Massacre Missions - Greater Variety Needed in Kill Count and Reward... and...

[Deleted member 115407]

Massacres start out great - 1M credits, 16 kills... they then tend to climb steeply as you rep up with the faction. Suddenly the mission board has 15M Cr, 84 kill missions.

The problem is, FD, that not everyone who reps up to Allied with a faction is flying a Conda or Corvette. I run CZs in Vipers and Eagles. 8-10 kills for a CZ run in one of those things is good work, 11-15 kills is fantastic. I would like to accept more massacre missions, as the payout is nice on top of the bonds, but once I am friendly or allied with a faction the mission boards overwhelmingly offer the bigger payout, bigger kill missions. And, frankly, as much as I enjoy spending time in CZs, I don't want to have to go back and forth 10 times in my eagle just to get a nice payout (and no, I don't want to spend three hours in there synthesizing more ammo, even if I can synthesize the ammo). It would be nice if smaller kill count missions were more readily available, regardless of your rep.

The other thing that's annoying are massacre missions that require cargo space to take on. A cargo rack is a useless module on a CZ combat ship, and when missions do appear with reasonable kill counts, they can be locked out for insufficient cargo capacity. Sure, I can always hop into outfitting and swap out a rack, if the station has them, but that's a poor workaround since doing so often refreshes the mission board, and the mission you were targeting disappears. No more cargo rewards for massacres, please.

Come on, FD, show the little guys some love.

Now, the new gameplay suggestion part (semi related to the suggestion above)...

It would be nice if massacres just gave you increased bonds. If I could accept only one massacre, and that massacre offered 2x or 3x the bond per kill, then I could easily satisfy the requirements of the mission for whatever ship I am flying. To prevent over-agressive farming, such missions could have a kill limit (kill ships for x increase in reward, up to and including y number of ships).

 

[Strangepork]

Massacres start out great - 1M credits, 16 kills... they then tend to climb steeply as you rep up with the faction. Suddenly the mission board has 15M Cr, 84 kill missions.

The problem is, FD, that not everyone who reps up to Allied with a faction is flying a Conda or Corvette. I run CZs in Vipers and Eagles. 8-10 kills for a CZ run in one of those things is good work, 11-15 kills is fantastic. I would like to accept more massacre missions, as the payout is nice on top of the bonds, but once I am friendly or allied with a faction the mission boards overwhelmingly offer the bigger payout, bigger kill missions. And, frankly, as much as I enjoy spending time in CZs, I don't want to have to go back and forth 10 times in my eagle just to get a nice payout (and no, I don't want to spend three hours in there synthesizing more ammo, even if I can synthesize the ammo). It would be nice if smaller kill count missions were more readily available, regardless of your rep.

The other thing that's annoying are massacre missions that require cargo space to take on. A cargo rack is a useless module on a CZ combat ship, and when missions do appear with reasonable kill counts, they can be locked out for insufficient cargo capacity. Sure, I can always hop into outfitting and swap out a rack, if the station has them, but that's a poor workaround since doing so often refreshes the mission board, and the mission you were targeting disappears. No more cargo rewards for massacres, please.

Come on, FD, show the little guys some love.

Now, the new gameplay suggestion part (semi related to the suggestion above)...

It would be nice if massacres just gave you increased bonds. If I could accept only one massacre, and that massacre offered 2x or 3x the bond per kill, then I could easily satisfy the requirements of the mission for whatever ship I am flying. To prevent over-agressive farming, such missions could have a kill limit (kill ships for x increase in reward, up to and including y number of ships).

This is also why I dont take these missions, I guess 5 to 80 might be a reasonable count, then those who like to do a mission over days or longer can take the larger numbers.

 

[Non Grata]

<aside>To me this is a symptom of the fundamental "progress equals bigger ship" game design</aside>

I wish I could bring myself to fly an eagle like you - I succumbed and do CZs in a vulture instead.

 

[Deleted member 115407]

<aside>To me this is a symptom of the fundamental "progress equals bigger ship" game design</aside>

I wish I could bring myself to fly an eagle like you - I succumbed and do CZs in a vulture instead.

You should give it another go, man, it's a lot of fun. I'll PM you with some loadout and tactical guidance.

You know, I've never flown a vulture? Maybe once, but I can't recall.

 

[concentric]

The other thing that's annoying are massacre missions that require cargo space to take on. A cargo rack is a useless module on a CZ combat ship, and when missions do appear with reasonable kill counts, they can be locked out for insufficient cargo capacity. Sure, I can always hop into outfitting and swap out a rack, if the station has them, but that's a poor workaround since doing so often refreshes the mission board, and the mission you were targeting disappears. No more cargo rewards for massacres, please.

Either no more cargo rewards or just let us finish the mission and ignore the cargo rewards if there's not enough cargo space.
Or even better (imho) let us set a per commodity/material/data cap and when the cap is reached, rewards/scans/scoops simply get ignored.
I suggested this already somewhere else and quote myself here lazily:

"Keep the total cap (although I'd prefer it to be raised a bit).
Then put a column "CAP" next to the "QTY" column with an up/down arrow next to it.
This way a cmdr can define a cap per material/data/commodity according to his/her needs.
I'm deliberately including commodities as it's pretty annoying not to be able to do missions with commodity awards without a cargo bay.
This way, simply set the cap for unwanted commodities to 0 and when cashing in missions, rewarded commodities get ignored but at least you're able to do the mission.
That's in case they don't dump commodities altogether as they're next to useless at the moment, except for Modular Terminals which are needed to unlock Marco Qwent...
At the moment I waste a lot of time dumping stuff after every few missions or scans, keeping everything of use at 10, except for stuff that's hard to come by like CIFs, MEFs, EFCs..."

You should give it another go, man, it's a lot of fun. I'll PM you with some loadout and tactical guidance.
You know, I've never flown a vulture? Maybe once, but I can't recall.

Can confirm!
I haven't flown my eagle for ages but I had one parked, mainly as a mule for 2 engineered multi-cannons which I had no use for but also didn't want to sell.
Then I saw the gold paint jobs lately and although gold isn't actually my colour and I wouldn't want to put it on one of my bigger ships I thought it looks kind of nice on the Eagle and I felt like getting it as kind of a tribute.
So with my Eagle all shiny I felt I have to give it some love and as I always keep enough materials for every G5 upgrade I might need, I unplannedly spent the night outfitting and upgrading and took it to the next CZ. Great fun indeed, although, of course, taking out enemies takes some time if you're used to bigger ships...
Back at my home base I bought another Eagle as a mule for one of the mcs and spare Enhanced Performance Thrusters which I had upgraded with G5 Dirty Drives when upgrading the golden Eagle. I was close to end my marathon session when I felt like taking the stripped down mule Eagle for a ride with those thrusters and it was so much fun that I abandoned my plans of sleeping and upgraded my mule Eagle to kind of a racing Eagle (including a 2D Shield Generator it boosts up to 693m/s)...

May I ask for your combat Eagle loadout? I've put 2 low distributor draw efficient fixed beams in the bottom hardpoints and 1 overcharged gimballed multi-cannon on top. Works pretty nicely. Originally I intended to use 2 plasma accelerators but then, after all that time, I had to realise there are no size 1 PAs :'( What I also noticed is the multi-cannon sounding pretty unremarkable given its position. I'd expect and want it to be considerably louder and dirtier that close to the canopy...

Vulture is great fun, too, btw...

 

[Lucius-Darcia]

There are some serious changes to massacre missions in the Beta for 2.4
lower rewards and kills but more variete between them. I would suggest to wait for open Beta if you have no access to the actual closed ones and than see if it fits your ideas

 

[Deleted member 115407]

May I ask for your combat Eagle loadout? I've put 2 low distributor draw efficient fixed beams in the bottom hardpoints and 1 overcharged gimballed multi-cannon on top. Works pretty nicely. Originally I intended to use 2 plasma accelerators but then, after all that time, I had to realise there are no size 1 PAs :'( What I also noticed is the multi-cannon sounding pretty unremarkable given its position. I'd expect and want it to be considerably louder and dirtier that close to the canopy...

Vulture is great fun, too, btw...

Sure thing, man! I'll PM it to you as well. I used to run mine unmodded way back when (before started engineering), but yeah, mine is modded up too. Have another one sitting back at home that I'll probably do the same with.

In short though, I run 1 efficient beam on the top mount, and two seekers with ammo increases. Eagles, Vipers, Cobras, Couriers... SLFs... it's great for wiping out the small stuff!

There are some serious changes to massacre missions in the Beta for 2.4
lower rewards and kills but more variete between them. I would suggest to wait for open Beta if you have no access to the actual closed ones and than see if it fits your ideas

Thanks Lucius, I'll hang on for 2.4!

 

[Nero Tacitus]

There are some serious changes to massacre missions in the Beta for 2.4
lower rewards and kills but more variete between them. I would suggest to wait for open Beta if you have no access to the actual closed ones and than see if it fits your ideas

Seriously? Weak. Massacre missions are currently my favourite way of earning credits. While I appreciate that people may want to do CZs in smaller ships, I think that's really a personal decision. If you'd like a bigger ship, but don't have the credits, do what everyone else does and farm bounties until you can afford a Vulture. If you're happy with your Eagle, then that's your decision to take it into the heart of high tier PvE combat. Personally, I'm constantly lamenting having to find new a system that has several factions at war, grinding them up to allied, just so I can get those 20M contracts. Then of course there's a damn ceasefire, and it's onto the next All Neutral system.

My main argument to your suggestion OP would be to simply go to systems you're neutral with, take some contracts until you're Friendly, then move on. Seems a hell of a lot easier than asking FDev to change the system for you, and put out others in the process.

Edit: Just read the Beta Notes....WEAK. Guess I better farm up my Corvette before 2.4.

 

[Deleted member 115407]

Seriously? Weak. Massacre missions are currently my favourite way of earning credits. While I appreciate that people may want to do CZs in smaller ships, I think that's really a personal decision. If you'd like a bigger ship, but don't have the credits, do what everyone else does and farm bounties until you can afford a Vulture. If you're happy with your Eagle, then that's your decision to take it into the heart of high tier PvE combat. Personally, I'm constantly lamenting having to find new a system that has several factions at war, grinding them up to allied, just so I can get those 20M contracts. Then of course there's a damn ceasefire, and it's onto the next All Neutral system.

My main argument to your suggestion OP would be to simply go to systems you're neutral with, take some contracts until you're Friendly, then move on. Seems a hell of a lot easier than asking FDev to change the system for you, and put out others in the process.

Edit: Just read the Beta Notes....WEAK. Guess I better farm up my Corvette before 2.4.

Cac. I have something like 1.4B credits in assets. Something like 20 ships including two fully outfitted Pythons.

I don't fly Eagles because I have no choice, I fly them because they are a crap-load of fun and require skill to fly... a lot more skill than just listing lazily to the left in some pillbox Corvette.

Instead of credit farming, you should try playing the game. It's a lot more fun that way.

 

[Nero Tacitus]

So you no longer have a need for credits, yet you create a thread to complain you can't farm CZs efficiently? OK.

 

[Deleted member 115407]

lol - you're the only one talking about farming.