Newcomer / Intro I take a mission to eliminate pirates, when i get there I get sidelined

[flAzer]

So I arrive at my target system to eliminate pirates for a Federation faction.

I zone in in a Unidentified Signal Source, meet up with a target who says 'blah blah' and my mission to eliminate the pirates is replaced with a mission NOT to eliminate the pirates. Accept or Decline.

Seeing that my original mission is now gone, I accept and head to a different terminal collect reward, from yet another Federation faction...

Um, beyond a twisted bait and switch, what just happened? Implications?
Had I declined the bait and switch, would my original mission returned?

 

[flAzer]

heck for all i know both missions came from the same faction... wasn't paying too close enough attention...

 

[Dommarraa]

It's been a long time since I did it, things might have changed but I was advised never to accept or decline, just ignore the message and do whichever version you want. There was a bug where if you hit decline, it would decline BOTH missions.

I would check the existing mission description, maybe after kill 1 more pirate. If you can see any mention of pirate, or a counter of 1,then you can still do the original mission.

If you have already managed to decline the original mission, or go and fulfill the alternative, you will take any fine associated with the original mission, and take a hefty rep hit with the originator. AFAIK, you can't get a big hit from the alternative, hopefully hitting accept won't change that

 

[Blaubart]

The suggestion, the ship you found, made, was to turn against the mission giver and kill his ships (usually traders or ppl of high authority). You can still go on and do the original mission By just going on with killing pirates. As soon as you kill the wanted number of them you can bring back the mission as usual. Most mission with this kind of system have been fixed as it sais "alternative target, ... system, ... amount, etc" but apparently, yours hasn't.

 

[andyraptor]

By accepting the alternate mission you actually LOST rep with the faction that issued the original mission.

You can ignore the update and continue as normal ..... the only downside is that when the alternate mission is given ..... it resets the kill count to zero ... so you have to start over

 

[willowfan]

I don't think you have to accept or decline the alternate mission these days (unless the offer is just to not do the original mission at all), they just run concurrently until one or other of the conditions is met.

 

[flAzer]

thx all for your input but still kinda confusing.

I guess what I'm hearing is, even though the original mission disappeared, I still could have completed it?
And if I outright Declined the new mission, I could have ended up declining both missions, because of a bug?

Had both missions still shown in transactions, my decision making might have been easier.
But as I said, the original disappeared, leaving only the new one as Accept / Decline.

And again, that new one was unsolicitied.

 

[the100thmonkey]

I've never seen accept/decline for the mission branches.

Go back/abandon in the transactions tab, sure - I've seen that. Accept/decline, though, never.

Are you sure that's what you saw?

 

[huwthomas]

From what I recall there's still enough information shown to be able to complete the original mission.

It seldom (if ever) makes sense to abandon IMO. If you took the mission to gain rep with a faction, then abandoning is damaging to that. And if you're in it for the money, the abandon incentive always seems to fall short. Here's hoping it will be made into more of a choice in the coming update...

 

[cassog]

As far as I'm concerned these alternative / forked misssions should be done away with entirely. At best, they confuse the issue - at worst in some missions (find and kill a certain character) they make the mission impossible to complete. They are neither use nor ornament. As huwthomas says accepting one will only cause loss of rep and the incentive to do so is never great enough. It is a broken tool that nobody wants - just bin it completely!

 

[markkuk]

After you have been offered the alternate ending, the mission info shows both possible missions:

You can either proceed with the original mission or take the alternative, in this case kill 3 pirates at Doris or kill 2 authority vessels at HDS 1879. There's no other way to accept or decline the alternative mission than by choosing which type of targets you start hunting.

 

[Navynuke99]

So I could use verification on this, but so far I've found that destroying the ship that offers the redirect mission counts towards your total pirate kill count.

 

[Blaubart]

So I could use verification on this, but so far I've found that destroying the ship that offers the redirect mission counts towards your total pirate kill count.

Negative, Tried the same. Didn't get a kill for the mission but a bounty on my head for killing civilians.