - i'm only up to expert so shouldn't have got one at that rank...).

I'm not sure how flying long distances (I've done Sag A* and back) and scanning lots of planets really prepares you to take on 5 NPCs at once in medium sized PvE configured ship. Maybe during this Beyond QoL improvment work, we can get some Exploration ranked missions that actually involve exploration of some kind, or at least make use of the all "mad skillz" i picked up jumping and honking my way across the galaxy.

Obviously some new & interesting exploration mechanics would be ideal, but these missions need a little work too.

o7
 

Deleted member 38366

D
There's no connection between Salvage Missions and Exploration. I guess the Mission System guy was once forced to include Exploration Ranks, naturally didn't find any Exploration Missions and just went for a few Mission types that were leftover :D

One day we might see Exploration Missions with UC as the tasking agency as suggested/requested years ago. But basically I doubt it'll ever happen.

When Planetary Salvage & Looting is misinterpreted as "Planetary Mining", bubble Tourism skyrockets Exploration Rank without ever leaving the bubble or i.e. the Mission System still subject to severe issues after a full 3+ years and several reiterations, you just know the gig is up.
 

kpmop

K
Pliedies said:
Ruin scans are exploration missions aren't they?
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True, but they don't tend to turn up on the mission boards - they're usually special events e.g. a Ram Tah mission. I was mostly saying that the general run-of-the-mill exploration missions seem to be combat focused and not particularly exploration focused (such as it is).

Maybe there could be missions that were a scaled down versions of the ruins - top of my head - "An anomoly has been detected on a planet orbiting a class A star in the general vicinity of [some other neaby star] - please locate and scan this anomoly." So you'd fly to the rough location and search the nearby systems of the right star class, scan the planets, find the planet with the mini-ruins (via DDS), land scan it and toddle off back to base... or something.

But dropping into a USS and getting whacked by 5 NPCs isn't really my idea of exploration... ;)
 

Pliedies

Pliedies
I have a hunch we will all be embroiled in alien war some time soon. Combat /replenish/exploration missions will become imperative to station survival. Lets hope , anyway.
 

Fyren

Fyren

kpmop

K
Fyren said:
Posted about this exact issue a couple of weeks ago.
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Yeah I did a quick search to see if this had already come up (not surprised it has) - didn't spot your post though!

Fyren said:
Therefore, if there's is a combat element, treat the rank as a combat rank requirement and adjust your decision to take or refuse the mission accordingly.
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Catch there is that I generally only get offered Pioneer/Elite ranked "exploration" missions which is quite a bit above my actual combat "skill" level (expert) / survivability of my ship.
To be fair I took the mission well aware that I'd probably die - it was only later I actually realised it was supposed to be an exploration mission!

Ho hum.
 
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