Irritated by the predictable mission signal sources

[Staarlord]

Mission: Assassinate [insert name] at [insert] system]. Scan the nav beacon to find your target's location.

Me: "Okay, I'm here... Looks like the furthest body here is 131,000ls... Guess that's where I'm going. I'll go scan the Nav Beacon and start up the coffee brewer."

[...scans beacon]

Me: "Yep... This mission has asignal source... All of which are 131,000ls from here. Big surprise, that."

Second assassination mission...

Me: "... K, I'm here. Looks like the furthest body is over 55,000ls, guess I'll pull up some social media and catch up on news, messages, and ridiculous memes."

[...scans beacon]

Me:" Yep... As I had thought.... "

 

[Stamford Rider]

Mission: Assassinate [insert name] at [insert] system]. Scan the nav beacon to find your target's location.

Me: "Okay, I'm here... Looks like the furthest body here is 131,000ls... Guess that's where I'm going. I'll go scan the Nav Beacon and start up the coffee brewer."

[...scans beacon]

Me: "Yep... This mission has asignal source... All of which are 131,000ls from here. Big surprise, that."

Second assassination mission...

Me: "... K, I'm here. Looks like the furthest body is over 55,000ls, guess I'll pull up some social media and catch up on news, messages, and ridiculous memes."

[...scans beacon]

Me:" Yep... As I had thought.... "

Or you get to jump somewhere else to "meet with a contact". If you can separate out the contact from all the other radar noise you get to drop out at his/her low wake echo; only, more often than not, to be sent back to the original system, where, you guessed it, your target is to be found as far as is physically possible away from the drop point.

 

[Tarman]

Wasn't the previous method "bomb around randomly and hope you find it"? Maybe somewhere between HEY HERE IT IS and GL SUCKA might be in order.

 

[Stigbob]

How are people supposed to complain about them not spawning now ?. Dang FDEV and their pesky working missions.

 

[Misty_Dark]

Mission: Assassinate [insert name] at [insert] system]. Scan the nav beacon to find your target's location.

Me: "Okay, I'm here... Looks like the furthest body here is 131,000ls... Guess that's where I'm going. I'll go scan the Nav Beacon and start up the coffee brewer."

[...scans beacon]

Me: "Yep... This mission has asignal source... All of which are 131,000ls from here. Big surprise, that."

Second assassination mission...

Me: "... K, I'm here. Looks like the furthest body is over 55,000ls, guess I'll pull up some social media and catch up on news, messages, and ridiculous memes."

[...scans beacon]

Me:" Yep... As I had thought.... "

So this is why you look at the target system before accepting the mission, does it have planets/stations far away? then you can be sure that this is where your targets will be found.


Was so before and and is still so.



But you can also be lucky, even if you have a signal source for where they are going to be found, they can still be found flying around in super cruise. so having d FSD interdictor can save you quite some leg work.
I have never found this trick to work when the mission turns into meet a contact in a different system that then later points you to a new system, now you have to go to the signal source, this is based on me never found the target in super cruise when this have happened.



Also when you scan the beacon, hang around for a few minutes, quite often, one or more of your active targets can decide to jump in on you here, well anytime you enter normal space actually, but if you are already at the nav beacon, there is no reason not to wait to see if they will show up...

 

[Villeruff]

In my experience, they're always also in supercruise for some reason, so I just travelling at half throttle and wait for them to interdict.

 

[Staarlord]

Or you get to jump somewhere else to "meet with a contact". If you can separate out the contact from all the other radar noise you get to drop out at his/her low wake echo; only, more often than not, to be sent back to the original system, where, you guessed it, your target is to be found as far as is physically possible away from the drop point.

Yep! So true. I didn't think about that one.

 

[Staarlord]

In my experience, they're always also in supercruise for some reason, so I just traveling at half throttle and wait for them to interdict.

LOL I don't use one. I don't like wasting a slot for an interdicter, and I don't like doing it in huge ships. I used to fit one onto the Cutter and would lose the contest, every time. This was due to the poor super cruise maneuverability and flipping around, turn-for-turn, was the worse in that ship.

 

[Staarlord]

So this is why you look at the target system before accepting the mission, does it have planets/stations far away? then you can be sure that this is where your targets will be found.


Was so before and and is still so.



But you can also be lucky, even if you have a signal source for where they are going to be found, they can still be found flying around in super cruise. so having d FSD interdictor can save you quite some leg work.
I have never found this trick to work when the mission turns into meet a contact in a different system that then later points you to a new system, now you have to go to the signal source, this is based on me never found the target in super cruise when this have happened.



Also when you scan the beacon, hang around for a few minutes, quite often, one or more of your active targets can decide to jump in on you here, well anytime you enter normal space actually, but if you are already at the nav beacon, there is no reason not to wait to see if they will show up...

...or, instead of having to do all this research they could compensate you more(lol)... It'd be realistic. [Mission giver]: "The target is in LP -410-81 B7. That's 410,000ls from the entry star." [Bounty hunter]: "That's no light haul...an additional 1,000,000.00 for that, please and thanks." Although, to be fair, most of the time I fly 300,000-500,000ls for a target it's something like a Cobra, Eagle, or Diamonback. I guess they feel like they don't want to send someone over there to be killed by a Conda, and have to re-buy ship insurance, fly all the way back out there, or abandon the mission and lose rep...which is probably what I'd do if I died on a 410,000ls mission signal. Thankfully these aren't that tough.

 

[Aashenfox]

These are so much better than they've ever been, I struggle to support any complaints.

I do a lot of assassinations to any system, and while it does happen that they are very far out, 1) It;s not 'always' or even 'common' to be at the furthest body, it just happens occasionally. 2) 99% of the time, they will either join you at the nav beacon (I suggest doing the nav beacon thing in every system you visit to inspect the USSes and also give your enemy a chance to try to jump you), or interdict you while you are heading to the waypoint and 3) They aren't even tied to bodies any more. Often they are in deep, deep space, completely in the middle of nowhere, 4kls out.

Lastly, since 3.3, there are no more contacts (unless it just so happens that I've done 25ish assassinations and been so lucky as not to see one).

 

[Burke]

Sounds to me like you need to be able to fssassinate them....you wouldnt have to move from the star!

 

[Deleted member 38366]

Arguably, we've had those before : "Target is around Body {far, far away}".

Still, a sanity check so that the Mission Target appears around the A Star of a System instead of a 600.000Ls distant C Star sure wouldn't hurt.
After all, why spawn something 20 Minutes SC time away when it could spawn within 5000Ls with absolute ease? Adds nothing positive to the Game and only frustrates. Thus, it's pointless and of no benefit.

But as a "character building", it kinda works.
Just avoid Missions into Systems with bodies at a very large Ls distance. Not much unlike the never-gets-old "please Courier this Data to Hutton Orbital"

 

[cmdr shaggy dogg]

in my experience, most of my targets are not at the outer reaches of the system, but are actually around the inner planets. mission targets can also be easily found using the fss, but often all you have to do is drop from supercruise, stop your ship, charge fsd, hit boost to jump back to supercruise, then you watch your scanner and wait for a few seconds for a ship to 'pop up' near you. that will almost certainly be your target.

 

[Avago Earo]

But as a "character building", it kinda works.

I think a teacher once said something like that, before he smacked me with a cane.

 

[Stamford Rider]

Lastly, since 3.3, there are no more contacts (unless it just so happens that I've done 25ish assassinations and been so lucky as not to see one).

I've only done one since 3.3 dropped, and it was a contact - did at least redirect me to a different system, mind you.

 

[Aashenfox]

I've only done one since 3.3 dropped, and it was a contact - did at least redirect me to a different system, mind you.

Oh god. Thanks for the info. I guess. lol

 

[Misty_Dark]

Lastly, since 3.3, there are no more contacts (unless it just so happens that I've done 25ish assassinations and been so lucky as not to see one).

They appears to be more rare, and more likely if you have collected a bunch of assassinate missions, sometimes I get real lucky and can collect 10+ of these and then 1-2 of these will be go to another system to talk a contact...

 

[BDelacroix]

LOL I don't use one. I don't like wasting a slot for an interdicter, and I don't like doing it in huge ships. I used to fit one onto the Cutter and would lose the contest, every time. This was due to the poor super cruise maneuverability and flipping around, turn-for-turn, was the worse in that ship.

No, they generally interdict you.