Exploration missons

[[VR] Bulbulunufus]

"I see you're heading out into the black - can you help us CMDR?"

One thing that's missing (passenger and Colonia courier missions aside) from the smorgasbord of BGS mission types, is exploration.

I'd like to see missions giving relatively high rewards (increasing with distance to objective) to head into the black and do something for a faction - e.g. find something very important, or someone very important. Maybe missions you'd pick up when heading out exploring, for an extra objective.

Could be a scan of a crashed ship or a dead floating ship, picking up a black box/pod, repair or refuel of an occupied ship. A successful mission might spawn a follow-on, e.g. passenger, mission.

The mission giver might provide a "last seen" location and "direction heading" so a bit of searching in system or an adjacent system is required. It could sometimes be spiced with some (disclaimed) combat danger - e.g. pursuit by NPCs, that also drop on the POI instance, where you wouldn't automatically take a jump optimised paper explorer (likewise the NPCs might be weak). Or maybe the faction wants you to scan a certain set of systems for unspecified reasons and "someone else" is in the area, interested in stopping you.

There could be similar PowerPlay missions offered by power contacts in your pledged power's control systems, awarding merits, e.g. to recover a diplomat or industry negotiator or other VIP, off on a trip who has come to grief, etc. They'd presumably have to be fortification merits for that control system (hell, why not apply the same system in expansions too, but you'd have have to be back the same week!).

This would create something to add content and direction to exploration and nicely punctuate an otherwise quieter journey, and give explorers a more meaningful impact and role in influencing the BGS and PP.

EDIT - please upvote/reply to this related contemporaneous thread too: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/lets-talk-about-the-search-rescue-in-this-game.561725/

 

[Eshackleton]

As long as they don't have a timer. I don't want to jump halfway across the galaxy to do a mission, just to turn around and go back because it has an expiration date.

 

[Eeka]

i really like this idea. There could also be missions like "Find amount X of undiscovered Y planet type or stars" or "get some discovered/undiscovered biological information from the sector Z". This would give deep space explorers an additional sense of purpose/objective and maybe help bring more interest of exploration candidates.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

As long as they don't have a timer. I don't want to jump halfway across the galaxy to do a mission, just to turn around and go back because it has an expiration date.

FD have said that the longest they can give a mission timer for is 4 weeks. I'm not sure if this would also apply to open ended missions or whether there is a technical reason they can't allow those.

 

[[VR] Bulbulunufus]

As long as they don't have a timer. I don't want to jump halfway across the galaxy to do a mission, just to turn around and go back because it has an expiration date.

Good point. I was implicitly assuming up to a 4 week timer, but really only as an acceptance of the apparent limits in the game's mission mechanic as it stands. It would be nice to have something more open ended, but it would want to depend on the nature of the mission and the associated need of the faction.

 

[[VR] Bulbulunufus]

i really like this idea. There could also be missions like "Find amount X of undiscovered Y planet type or stars" or "get some discovered/undiscovered biological information from the sector Z". This would give deep space explorers an additional sense of purpose/objective and maybe help bring more interest of exploration candidates.

Yes, explo is very transactional as it stands, "dump your data here and take your credit chit, discoveries will be updated by the carto bot - NEXT!". Be nice to create the feeling there was some functional value in the specific data collected. I like your suggestions.