Guide / Tutorial No, Support Missions are not missing

Support missions (Restore Power) require:

  • a faction with a Negative state (see below), and
  • that faction owns an Odyssey Settlement that is offline (because of the negative state), and
  • the missions only spawn from the faction that owns the settlement, and
  • the missions normally will only spawn for settlements within 20 Ly of where you are, and
  • the missions only spawn on the concourse mission board, not the ship mission board

Even if a faction is in a negative state all of its settlements will not be offline. And you probably won't get missions to all the offline settlements.

The main reason you will not see missions in the Support section is the faction states. You need an owning faction in a negative state and the negative states are:

With Bodies and Fires:
  • CIVIL UNREST
  • LOCKDOWN
  • NATURAL DISASTER
  • PIRATE ATTACK
  • TERRORIST ATTACK

Without Bodies or Fires:
  • BLIGHT
  • BUST
  • FAMINE
  • INFRASTRUCTURE FAILURE
  • OUTBREAK
The state governs whether there will be fires and bodies on the ground - they always seems to be the same for the same states. There are some negative states that don't cause settlements to go offline - like Drought. Settlements without fires can be good (faster to complete missions). If you plan on doing Scavenger massacre missions and looting by powering up the bases then you might want Bodies (so you can scan for security codes and save your e-breaches).

You can use the generic search in inara - note that you can't select multiple states on that search page, but you can manually choose the other ones to check (Civil Unrest and Bust tend to have the most). Look for systems with the most settlements as not all will give missions. As usual the data in Inara can be out of date, but the results do show how old they are. For advanced users you can select a Station Economy if you want a specific type of settlement (Military, Agriculture etc). Avoid factions also in a war, as the war state will override the settlement to be a CZ. Positive states also seem to override negative ones - so for example if a faction is in a Boom and Famine you won't see any missions.

Inara also has a specific search for these locations (inara) - plug in the system you are in and it should give some systems to look it. I find this less useful as it doesn't indicate how many settlements there are, and sometimes there may be none at all.

Factions can be in multiple states - if a faction has a Negative state and a positive state (say Terrorist Attack and Boom) then it can still be offline. The system map doesn't always show the negative state, but as long as it is listed on the full list of states for the faction it will count. If there are multiple negative states it appears that either can be chosen as the cause (so you can get mixes between Fires / No Fires in this case).

Also be wary of factions with pending state changes as these also appear to stop missions spawning - so a pending War will stop missions appearing even though the settlement will still be offline.

Finally:

You don't need to take Support missions to Anarchy factions. The scavengers you might come across will not give Notoriety in any system, so no need to stick to Anarchies unless you specifically want Smear Campaigns or Push - and even they these require Anarchy Systems not Anarchy settlements (i.e. the controlling faction must be Anarchy, not the Settlement owning faction).

Thank you for coming to my TED talk :)
 
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1. What, no sticky?
2. Also what, no Pirate Attack*?

Worth noting that there may be settlements that are still online even during a negative state, for reasons that we mortals may not be equipped to understand.

* Pretty sure that's with bodies and fires.
 
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Support missions (Restore Power) require:

  • a faction with a Negative state (see below), and
  • that faction owns an Odyssey Settlement that is offline (because of the negative state), and
  • the missions only spawn from the faction that owns the settlement, and
  • the missions normally will only spawn for settlements within 20 Ly of where you are, and
  • the missions only spawn on the concourse mission board, not the ship mission board

Even if a faction is in a negative state all of its settlements will not be offline. And you probably won't get missions to all the offline settlements.

The main reason you will not see missions in the Support section is the faction states. You need an owning faction in a negative state and the negative states are:

With Bodies and Fires:
  • CIVIL UNREST
  • LOCKDOWN
  • NATURAL DISASTER
  • PIRATE ATTACK
  • TERRORIST ATTACK

Without Bodies or Fires:
  • BLIGHT
  • BUST
  • FAMINE
  • INFRASTRUCTURE FAILURE
  • OUTBREAK

The state governs whether there will be fires and bodies on the ground - they always seems to be the same for the same states. There are some negative states that don't cause settlements to go offline - like Drought. Settlements without fires can be good (faster to complete missions). If you plan on doing Scavenger massacre missions and looting by powering up the bases then you might want Bodies (so you can scan for security codes and save your e-breaches).

My choice for finding these missions is to use inara - plug in the system you are in and it should give some systems to look it. Note that you can't select multiple states on that search page, but you can manually choose the other ones to check (Civil Unrest and Bust tend to have the most). As usual the data in Inara can be out of date, but the results do show how old they are. For advanced users you can select a Station Economy if you want a specific type of settlement (Military, Agriculture etc).

Factions can be in multiple states - if a faction has a Negative state and a positive state (say Terrorist Attack and Boom) then it can still be offline. The system map doesn't always show the negative state, but as long as it is listed on the full list of states for the faction it will count. If there are multiple negative states it appears that either can be chosen as the cause (so you can get mixes between Fires / No Fires in this case).

Finally:

You don't need to take Support missions to Anarchy factions. The scavengers you might come across will not give Notoriety in any system, so no need to stick to Anarchies unless you specifically want Smear Campaigns or Push - and even they these require Anarchy Systems not Anarchy settlements (i.e. the controlling faction must be Anarchy, not the Settlement owning faction).

Thank you for coming to my TED talk :)
Thank you...
 
So I did a search for Democracy+Inf Fail+Tourism and found this system:
1634245336216.png

Zero support missions all day.
In fact, I visited another system with similar specifications and it too had no support missions. I can confirm both factions were in a state of IF. Are shut down settlements really that rare or am I missing something?
 
So today, same system, the support missions are showing up. Maybe it takes a day for it to get bad enough settlements start shutting down?
 
Anarchy + civil unrest usually works for me, always remember that external tools are only as up to date as the Commander data input so the galmap is a better guide to current states.
 
This is a great guide! I only found it after putting in my own leg work and decided to see if anyone else had before posting a guide of my own. 🤣

A few additional observations I have made while doing my own research:
  • The Famine state is currently spawning the 'Restore: Prepare...' missions with fires and bodies although it should, imho, be a non-violent negative state spawning reactivate missions instead. I've even seen settlements in the famine state show up as OFCZs. Probably a bug.
  • I've never seen a support mission for a settlement in Lockdown so I decided to go looking for them. Even when I can find stations for the faction that are not in lockdown so that the mission boards are accessible (usually in neighboring systems) I have not seen any support missions spawn. I decided to visit a couple of settlements to see what their power status was and it was a mixed bag; some powered, some not. In short, I would just ignore Lockdown as a viable source of support missions.

None of this, of course, negates the fact that support missions remain incredibly easy to find. Using an Inara search similar to this yields the support mission type of choice within minutes every time without having to go hunting everywhere.
 
Support missions (Restore Power) require:

  • a faction with a Negative state (see below), and
  • that faction owns an Odyssey Settlement that is offline (because of the negative state), and
  • the missions only spawn from the faction that owns the settlement, and
  • the missions normally will only spawn for settlements within 20 Ly of where you are, and
  • the missions only spawn on the concourse mission board, not the ship mission board

Even if a faction is in a negative state all of its settlements will not be offline. And you probably won't get missions to all the offline settlements.

The main reason you will not see missions in the Support section is the faction states. You need an owning faction in a negative state and the negative states are:

With Bodies and Fires:
  • CIVIL UNREST
  • LOCKDOWN
  • NATURAL DISASTER
  • PIRATE ATTACK
  • TERRORIST ATTACK

Without Bodies or Fires:
  • BLIGHT
  • BUST
  • FAMINE
  • INFRASTRUCTURE FAILURE
  • OUTBREAK

The state governs whether there will be fires and bodies on the ground - they always seems to be the same for the same states. There are some negative states that don't cause settlements to go offline - like Drought. Settlements without fires can be good (faster to complete missions). If you plan on doing Scavenger massacre missions and looting by powering up the bases then you might want Bodies (so you can scan for security codes and save your e-breaches).

My choice for finding these missions is to use inara - plug in the system you are in and it should give some systems to look it. Note that you can't select multiple states on that search page, but you can manually choose the other ones to check (Civil Unrest and Bust tend to have the most). As usual the data in Inara can be out of date, but the results do show how old they are. For advanced users you can select a Station Economy if you want a specific type of settlement (Military, Agriculture etc).

Factions can be in multiple states - if a faction has a Negative state and a positive state (say Terrorist Attack and Boom) then it can still be offline. The system map doesn't always show the negative state, but as long as it is listed on the full list of states for the faction it will count. If there are multiple negative states it appears that either can be chosen as the cause (so you can get mixes between Fires / No Fires in this case).

Finally:

You don't need to take Support missions to Anarchy factions. The scavengers you might come across will not give Notoriety in any system, so no need to stick to Anarchies unless you specifically want Smear Campaigns or Push - and even they these require Anarchy Systems not Anarchy settlements (i.e. the controlling faction must be Anarchy, not the Settlement owning faction).

Thank you for coming to my TED talk :)
Thank you factabulous, excellent and unique information, specially for beginners in Odessey like me
 
The only time I've seen droughts with offline settlements is when there are other states, and it's been the other states that caused the offline. Haven't checked for week's, so they could have fixed it.
 
I, too, while doing my own research, never found a mission for a settlement in drought and the three that I visited were powered on. That doesn't mean it's impossible, though, but I probably wouldn't waste my time adding drought to my search while the other states are plentiful and pretty much guaranteed.
 
Unfortunately, the new UI no longer tells you what effect a given mission has on the security or economy sliders, or any other states like the Horizons UI does when you turn in a mission.
I'd assume the sensible way would be for them to act to counter the state that's shutting them down, as the ones with bodies and fires are mainly caused by states associated with low security (so boosting the sec slider would make sense) while the others are mainly caused by low economy.
Can anyone confirm one way or the other?
 
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