Mission system rework - random missions vs fixed missions = partially fixed system.

[Xender]

Recently there was a problems related to massacre mission stacking and skimmer killing. Frontier introduced countermeasures to limit this by adding limit for mission stacking, now you can't have more than three mission of the same type. Well it is true that this solution fixed to some point massacre stacking, from the other hand it cut great credit sources. Furthermore it even influenced other branches of missions system, for example:
Currently I am working with Sirius Corp to become allied with them. For that purpose I am focused on doing missions in Procyon system, I am taking every missions which is not mining mission - fighting, assassinate, data delivery, data scan, trading mission, just everything. To be honest those missions are not well paid and for me only purpose of them is reputation farming. Because of that I am interested in stacking as much of this mission as I can. Still I can't stack more than 3. Additionally there are not many missions available in Procyon because you know "RNG God". So I will ask the question: "How to improve mission system?".

In my opinion best solution will be mixture of the best parts of predefined missions and randomised details, let me explain.

1. On the station there should be a Agent for each faction, or maybe in future, Frontier could replace Agents with Factions Offices and there will be few agents of different type?
2. Each agent should have assigned few types of predefined missions, like massacre, trading, data scan. Of course with addition of Factions Offices there may be few agents per faction, for example Combat Agent, Trading Agent, Information Agent.
3. Example Agent missions list (it fixed and always the same): Scan data link mission, Source materials mission, Assassinate target mission.
4. When player is taking the mission, he may select difficulty level, from 1-5 or whatever else Frontier will choose. Level of difficulty change rewards, strength of enemies, distance to travel, amount of required goods.
5. Parameters like type of enemies, exact location, required goods, etc. will be random in order to improve variety of missions
6. High level missions 4-5 should be designed for wings and should require cooperation because of difficulty. Missions around level 3 should be comparable to current highly payable missions.
7. Missions should be sharable, so when you select archetype of missions you should be able to share missions with your wing. Because archetypes of mission will be the same, only the minor parameters like locations, mission state etc. must be synchronised between players.
8. Players should be allowed for talking only one missions of given archetype from given Agent. However multiple agents available via Faction Office should allow for taking multiple missions of the same archetype for one faction.

That kind of system should allow for much more evenly distributed and managed rewards amount, it will also fix problems with relogging for missions between solo and open. Elite is strongly based on random and procedural mechanics however a lot about bubble is hand crafted (Factions for example), because of that, missions also should be a little more predefined. In my opinion not random content, not predefined content but mixture of both creates the most interesting experience, Frontier should consider that.

 

[NW3]

Interesting idea! I'd like to see missions improved. Rep++

 

[Xender]

I hope that missions system will change somehow and in my opinion system proposed by me sound interesting. Thanks to that, Frontier may introduce much more advanced interaction after Space Legs.

 

[Xender]

According to upgrading mission system, it will be also nice to have some more interesting mission locations like caves, drilled asteroids, which can be explored with SRV or SLF. In that case mission should be focused on exploring interior tunnels and finding the target should take at least few minutes ;P