There you are in your seedy spaceport cantina, having a Lavian brandy and trying to figure out how you'll make the next payment on that giant loan you owe to Trent the Shark, when you get a call.
ARE YOU IN THE BUSINESS OF MAKING CREDITS? SO ARE WE!
In our current mission system you have to take whatever they offer or else leave it, even if the payout is pathetic. You either take it or don't, and that's not really how things work. In these sci fi settings, a staple of the pilot-for-hire is that you always get to negotiate. Han Solo didn't just agree to take Luke, Obi-Wan, and the droids off of Tatooine. He had debts to pay, and his own greed to take care of.
So why not amend the risk and reward system for these missions with a tweak? Why not say that you can talk up the reward for the job by percentages, say up to 25% above their asking price? If you do they may agree, but there will be more risk. Maybe someone else in the organization will talk about the job (resulting in more pirates getting wind of what you're doing, and more interdictions, more harassment, etc). Maybe you really want to do this job but you want it to be easier, so you offer to do it for less. Doing so lowers your risk, resulting in fewer pirates or police coming after you since clearly whatever job you're doing isn't worth THAT much money, or so they've heard.
You can even have this be influenced by your reputation with the given job handler. You have a high rep with Corporation X and Corporation X wants you to run this box of samoflanges out to Thundera to be delivered to a guy named Panthro? Well because they know you so well and you've worked for them in the past, when you ask for 10% more, the risk doesn't go up at all. Maybe it only starts going up when you ask for 20%, or whatever. After all, they're paying for reliability when they pay you.
Seems like a way to add a little flavor and immersion to the game.
ARE YOU IN THE BUSINESS OF MAKING CREDITS? SO ARE WE!
In our current mission system you have to take whatever they offer or else leave it, even if the payout is pathetic. You either take it or don't, and that's not really how things work. In these sci fi settings, a staple of the pilot-for-hire is that you always get to negotiate. Han Solo didn't just agree to take Luke, Obi-Wan, and the droids off of Tatooine. He had debts to pay, and his own greed to take care of.
So why not amend the risk and reward system for these missions with a tweak? Why not say that you can talk up the reward for the job by percentages, say up to 25% above their asking price? If you do they may agree, but there will be more risk. Maybe someone else in the organization will talk about the job (resulting in more pirates getting wind of what you're doing, and more interdictions, more harassment, etc). Maybe you really want to do this job but you want it to be easier, so you offer to do it for less. Doing so lowers your risk, resulting in fewer pirates or police coming after you since clearly whatever job you're doing isn't worth THAT much money, or so they've heard.
You can even have this be influenced by your reputation with the given job handler. You have a high rep with Corporation X and Corporation X wants you to run this box of samoflanges out to Thundera to be delivered to a guy named Panthro? Well because they know you so well and you've worked for them in the past, when you ask for 10% more, the risk doesn't go up at all. Maybe it only starts going up when you ask for 20%, or whatever. After all, they're paying for reliability when they pay you.
Seems like a way to add a little flavor and immersion to the game.