@FDev
Sounds to me like an excellent idea - but with potentially bad outcome (concept vs. implementation) due to the existing limiting factors.
The underlying reason for Mode-hopping (i.e. fill the Ship with suitable Missions for BGS purposes or simply to fully utilize the Ship's capacity) remains potentially unaddressed, which effectively would degrade the already extremely limited Mission System even further.
The current Mission System
1) from the looks of it, produces way too much network traffic for the little information it has to deliver
Hints :
a) if network-transmitted, cache seeds for Faction Avatar generation locally with basic CRC (Client images cache refreshes only if Avatars are changed)
b) use modular and extendable Binary encoding (oldschool!) for Mission parameters where feasible
=> chances are you have now cut 90% or more off the net traffic for Clients utilizing the Mission Server
2) is still able to persistently display zero (0) Missions for one or multiple Factions
Solution :
a) ensure a minimum amount of Missions is generated for every single Faction at all times; mandatory sanity-check in order for large & expensive Ships to be brought into effect
3) is still able to persistently display zero (0) Faction State-aware Missions for one or multiple Factions
Solution :
b) this frequently produces the proverbial "BGS nightmare" and requires its own mandatory sanity check
Option 1 : amend BGS rules of Mission effectiveness to permit i.e. Combat Activities during Election and non-Combat Activities during Conflicts; instead of negating +Inf effects entirely simply enable and redistribute +Inf weighting for all Activity Types
(Example : during War/Civil War, all non-Combat actions yield only 50% of their usual +Inf effect and during Elections, all Combat actions only yield 50% of their usual +Inf effect)
Option 2 : full sanity check to ensure 50% of all Missions generated for any Faction to guarantee valid +Inf effect for execution during its active Faction State
btw. if a Faction is War/Civil War anywhere - currently its entire (otherwise quite reliable) Passenger Board is rendered useless for Influence purposes in all Systems for that Faction.
Option 1 IMHO sounds like the easiest and sexiest solution with that in mind, when compared to thinking about something like "Combat Passengers" just so a PAX Mission could have a +Inf effect during a Conflict State.
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Unless those issues are addressed, the proposed changes might backfire badly, despite being created with the best of intentions.
PS.
The listed caveats mostly ever affect BGS workers and additionally depend on location - but especially there one simply does not have the luxury of choosing the location.
Have to live with whatever the Mission Board on location turns up. And if that fails, which it sometimes just loves doing, things get very ugly very quickly.
Especially if the Faction is under active duress, repeated failure of the Mission System for a specific Faction is a 100% nightmare.
