40mil per mission. Scarily imbalanced, I know. Unless you add a twist. Or several. Please keep reading if you want to find out how FD could add some fun gameplay. Well, at least I think it would be fun 
The usual suspect stations could be made to offer multi-recipient smuggling missions. Say, 80 tons of slaves need to be distributed to 10 stations, and it would pay 40mil upon completion. That's your first twist. You don't get paid after every station you visit, not even a share of the sum, you get paid in full only after you successfully delivered every single ton of your cargo.
Second twist: Cops can team up. If you manage to evade one, two or three systems later you will have an additional cop on your tail, teaming up with the first one. +1 cop for every time you manage to evade them. Cops won't look for you in every system along your plotted route though, but at the end of a 16 jumps path you might need to deal with 4 to 8 cops in hot pursuit, split into two or three wings.
For this to work as described, FD would need to change a couple of mechanics:
- NPCs that are trying to scan you should only very rarely spawn right next or behind you, as having pinpoint supercruise exit precision is impossible
- if NPCs follow your wake, they should spawn around your arrival wake, not at the actual position of your ship
- get rid of the scanner auto resolve for NPCs. It's a cheat
You could even branch this mission into a smuggling / bounty hunting mission for PvP. Here's how that would work:
As humans can be quite devious and lay traps for each other, making them the most formidable opponents possible, system security interventions would of course be greatly reduced or disabled altogether.
Whenever someone accepts one of these "special" long range smuggling missions, various competing in-game companies start offering bounty missions for a similar sum of credits on the smuggler's head once he has cleared his system of origin. To prevent the whole playerbase from chasing after our smuggler, the bulletin board would only offer bounty missions until four or so human hunters have signed up. The actual number of allowed opponents would obviously need to be figured out during beta. NPCs could drop hints about where the smuggler's drop off locations are. Nothing specific, just naming a random system in a one jump radius around the actual target systems. Similarly, the smuggler would be warned about where an ambush might be waiting for him, based on the location of his hunters.
If the smuggler makes all deliveries, he gets the cash and the bounty is cancelled. If he's killed, the killer needs to collect evidence of the deed ("%Pilotname%'s corpse") from the wreckage and deliver it to a "Pilots Federation internal affairs branchlet" that works as kind of a trust for the company that put out the bounty. This would be a simple contact in a station somewhere and would be as far away from where the smuggler was killed as the drop off area for the smuggler was away from his starport of origin. When the smuggler is killed by the hunter, the in-game company responsible for the smuggling mission puts out a bounty on the former hunter's head so that he is now being hunted. If the corpse is successfully delivered, an equal amount of credits is paid to the former bounty hunter. NPCs would always drop "rumors" about the state of the mission, like when a hunted player is killed and the current mission is over. I wouldn't want people to keep people waiting for their target when that's no longer valid.
This mission could be exploited if smuggler / fugitive and bounty hunters worked together. Hence the reason for the bounty hunter turned fugitive to travel an equal distance. In addition, new missions would be put up on bulletin boards along this former bounty hunter's path for players to accept to hunt him. This process is repeated every time the target player is killed and the bounty is transferred onto another player's head.
What do you think? Would you be interested in playing any of that?
The usual suspect stations could be made to offer multi-recipient smuggling missions. Say, 80 tons of slaves need to be distributed to 10 stations, and it would pay 40mil upon completion. That's your first twist. You don't get paid after every station you visit, not even a share of the sum, you get paid in full only after you successfully delivered every single ton of your cargo.
Second twist: Cops can team up. If you manage to evade one, two or three systems later you will have an additional cop on your tail, teaming up with the first one. +1 cop for every time you manage to evade them. Cops won't look for you in every system along your plotted route though, but at the end of a 16 jumps path you might need to deal with 4 to 8 cops in hot pursuit, split into two or three wings.
For this to work as described, FD would need to change a couple of mechanics:
- NPCs that are trying to scan you should only very rarely spawn right next or behind you, as having pinpoint supercruise exit precision is impossible
- if NPCs follow your wake, they should spawn around your arrival wake, not at the actual position of your ship
- get rid of the scanner auto resolve for NPCs. It's a cheat
You could even branch this mission into a smuggling / bounty hunting mission for PvP. Here's how that would work:
As humans can be quite devious and lay traps for each other, making them the most formidable opponents possible, system security interventions would of course be greatly reduced or disabled altogether.
Whenever someone accepts one of these "special" long range smuggling missions, various competing in-game companies start offering bounty missions for a similar sum of credits on the smuggler's head once he has cleared his system of origin. To prevent the whole playerbase from chasing after our smuggler, the bulletin board would only offer bounty missions until four or so human hunters have signed up. The actual number of allowed opponents would obviously need to be figured out during beta. NPCs could drop hints about where the smuggler's drop off locations are. Nothing specific, just naming a random system in a one jump radius around the actual target systems. Similarly, the smuggler would be warned about where an ambush might be waiting for him, based on the location of his hunters.
If the smuggler makes all deliveries, he gets the cash and the bounty is cancelled. If he's killed, the killer needs to collect evidence of the deed ("%Pilotname%'s corpse") from the wreckage and deliver it to a "Pilots Federation internal affairs branchlet" that works as kind of a trust for the company that put out the bounty. This would be a simple contact in a station somewhere and would be as far away from where the smuggler was killed as the drop off area for the smuggler was away from his starport of origin. When the smuggler is killed by the hunter, the in-game company responsible for the smuggling mission puts out a bounty on the former hunter's head so that he is now being hunted. If the corpse is successfully delivered, an equal amount of credits is paid to the former bounty hunter. NPCs would always drop "rumors" about the state of the mission, like when a hunted player is killed and the current mission is over. I wouldn't want people to keep people waiting for their target when that's no longer valid.
This mission could be exploited if smuggler / fugitive and bounty hunters worked together. Hence the reason for the bounty hunter turned fugitive to travel an equal distance. In addition, new missions would be put up on bulletin boards along this former bounty hunter's path for players to accept to hunt him. This process is repeated every time the target player is killed and the bounty is transferred onto another player's head.
What do you think? Would you be interested in playing any of that?