Improve mission generation in isolated systems

Ian Doncaster

Ian Doncaster
2.3.10 update: 2.3.10 brought some very welcome changes - peninsulas now get fairly decent missions, and islands at least get occasional donation missions (also, the new systems out in Colonia made a lot more systems 'mainland' anyway). It'd still be good to have the medium-range cargo/courier missions available, but this is much better. Thanks Frontier!

2.4 update With the new mission generation in 2.4 this now seems to be entirely fixed in Colonia. Excellent work - many thanks!

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This would mainly affect Colonia, but might help some of the frontier stations in the bubble and some of the lone stations beyond it too.

Currently in the Colonia region, stations more than 15 LY ('islands') from the next nearest inhabited system get extremely restricted mission generation. Stations with only one other inhabited system within 15 LY ('peninsulas') often have very sparse mission boards.

The suggestion is to:
- allow 'fetch cargo', 'donation' and 'mining' missions to appear on islands
- allow 'courier' and 'cargo delivery' missions with a range greater than 15 LY to appear between systems near Colonia (as they do near Sol)

This may be particularly important once the CEI phase 5 and 6 systems are added and bring in a lot more islands and peninsulas. I realise it might be tricky to change it before then, but it won't be good for those systems long-term if it remains as it currently is.

Some more background on the current situation and the reasons for the suggestion follows:

Islands only ever get Famous Explorer passenger missions. No non-passenger missions ever appear on islands. (This has consistently been the case since we first got an island with the addition of the CEI phase 1 systems)

When a former island has become a peninsula (or part of the 'mainland') as more systems have been populated, it has had an immediate increase in mission generation.

Mission types such as "fetch cargo", "donate cash/cargo" or "mining" do not appear in island systems - despite not having an obvious requirement for another nearby system. Once an island becomes connected, they start appearing.

In the Sol bubble, medium- and long-range courier and cargo transport missions are generated, with ranges over 15 LY, but in the Colonia region these never appear.

VIP passenger sightseeing trips do appear in the region to the three tourist beacons near Jaques Station - but while these *are* available at systems further than 15 LY from Colonia itself, again, they do not appear on 'islands'. Edit: these do seem to appear at islands occasionally.

At the moment the 'island' problem is fairly small - only Eol Prou IW-W e1-533 (Rock Rats Reach) is an island - but there are several peninsula systems. However, CEI phases 5 and 6 will soon add many more islands - the furthest being almost 30 LY from the next nearest inhabited system, which will make this a more important change.

Some current peninsula examples:
Garuda (Vera Rubin Complex) - only near Eol Prou YD-W b17-1
Eol Prou SS-T d3-147 (Knight's Retreat) - only near Kopernik
Pyrrha (Tsiolkovskiy Horizon) - only near Meretrida

And some current 'paired peninsula' examples:
Phoenix (The Nest) and Eol Prou IW-W e1-2469 (Brazilian Dream)
Aurora Astrum (Prisma Renata) and Canonnia (Arcanonn's Legacy)
 
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Ian Doncaster

Ian Doncaster
xondk said:
It is the the new beginning a whole new location, of course it would be sparse?
Click to expand...
Sparse in terms of population or density is fine - it's fine that there are systems that have been added that are relatively far away from the others. It's just some of the consequences of that are undesirable and may be accidental.

The problem is that compared with a similarly sparsely-populated area of the Sol bubble (on the fringes, say) - the mission generation is a lot more limited for reasons that don't seem to obviously relate to what the region does or doesn't have.

There are mission types we don't have out here at all because we don't have the pre-requisities (e.g. we never get "take this VIP on a tour of three systems" missions because we only have tourist beacons in one system) - and that's absolutely fine. There are also types which some systems get and some don't, for the same sorts of reason - for example, some Extraction economies don't generate cargo transfer missions, because there are no Refinery systems nearby [1].

But there are also mission types which particular systems appear to meet the obvious pre-requisities for that nevertheless don't generate those missions (e.g. why does a system need another inhabited system within 15 LY to generate mining missions?) It's not that the system doesn't need mined goods - Phoenix, for instance, didn't generate any mining missions until Eol Prou IW-W e1-2469 became inhabited. Now, along with the courier missions it generates to '2469, it gets mining missions. Nothing, other than the addition of the nearby system, has changed...

I assume whatever hidden rule that suppresses mission types is one which makes sense in other contexts - but it will cause problems when the CEI phase 5 and 6 systems get added and seven of them get no missions whatsoever, and others get very poor selections, when systems in similarly sparse regions of the Sol bubble would be fine.

[1] Except that in the Sol bubble they might generate a medium-range transfer mission to a more distant refinery, but in Colonia (again, for no obvious reason) they don't.
 

Kaocraft

Kaocraft
Thanks for this writeup, OP. I hope something can be done about this. Kinda seems like Frontier has lost interest in the Colonia Initiative; I dunno if they were disappointed by the low levels of participation in the later rounds or what. Still worth bringing up this issue since it would be to the benefit of the mission system in general.
 

Ralph Vargr

Ralph Vargr
Ian Doncaster said:
2.3.10 update: 2.3.10 brought some very welcome changes - peninsulas now get fairly decent missions, and islands at least get occasional donation missions (also, the new systems out in Colonia made a lot more systems 'mainland' anyway). It'd still be good to have the medium-range cargo/courier missions available, but this is much better. Thanks Frontier!

---

This would mainly affect Colonia, but might help some of the frontier stations in the bubble and some of the lone stations beyond it too.

Currently in the Colonia region, stations more than 15 LY ('islands') from the next nearest inhabited system get extremely restricted mission generation. Stations with only one other inhabited system within 15 LY ('peninsulas') often have very sparse mission boards.

The suggestion is to:
- allow 'fetch cargo', 'donation' and 'mining' missions to appear on islands
- allow 'courier' and 'cargo delivery' missions with a range greater than 15 LY to appear between systems near Colonia (as they do near Sol)

This may be particularly important once the CEI phase 5 and 6 systems are added and bring in a lot more islands and peninsulas. I realise it might be tricky to change it before then, but it won't be good for those systems long-term if it remains as it currently is.

Some more background on the current situation and the reasons for the suggestion follows:

Islands only ever get Famous Explorer passenger missions. No non-passenger missions ever appear on islands. (This has consistently been the case since we first got an island with the addition of the CEI phase 1 systems)

When a former island has become a peninsula (or part of the 'mainland') as more systems have been populated, it has had an immediate increase in mission generation.

Mission types such as "fetch cargo", "donate cash/cargo" or "mining" do not appear in island systems - despite not having an obvious requirement for another nearby system. Once an island becomes connected, they start appearing.

In the Sol bubble, medium- and long-range courier and cargo transport missions are generated, with ranges over 15 LY, but in the Colonia region these never appear.

VIP passenger sightseeing trips do appear in the region to the three tourist beacons near Jaques Station - but while these *are* available at systems further than 15 LY from Colonia itself, again, they do not appear on 'islands'. Edit: these do seem to appear at islands occasionally.

At the moment the 'island' problem is fairly small - only Eol Prou IW-W e1-533 (Rock Rats Reach) is an island - but there are several peninsula systems. However, CEI phases 5 and 6 will soon add many more islands - the furthest being almost 30 LY from the next nearest inhabited system, which will make this a more important change.

Some current peninsula examples:
Garuda (Vera Rubin Complex) - only near Eol Prou YD-W b17-1
Eol Prou SS-T d3-147 (Knight's Retreat) - only near Kopernik
Pyrrha (Tsiolkovskiy Horizon) - only near Meretrida

And some current 'paired peninsula' examples:
Phoenix (The Nest) and Eol Prou IW-W e1-2469 (Brazilian Dream)
Aurora Astrum (Prisma Renata) and Canonnia (Arcanonn's Legacy)
Click to expand...

Duly +1'd.
 
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