Massacre pirate missions "mission target" missing - Bug or feature?

[potatori]

Hi all,

I have tried a couple of Massacre Pirate missions in the Nortes system (highly rewarding at 10 million each in different factions where I am allied).

In both missions, killing different pirate factions in different systems, I have noticed that not all the pirate faction ships I encounter in Haz Res areas of systems where these pirates are located are listed as mission targets

In fact, it is a minority of those ships that appear in Haz Res which are listed as mission targets and the result is a needless (and endless) grind.

Say for example that I need to kill 27 ships of XYZ Mafia in ABC system. I fly in, locate Haz Res, drop in and begin the blood-work. Only, out of the 10 ships of XYZ Mafia I encounter in the Res, perhaps 2 are having the red denotation of Mission Target with the result that only 2 kills are tallied in the mission score.

My memory may be failing me but this was not the case pre 3.0 when all XYZ Mafia ships were all listed as Mission Target and hence all kills went to the tallying.

Am I the only one experiencing this, is this a bug or a feature?

 

[viper666]

Bug I think. Used to be only the lead ship of an NPC wing would be a mission target, then all ships encountered were mission targets. Now it's very hit or miss.
I'm seeing the same, to the point I am not taking massacre missions, as it's pure frustration at the moment.

 

[potatori]

OK, thanks, good to know I am not the only one.

I had to abandon the mission as I was not planning to spend 10+ hours pew-pewing to get to 48 kills. Suffered a blow in my rep with the faction that was mission-giver but was mitigated by the huge bounty I had amassed.

Will also steer clear of massacre missions of that type - shame that they are not fixing this

 

[Arry]

Ships from the 'desired/target' factions, are not always listed as missions targets. This has been an issue for years and there are a number of threads connected with this. It was meant to be fixed, in a number of updates, in the past.