Mission Counter Offers

[Galactic Fork]

I would like to see occasional optional counter offers to missions. For example if you’re performing a VIP passenger transport mission, you might get a message from someone saying something like “I hear you have Maxwell Simmons on your ship, I’ll make sure it’s worth your time if you bring them to Filthy Betrayer Station in the Untrustworthy System.” Another example could be in assassination missions where you’ll get a message “Hello Commander, I have been informed you have taken a mission to assassinate me. I just so happen to know who put the hit out on me, and I will double your pay if you take them out instead. My sources say they’re in the Doublecross system.”

If you choose to accept the counter offer, you get a larger reward, maybe better materials but you take a hit in reputation with the original faction, and the faction may lose influence. If the counter offer isn’t from an anonymous source, your reputation with them and their influence may increase.

 

[VR CMDR Novindus]

+1

Great idea. Makes things interesting, forces the player to make a possibly difficult choice, increases roleplay opportunities, and is a relatively easy feature to develop.

 

[Misty_Dark]

I would like to see occasional optional counter offers to missions. For example if you’re performing a VIP passenger transport mission, you might get a message from someone saying something like “I hear you have Maxwell Simmons on your ship, I’ll make sure it’s worth your time if you bring them to Filthy Betrayer Station in the Untrustworthy System.” Another example could be in assassination missions where you’ll get a message “Hello Commander, I have been informed you have taken a mission to assassinate me. I just so happen to know who put the hit out on me, and I will double your pay if you take them out instead. My sources say they’re in the Doublecross system.”

If you choose to accept the counter offer, you get a larger reward, maybe better materials but you take a hit in reputation with the original faction, and the faction may lose influence. If the counter offer isn’t from an anonymous source, your reputation with them and their influence may increase.

There used to be this kind of counter offer, and it was working mostly how you describe it, except that the reward you where offered often was considerably lower than what the mission was giving you.



I know I was transporting aid workers, and would get something like 2 million to deliver them to their destination, then I got a counter offering, to deliver them to "slavery" and they would pay me like 1 million for my work.


Also the UI did not aid you in making the decision if the reward was better than the current reward, as it was not obvious what mission (if you had several similar ones) that got he counter offer etc. Until you accepted the offer.

 

[Daynen]

I remember the counter offers from a ways back. They almost universally paled in comparison to the original mission, especially considering you were usually trying to build your rep and influence with the faction from whom you took the job in the first place. There simply was never anything good offered, nor were there any circumstances where you were made "an offer you can't refuse" which would've also been interesting.

 

[Berpol]

I had one. I was transporting politicians and got an offer to reroute them as slaves.
It was a temptation.

 

[Galactic Fork]

So there was already a basic mechanic there, though it sounds underwhelming. I was more imaginging it affecting all different kinds of missions. Maybe more common when factions are in conflict (though some may have non faction sources).

Usually, I'm not super worried about which faction I'm doing missions for, unless it's a requirement for some other goal, so a nice monetary or material incentive would certainly be tempting, even if I lost reputation.

Of course, I could see factions retaliating against you if you betray them several times.