Sure thing. Just warning.
Is The Game Rigged Or Is It Just Me?
- Thread starter CaptJoeTurdley
- Start date
The code that creates missions is either dodgy or it's a feature, I'm not decided yet. I often end up having offered only missions of the same type. Yesterday I had only planet surface scan missions for one faction and only courier missions for another.
I don't know if there's some hidden mission progression dynamic or not, but missions aren't purely random.
I disagree missions aren't purely random, based on pre- and post- board flipping removal observations.
A key thing I want to assert to start with is the general distribution of missions on an arbitrary mission board is no different before and after mode flipping was removed. A general observation about that distribution is inline with what you're suggesting, which is that mission board generation is "blobby"... once the mission board picks a type to populate, it tends to populate lots of them.
The reason mode-flipping worked was that there were two mission servers, one for Solo Players, one for non-Solo players (Private Groups, Open Play). These two servers had unique seeds, which meant the random generation of missions would be different, but generate the same missions within the 15-minute validity period (i.e every 15 minutes, the boards generate new missions, noting this is 10 minutes today post-removal of mode flipping). This could be proven by flipping from Solo to Open, then back to Solo, without bridging two validity periods.
- (In Solo) Mission board would generate a set of missions, say, S1
- (In Open) Mission board would generate a new set of missions, say, S2
- (Back in Solo) Mission board would generate the original set of missions S1 [1]
The only difference between these two servers was the seed; all other information, state, government, economy, anything else, is common between those two servers, as it's the one BGS for both open/solo. Now comes the kicker...
For all conditions held static, including the validity window, I could generate one mission listing in Solo and get, say, a bunch of delivery, salvage and source missions, and then mode-flip to Open, and get a bunch of assassination, massacre and mining missions. Of course, sometimes they'd be the same, but it'd be fair to say that the difference between the two boards was always somewhere on a slider ranging from "No difference" to "Completely different in all ways". Also remember; all other conditions are common between the two servers, only the seeding of those servers is different. This creates two possible conclusions:
- The generation of missions is totally random[2]; or
- The generation of missions is not random, but the impact of the random seed on the server is so significant that it renders all other conditions meaningless.
I lean towards it being random, under the following conditions:
Assertion: Mission Server has a hard limit of =~ 100 missions per board generation... the actual number may be different.
Step 1: Distribute 100 "missions" randomly between the factions in system. This doesn't necessarily have to equal the hard limit, but it cannot exceed it
Step 2: For each Faction with Y allocated missions
Step 2a: Randomly pick an available mission type from a weighted list[3]
Step 2b: Generate an amount of missions 0 < X < Some Fraction of Y or a fixed value Z, whichever is higher
This would bias generation in favour of multiple missions of the same type, at the unavailability of others.
Step 1: Distribute 100 "missions" randomly between the factions in system. This doesn't necessarily have to equal the hard limit, but it cannot exceed it
Step 2: For each Faction with Y allocated missions
Step 2a: Randomly pick an available mission type from a weighted list[3]
Step 2b: Generate an amount of missions 0 < X < Some Fraction of Y or a fixed value Z, whichever is higher
This would bias generation in favour of multiple missions of the same type, at the unavailability of others.
[1] FD reported this was the expected behaviour, though sometimes through chance you could force a new generation through enough flipping.
[2] I'm drawing up a chart and slowly gathering evidence... but people seem to think that Economy, State, Government type have impacts on the availability of mission types; it provably does not. That is, Massacre, Delivery, Source, Courier, Surface Installation, Assassination, Salvage etc. are all available from any combination at any time. It only affects flavour text and the underlying theme of the mission (Deliver Food in famine, vs Deliver Medicine in outbreak, or Massacre Pirates in Non-war states vs Massacre Enemy Ships in War). Note there are some parameters which do affect the availability of missions, but Economy, State and Government type are not factors... except for Criminal Anarchy factions.
[3] It is true that on some occasions, certain types are more commonplace based on state, such as source missions in outbreak/famine, or massacre missions in War, the latter mostly a by-product of a misreported bug meaning FD have guaranteed a minimum amount of massacre missions spawning now... so some weighting of mission types occurs.
Dont you need the ships to be at the same station to switch ships?
If that is happening, take the mission, then switch ships, then load up! Ta da! You've beat the system!
Definitely seems to be the case.
And when we don't have a particular state on in our system, a majority of missions are to Colonia.... ugh.
What you wrote might be the case for arbitrary missions, as you said it yourself. If I'd take a random route through the Bubble while never docking in the same system twice, I'd expect missions to be more or less random.
What I wrote refers to mission boards for selected factions after I became allied with them. I wasn't trying to document or gather evidence, I was just amused when two factions in one station suddenly offered only one type of missions, as if I drained the pool of possible missions by cherry picking only those I was in the mood doing.
If you want to have more data, tell me and I'll gladly document my efforts.
BTW my current home system is an anarchy.
I noticed something but with combat. If I outfit with seeker missiles every single ship has dual point defense and zero chaff.
If I switch to my gimballed builds, every single ship has dual chaff and zero PD. Go figure.
Now that I think of it, I'm going to break the Internet tonight and build a dual gimballed missle rack combo Mamba.
If I switch to my gimballed builds, every single ship has dual chaff and zero PD. Go figure.
Now that I think of it, I'm going to break the Internet tonight and build a dual gimballed missle rack combo Mamba.
I feel your pain. Whenever I want to duel BigMäc, he has dual chaffs equipped as if he knows that I'm a gimbal n00b.
Next time I'll ram him to death. He'll never see that coming.
Not really a theory... merely one of the best trade QOL updates ever. You do know that the depot system allows you to accept missions even if your cargo capacity is too low and you can make multiple runs to finish the mission?
If your larger ship isn't at the same port, accept that high paying mission. Accept them all. Stack them, have your larger ship transferred, and start doing partial loads while you wait. If there is no starport at the mission giving station, check if there's one at the end of the run, and have it transferred to the destination station after you make one partial load run. If there's no starport at the destination station there's got to be one along the route.
Hi there,
Economy, state, and government type are the primary factors on availability and prevalence of mission types at a given market.
Thanks,
Dom
Confuse him by fitting a bunch of seekers...
Then next time back to gimbals as he would have swapped to PD...
I'm really keen to understand what's meant by that, and wonder if we mean something different by type.... specifically, I'd love to hear some direct counter-examples to my claim.
To be clear on my understanding, I call "type" the base activity being undertaken, but distinguish on legality. So for salvage missions (not an exhaustive list...)...
I'd call all of these the same type. Target commodity changes and the flavour text changes, but fundamentally, they're same mission in terms of gameplay experience and activity required.
But I'd call this one different, because it's illegal and carries a different risk profile.
There's also different flavour-text for missions offered by different government types, such as the wording on assassination missions for Communism factions vs Dictatorships, but I call them the same too.
EDIT: Just to further clarify the above... in a Boom state you might get "Assassinate Pirate Lord"... in a War state you might get "Assassinate Deserter"... but these are the same, as they're both "Fly to different system, find wanted target, kill them"
Economy seems to change cargo types sought/delivered, consistent with what's available/in demand, but they're still just source/deliver missions
State seems to change cargo types and flavour text, like in the above examples
Government, for the most part, just seems to change flavour text
Criminal-ethos Anarchy factions are the only type of faction I'm aware of with substantially different mission lists.
I'd put hand-on-heart and say the following mission types are without doubt in my mind available in any state, government and economy combination:
- Delivery
- Source
- Courier
- Salvage
- Assassination
- Wetwork
- Massacre
- Donation
- Hijack (legal)
- Illegal Massacre
- Surface Scan (Planetary Scan)
- Surface Scan (Installation Scan)
- Surface Salvage
- Illegal Salvage
- Mining
- Disable Megaship Turrets
- Disable Powerplants
- Skimmer/Goliath Kill Missions
I guess the thing I'm trying to flag is that if these are factors, I'd question whether or not they're enough of a factor at the moment. I'll keep my eye open, but I've had experiences going to a Corporate faction, in an Extraction Economy, in an Boom/Investment state, and get met with a board full of Salvage/Assassination missions, and no trading missions at all. For a system which is mostly-RNG without much sway from effects such as Gov/State/Econ, that makes sense considering how often I'd see that sort of thing... but if it really does take them into account, it feels like it's not enough to make it feel like a difference.
To contrast, I'd expect, for example: A dictatorship, in Outbreak, at a Military economy, to offer nothing but massacre/assassination missions to destroy plague ships and missions to hijack medicines (aka, seize them in the name of the state). A corporate government, however, would have missions to buy up as many medicines as possible... while a cooperative would be asking for donations and issuing salvage missions to recover research data or medical supplies from shipwrecks. Instead, those three quite different gov types seem to get a blend of all those mission types.
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This thread is just another data point for me that the mission system is not living up to its potential. Instead of generating fun for CMDR's it often generates frustration as it is simply too difficult to find good missions, especially if you don't have 8 hours of play time in a given session to devote to that task. It is simply too random. You can have a whole area of the galaxy seeded with reputation, be elite, etc. and still waste a lot of time sifting through missions that are not worth doing. For me trying to find good paying haulage missions is the most frustrating aspect of Elite Dangerous.
It was heartening to see other areas of the game fixed in 2018, I really hope one of the 2019 updates has at least some tweaks and fixes to the missions system.
It was heartening to see other areas of the game fixed in 2018, I really hope one of the 2019 updates has at least some tweaks and fixes to the missions system.
Find a home system, settle yourself in it and start working on your reputation with a selected faction and its friends in the neighbouring systems.
Your income will go up, together with missions available to you.
I have over 600 hours in ED, started playing in 2017. I have unlocked most of the engineers, basking in the Cutter, elite in trade and exploration. I've seeded multiple areas in the bubble with rep to get allied. I am not a greenhorn by any stretch, yet I still have gaming sessions where I go to a boom state where I am all allied and what not and RNG gives me crap missions for that evening. It happens a lot. If you look at most of my whinging posts it is almost aways about this.
I made most of my money exploring believe it or not. Colonia, Sag A*, etc. I scanned everything along the way which took me months. It was fun for a while, but I did start to get space madness towards the end. You know what though? Haulage missions are the way I want to play the game, especially for short play sessions. However, I get so frustrated at how rare the good ones are.
Frontier, this is all I want. It's super simple. I want Euro Truck simulator in space. With lasers.
I want to login to the game. Get into my Imperial Cutter which I worked SUPER HARD to get. Find a haulage mission for my Cutter, even 5-6MCr RELIABLY (10MCr if I am lucky) if I am allied with the factions. And then I want to haul that stuff somewhere and cash my 5MCr into my account. Don't insult me with missions for 600KCr if I am an Elite pilot flying a Cutter and I am allied with all the peeps and the system is in Boom and all that. If I had done all the things just make it reliable to find decent missions. 600KCr is Type-6 haulage back when I was a Broker. C'mon. And don't even get me started on the wing missions or this already too long post will stretch on for several pages.
I'm not trying to get rich quick, I am not chasing void opals. I just want reliable haulage missions. Oh, and if you added a bit of spice like long range trucking or fragile goods, etc. dangerous goods. You'd hear my screams of joy from beyond the cosmic event horizon!!!!!
Have you tried this:
Accept the mission(s), then change ships? Just a thought.
Accept the mission(s), then change ships? Just a thought.
I'm sure I remember something way back about mining missions being altered to not show up if you have a hold full of that cargo, to stop people mining and then cashing in. You had to take the mission before going out. It started happening to me quite a lot.
Could be just conspiracy theory stuff though
Could be just conspiracy theory stuff though