Pirate lord mission template

[Ananym]

I've ground out about 6 of these for faction rep because they're usually the only things that generate for me that aren't 1 '+' delivery missions.
Can we talk about how rubbish this mission template is?

You take the mission - it invariably points you toward another system, because no faction would EVER be concerned about a pirate lord in their own system, I suppose.
It provides a time window which I've never paid attention to. The pirate can easily spawn before it, anyway. I don't know why it's there.
The mission description points out that an FSD interdictor can be used to drag targets out of supercruise. I've no idea why - I've never been able to find a target this way.
Instead, you jump over and get to scan the nav beacon. (Or fire your infinite range discovery scanner, but I sure as hell can't fit one of those on a vulture.)
Pirate lord last seen 13000 lightseconds away! What fun.

You get to the mission target body, drop your speed down to 30km/s and get up for some coffee for five minutes while the mission objective takes its sweet time to spawn (Compelling gameplay award 2017).
When you arrive, the scene goes like this - a 100% healthy AspX with 100% healthy sidewinder escorts sitting there in space doing nothing, screaming distress calls. They're allegedly being menaced by your pirate lord target.
This fight goes one of two ways for me. Any target below expert is child's play. Any target at expert or above suddenly gains the ability to turn on a dime, and my vulture gets its weapons or canopy shot out 9 times out of 10 and I rush to finish it off with a well placed ram.

You kill the pirate, and take home a bounty of.. maybe 40k, from the """""pirate lord""""". Meanwhile, the trade ship heartily thanks you for- nope, it continues to just sit there, screaming into space. Not a word of acknowledgement. If you go to the trouble to shoot its cargo out, it's never carrying anything worth pirating anyway. You haul yourself back to your home system to get compensated with approximately 0 credits. These missions pay peanuts, even for expert targets - far less than I could ever make in a High Res in the same time, with the police doing all the work for you with no risk of death.

And it's been this way for, what, a year at the least. Likely two. This is a prime example of Elite's design debt. They needed a mission template for this purpose, so they designed the barest minimum sequence and have never touched it since. Stalking and taking down a pirate lord - what should be one of the most compelling scenarios in the entire game - reduced to the most tedious template imaginable.

 

[Drelthar]

None of the missions are amazing.

This is one of the better ones...

The scanning nav beacon/using scanner thing, is actually fine for me.


However, it should then actually decide if it's going to spawn the guy in super cruise around the stellar body your given, or, if it's going to use a signal source (more in a moment) or, if it's going to send you down to the surface, to find him at some kind of surface base, or, if it's going to send you down to the surface, to scan a data point, to find out where he went (this happens on some, though boy is it rare)

IF it chooses the signal source, then when you reach the target body, the same animations used when finding salvage targets on planet surfaces should turn up, and swing you about to find the mission objective, there should be no random amount of time to wait, it's the most ridiculous idea I've ever heard of and serves no one.

Once you drop into the signal source, there could be a huge amount of scenarios, all of which could have various different elements to them.

The one you described, but,
the target of the pirate should be carrying worthwhile cargo.

The pirate should be using hatch limpets and actually trying to pirate it, not kill it.
The scenario should almost never be at the very start of the situation!

the fight should have been happenig for a while, when you drop in, some cargo should be strewn around, some limpets already trying to collect it, shields should be partially damaged, some hull on one or two ships involved perhaps.

The trader should have various reactions, such as running and trying to low wake, running and trying to high wake (you should be able to follow him and pirate him if you want), trying to fight back (launch fighters, etc) and thanking you for the help.

If you defeat the pirate, the trader should transfer credits, or drop cargo/materials for you (I know we can't drop materials, but who cares, they are valuable as a reward) Then wake out.

I mean... there's so much you could do with it. It's unreal.

It'd also be good if the pirate lord could wake out, and you could follow him and still complete the mission even if he leaves the system (I thought you could, but according to another thread, it doesn't complete the mission, because your not in the right system... wow...)

 

[Trafalgar Law]

I do like these missions (and other assassination missions) and always take them if I have time to complete them. However they could do with a lot of work:

Why does the contact you have to meet (if that wrinkle is spawned after the scan/nav beacon interaction) send you back to the original system? I always think it should send you to a third location.

What purpose does the arrival time thingy have? I always go straight there and find a USS regardless of the timer.

Does the target ever appear in supercruise?

Why don't the ship and escorts the pirate is attacking do anything unless the pirate shoots them first? If you engage before the pirate attacks them (or if the pirate scans and attacks you instead) they just sit there and don't move.

Why doesn't the target freighter ever acknowledge that you saved them? A reward would be nice, but even thanks would be better than just continuing to spam distress signals.

Why not use these as the basis for a multistage mission? Save the freighter, then get a follow on mission to escort it to it's destination. Maybe it's damaged and you need to bring fuel or use some sort of repair limpet. Maybe you find an escape pod or black box in the wreckage of the Pirate ship that opens up an additional mission chain, such as taking the prisoner somewhere for trial or carrying a hostage/valuable data home with the obvious attempted rescues/kidnappings/theft by the pirate lords cronies or government/corporate agents desperate to recover their secrets stolen by the Pirate Lord (you could even relate this back to the original mission and why the Pirate has an additional price on their head).

These missions have so much unrealised potential

IF it chooses the signal source, then when you reach the target body, the same animations used when finding salvage targets on planet surfaces should turn up, and swing you about to find the mission objective, there should be no random amount of time to wait, it's the most ridiculous idea I've ever heard of and serves no one.

I really like this idea. Much better than sit and wait for the USS.

 

[metascrawl]

I mean, you can fit an ADS on a Vulture - it only takes up one of the two class one slots. And I've rarely had to supercruise that far for one of these missions. However, I agree they're not particularly interesting, and the reward is too low for the time spent to complete them. I pretty much agree with what you say in your last paragraph.

 

[sb413197]

There isnt enough range in the difficulty and payout. There should be 30 million credit ones with wings of 5 elite anaconda and a Farragut or something....mission=make the Farragut retreat. That would make them worth the time and equal the other big money earners.

 

[Faded Glory]

[snip]
It provides a time window which I've never paid attention to. The pirate can easily spawn before it, anyway. I don't know why it's there.
The mission description points out that an FSD interdictor can be used to drag targets out of supercruise. I've no idea why - I've never been able to find a target this way.
Instead, you jump over and get to scan the nav beacon. (Or fire your infinite range discovery scanner, but I sure as hell can't fit one of those on a vulture.)
Pirate lord last seen 13000 lightseconds away! What fun.

Well, at least this type of mission is fairly reliable.... Just don't follow the target to a different system (unless the mission points you elsewhere), they have to be killed in the system given in the mission description or the kill doesn't register against the mission!

On a constructive note, yes the pirate will spawn in their USS from the minute you accept the mission. If you want to drag them out of SC, they will spawn there during the window of opportunity given. Now you know at least part of what it's for...

And don't miss the end of the window of opportunity or the mission will fail. The 23 hours timer is how long you have to go back and collect your reward, not how long you have to destroy the target.

The missions do at least scale with rank, and the Deadly / Elite ones can be quite a challenge. But yes, all missions in ED could do with some fleshing out, but to be fair to the designers, anything you do many times will eventually lose it's shine.

 

[Drelthar]

but to be fair to the designers, anything you do many times will eventually lose it's shine.

Of course! but if they are more shiny in the first place, it takes longer, and when you come back to it, it feels more shiny again.

Also, the shiny parts need to make sense, and work in the first place, consistently with the rest of the game, otherwise it isn't even shiny in the first place. (wake scanner is useless as killing them in a different system doesnt trigger mission completion, ship the pirate may be attacking continues to make distress calls when the pirate is dead, GENERAL lack of start, middle, and end, to ALL missions/scenarios in the entire game, though I guess... that is consistent, just a shame it's consistently dissapointing.)

 

[Faded Glory]

Of course! but if they are more shiny in the first place, it takes longer, and when you come back to it, it feels more shiny again.

Yes, I agree...

I tend to be reserved in my criticism of the devs, simply because it's easy for us to suggest how things could be better, (I've done it myself, here for example). However, I'm not a software developer, and even if I were, I'm not one working on ED, so throwing our hands up in despair seems a bit unreasonable when we don't truly understand the constraints and challenges that they may face.

I'd love missions to 'feel' better, pretty much all of my play time (except exploration) is spent doing missions, and I've made other suggestions regarding this subject over time. Anyway, my post wasn't intended to white knight missions, just fill in a few of the details that the OP wasn't aware of.

 

[sqzbox1]

1. Don't accept anything with a reward less than 500,000 credits. This will also usually give you a worthy target (corvette and the like). Plus a good bounty.
2. Check the proposed system to see if there are bodies a long way from the arrival point. Don't accept the mission if there are.

The rest of the "problems" are minor. For example, why shouldn't the wrinkle send you back to the first system? It's just as likely as any other place really. Maybe their agent in the area just couldn't find them but rumour suggested that someone else could. And the fact that the stupid trader comntinues to scream after we have saved them is annoying at most and can be ignored - just call him a moron and move on.

I agree that there are lots of possibilities that could be added to make it more interesting but I think perhaps we are asking too much, too soon. FD are working on a lot of things at the same time, including bug fixes, and resources are limited. I think it is very smart of them to announce that the next season will focus on enhancing what is already there and so I expect that a lot of this type of thing will be worked on then.

 

[nosleepdemon]

The way that missions behave in Elite range from bizarre to down right non-sensical. Often after a patch, it's anybody's guess as to whether a particularly strange mission is simply broken, or working as intended. With each major patch I keep hoping that someone, anyone, will take a look at the missions and actually try to fix them. But nope. In fact, I'm convinced at this point that FD sincerely believe there's nothing wrong with them. As you've noticed OP, they are in fact completely bonkers.

 

[Leo Sagan]

The way that missions behave in Elite range from bizarre to down right non-sensical. Often after a patch, it's anybody's guess as to whether a particularly strange mission is simply broken, or working as intended. With each major patch I keep hoping that someone, anyone, will take a look at the missions and actually try to fix them. But nope. In fact, I'm convinced at this point that FD sincerely believe there's nothing wrong with them. As you've noticed OP, they are in fact completely bonkers.

FD announced several times that they were heavily reworking the missions system but even if changes were made (rewards, bugs fixing), you're right, they never fixed the main issue : they are over-simplistic (at best), or over-simplistic *and* utterly bugged.

They announced they intend to stop developing new features after 2.4 to rework the core game (which, to me, would include the missions system) : we'll see about that. Difficult to convince anyone that they will do it though, because of the previous disappointments.

 

[the100thmonkey]

You get the wrinkle if you arrive in the system too early and honk. Every time I've taken the mission and jumped in at the appropriate time, the target has been in the system.

And if you're in a Vulture and losing your canopy in these encounters, you're doing something deeply wrong, particularly at expert rank.

With regard to the bounty, if you're not running a KWS on the target, you're only getting the bounty for the system you're in currently. I mean, pirates have FSDs too you know.

 

[fus roh potato]

It would be nice.

As far as I can think of, massacre missions are the only missions that don't require jumping systems. I would have imagined that assassinations would always have targets in the system that require interdiction, and that high paying jobs would include more evasive criminals that require, wake scanning, include traps, or perhaps be found paying visits to their victims at a planetary base.

I wonder what kind of mess I'd have to make of my hand trying to cross fingers in hopes for mission improvements like that.

 

[Jezzah]

I really dislike these missions. I dislike not knowing to some extent what ship ill be facing at what level and whether or not he has friends. Maybe that's just me and not knowing is part of the "charm" maybe you guys like that?...I detest it.

 

[Drelthar]

but I think perhaps we are asking too much, too soon.

The game has been out for a good long while now, and had an expansion pack released to (near) completion.

They "Re-worked" the mission system twice now. Once in a minor way, which was mostly UI based, and once again, in an underlying system way.

Neither really helped that much in the end. Sure it gave the mission guys much more to work with, but didn't fix the actual core issues, which is things linking together intuitively (from the PLAYERS point of view) and things having the utterly basic narrative of start, middle, and end.

The bizarre thing is, most of these elements exist in an isolated way, but there seems to be no way for the guys making the missions to actually piece it all together using the systems they've been given.

It sometimes feels like the people doing the underlying coding, have literally no idea what the people using the stuff they are making, need to do with it.

Asking for missions to have a basic start, middle, and end, and having NPCs react to things happening, doesn't seem that huge (though I am fully aware no coding is "Easy") .

I mean... it just seems like the people trying to make the missions, are making the best they can in the constraints they have, and finding massive holes in the system, which haven't been plugged for a long, long, long time.

I can only hope some of the "Core game improvements" include making all of this work how it seems like it should intuitively.

I really love the game guys, don't get me wrong, honestly though, considering a lot of things get talked about with "We want to make sure we do it right, so are taking more time on it" this kind of thing just seems crazy.

If an NPC kept jabbering about being attacked, when you just killed his attacker in any other "AAA" (or just full priced) game, it'd get some stick in reviews. I'm not letting them off because I think their game idea is awesome.

It sucks, it really does, they know it, and they really want to fix it, and they need some time to do it. Whoever they heck gives out the time, give them some to work on this, frankly, joke like system.

Please...

 

[Faded Glory]

I really dislike these missions. I dislike not knowing to some extent what ship ill be facing at what level and whether or not he has friends. Maybe that's just me and not knowing is part of the "charm" maybe you guys like that?...I detest it.

I can spoil it for you if you like...

Spoiler

The rank of the pirate will be the same as the mission rank, adjusted for your own rank. Let's say you are Dangerous, and you take a Deadly mission, your target will very likely be Dangerous, and if you take a Master ranked mission then your target will likely be Expert. That at least is how it has worked for me...

Low ranking pirate lords (Harmless to Novice) will generally be in a Cobra or such-like ship.

Mid ranking pirate lords (Competent to Master) will generally be in a Vulture or a Federal Assault / Gunship.

High ranking pirate lords (Dangerous to Elite) will be in a Python (Dangerous) an Anaconda (Deadly) or a Federal Corvette (Elite).

Again, this is all from my experience...

But actually, I agree with you, and have suggested many times that the mission description should specify the rank, ship and any wing status, and that there should be no target rank adjustment for the players rank. The mission / NPC rank is the much asked for difficulty slider, and adjusting it to compensate for the player seems pointless.

 

[Drelthar]

I agree about not adjusting based on the players rank, it should just be the mission, but I actually like not knowing their exact load out.

I'd prefer, if they had to add more details, for it to be a basic idea, a tonnage, perhaps a clue about their favourite weapon type/defences, and their closest ally who always flies his Vulture "The reckoning"

But just a direct list of everything you'll 100% definately face, would be boring for me.

 

[Faded Glory]

I agree about not adjusting based on your ship, but I actually like not knowing their exact load out.

I'd prefer, if they had to add more details, for it to be a basic idea, a tonnage, perhaps a clue about their favourite weapon type/defences, and their closest ally who always flies his Vulture "The reckoning"

But just a direct list of everything you'll 100% definately face, would be boring for me.

Not suggesting a full list (if you're referring to my post). Just rank, ship and whether they are in a wing. Plenty of room for surprises in that.

 

[Jezzah]

I can spoil it for you if you like...

Spoiler

The rank of the pirate will be the same as the mission rank, adjusted for your own rank. Let's say you are Dangerous, and you take a Deadly mission, your target will very likely be Dangerous, and if you take a Master ranked mission then your target will likely be Expert. That at least is how it has worked for me...

Low ranking pirate lords (Harmless to Novice) will generally be in a Cobra or such-like ship.

Mid ranking pirate lords (Competent to Master) will generally be in a Vulture or a Federal Assault / Gunship.

High ranking pirate lords (Dangerous to Elite) will be in a Python (Dangerous) an Anaconda (Deadly) or a Federal Corvette (Elite).

Again, this is all from my experience...

But actually, I agree with you, and have suggested many times that the mission description should specify the rank, ship and any wing status, and that there should be no target rank adjustment for the players rank. The mission / NPC rank is the much asked for difficulty slider, and adjusting it to compensate for the player seems pointless.

Thanks for the explanation is it helpful Still as you say they could flavour the mission text a bit more. It doesn't even have to be blatantly telling you the information it could be worked into some sort of story about the target. Ebil pirate lord poncy face mcguffin has murdered another trader in Lave, the last transmission from the witless trader indicated that the pirate was in his trademark Cobra mk4 assisted by his sidekick Scumbag O'Neill in his sidewinder.....

And other such better written stuff.

 

[Faded Glory]

Thanks for the explanation is it helpful Still as you say they could flavour the mission text a bit more. It doesn't even have to be blatantly telling you the information it could be worked into some sort of story about the target. Ebil pirate lord poncy face mcguffin has murdered another trader in Lave, the last transmission from the witless trader indicated that the pirate was in his trademark Cobra mk4 assisted by his sidekick Scumbag O'Neill in his sidewinder.....

And other such better written stuff.

Yes indeed.