TL;DR: When clearing a mission signal course of mission targets for a Massacre mission AND the player still has some targets left to destroy to finish the mission, the next mission signal source should spawn WITHIN a maximum distance from the player. Perhaps , 2500 ls or so?
When doing Massacre missions, the new mechanism where you enter the system, locate the Mission signal source and then head to the source to fight mission targets is MUCH better than the old system. However, there is one REALLY terrible flaw, which is obvious whenever you kill all the ships at the mission source but still have some targets left to kill for the mission. The flaw is that, when you've cleared an instance and hop back into super cruise to get another mission USS to spawn, that signal source MIGHT be REALLY far away. My suggestion is that these new signal sources should spawn AT MOST something like 2,500 ls away.
For example, took a wing massacre mission with my squad mate, target count was 25 kills. We go to the target system, find the mission signal source, head there and kill the 6 or 7 ships. Then jump out to get the mission source to respawn, which it does... but the new signal source is 90,000 ls away on the other side of the system. We finally get to the next source and take out another 6 or 7 ships, jump back to SC... and the new one is back where the FIRST signal was. This scenario makes slogging through these missions a real chore, to the point where my squad (who collectively have been very eager to do these missions as wings) have basically consigned these missions back to the "broken" status.
The distance you have to travel between the spawns appears to be somewhat random. Sometimes when I take these missions, the mission signals never spawn more than a few thousand Ls from each other, and when that happens these missions are GREAT and a lot of fun, especially with friends. When the amount of travel time, in-system, is more than 2x the time it takes to actually destroy mission targets, it just isn't.
When doing Massacre missions, the new mechanism where you enter the system, locate the Mission signal source and then head to the source to fight mission targets is MUCH better than the old system. However, there is one REALLY terrible flaw, which is obvious whenever you kill all the ships at the mission source but still have some targets left to kill for the mission. The flaw is that, when you've cleared an instance and hop back into super cruise to get another mission USS to spawn, that signal source MIGHT be REALLY far away. My suggestion is that these new signal sources should spawn AT MOST something like 2,500 ls away.
For example, took a wing massacre mission with my squad mate, target count was 25 kills. We go to the target system, find the mission signal source, head there and kill the 6 or 7 ships. Then jump out to get the mission source to respawn, which it does... but the new signal source is 90,000 ls away on the other side of the system. We finally get to the next source and take out another 6 or 7 ships, jump back to SC... and the new one is back where the FIRST signal was. This scenario makes slogging through these missions a real chore, to the point where my squad (who collectively have been very eager to do these missions as wings) have basically consigned these missions back to the "broken" status.
The distance you have to travel between the spawns appears to be somewhat random. Sometimes when I take these missions, the mission signals never spawn more than a few thousand Ls from each other, and when that happens these missions are GREAT and a lot of fun, especially with friends. When the amount of travel time, in-system, is more than 2x the time it takes to actually destroy mission targets, it just isn't.