In 1.04, I decided being allied with an anarchy pirate faction might be a good idea in the future. So I set off to the anarchy world of Forculus in my Viper, and my Type 7 parked in a nearby high tech system. I docked at Irrational Exuberance (what a great name) and went to the bulletin board.
Kill authority, kill traders, kill bounty hunters - salvage black boxes, rebel transmissions, military plans, rare artifacts - bring is food, liquor, computer tech, bertrandite, coltan and so on - deliver packet to system you have to go to anyways to deliver cargo or package - yes yes accept accept accept accept I'll do it all. Except authority, because I don't think those can actually spawn in anarchy or uninhabitated systems.
So off I go to Alrai Sector IHV 123 and whatever they're called and do these missions.
USS USS USS USS, sometimes, very rarely, I get an alternate mission offer. I'm not interested, I picked this station for a reason to work my reptuation, so I'm doing the missions as originally offered, but nice touch, every now and then. So more USS USS and when my Viper's 12t cargo hold is full, back to Irrational Exuberance to deliver. Accept new missions from the BB, including more "fetch us this", and so on. To the next system, murder people, steal goods, deliver secret messages to The Blue Mob, USS USS USS USS and another Alternate mission path. Cute, still not interested, don't care, moving on, part of the game. Cargo hold maximum capacity, back to Irrational Exuberance. More missions, only accept fetch missions, complete everything else that is on a short timer, back to Irrational Exuberance, deliver all missions but the "Fetch me X" missions, accept all remaining "Fetch me X" missions.
Trip back to the high tech system, getting my space truck. Pick up all high tech they want, fly to extractor / industrial system, pick up all the Rocks GOD DAMNIT MARIA THEY'RE MINERALS they want, pick up clothing, food cartridges (most disgusting item in the game, right?), computer components, fly to Agricultural system, pick up the booze and the food, fly to a refinery, pick up the metals. With around 150t of mission items demanded by Brothers of Forculus and the other smaller factions in Forculus and the rest Tobacco for bonus profit, I return to Irrational Exuberance. Click, click, click, click, deliver all the cargos! I feel like the hero of the people, coming in with my big space truck, filling everyone's needs and desires. Reputation raised to friendly with the main faction. I call it a day.
The next day, truck flies back to high tech, viper returns, I start over. Kill, salvage, Deliver missions 3-4 trips back to Irrational Exuberance, stacking up those Fetch missions. I see maybe again 2-3 USS that turn out to be alternate missions. Once I stacked up another 15 or so fetch missions, I repeat the round trip with my Type 7, return to Irrational Exuberance, deliver everything. Bam, Allied in 2 days @ 3 hours each. That was fun, rewarding and also not exactly bad cash. It was great gameplay all around and I was very satisfied.
Then patch 1.05 came.
- Fix salvage mission branching
I moved on to a second anarchy system, because I had fun and I wanted more. Why not two allied pirate factions?
So parking the Type 7, get in the Viper, ACCEPT ALL THE MISSIONS!!! This time even authority, because the Oompa Loompa system is nearby, independent and ugly, so here I can kill traders and cops, who gives a damn, they're not protected by the Big Three unlike the systems the Brothers of Forculus wanted to send me to for their kill missions.
So off I go, starting my salvage run in an unpopulated system which may or may not consist of just 1 star to find a single black box. Let's start slowly for now.
First USS: A trader offering alternate mission for my kill traders
Second USS: Some guy offering alternate mission for my fetch Rebel transmissions in a different system
Third USS: Alternate reward for deliver package to Oompa Loompa Port #1.
and so on.
First 7 or 8 USS I found were all alternate mission rewards, until my transaction log had every single contract updated. Since it's around 3 minutes for an USS to spawn on average in these systems, that means I spent half an hour getting hit with alternate missions. Half an hour of not progressing whatsoever. In fact, this is detrimental, as completing the missions now would result in a reputation penalty with factions I have no power over choosing or even knowing before I accept the mission.
Some of these alternate missions did not even make sense, for example someone asked me to fetch 6 units of agri-medicines. So I find an USS, and the guy tells me he can't find agri-medicines at all, if I could provide him some if I came across any?
Not a single word about my current contract, let alone abandoning it. The way the mission was worded, it should have copied the existing one, allowing me to deliver Agri-medicines to both. It says in the patch notes just for salvage missions, but I also got far more alternative missions for the Fetch missions as well, which made collecting up fetch missions every time you hit your home port even more of a pain, because I know if I accept these three missions here, my progress will be slowed down by three wasted USS contacts.
This system is so unintuitive to use now, it makes more sense to pick a faction you can afford to ruin, then accept every mission for that faction, and hope you get an alternate mission from the faction that you actually want to improve. If you do it the way I did it at Forculus, the way that makes sense, you would end up with dozen unfriendly factions from mission failure by the time you reached allied with your chosen faction. I do not even begin to comprehend why the Alternate mission offer finds you in the wrong system. If I have a mission to salvage a black box in Alrai Sector 123, why would the Kill Traders Mission NPC in Mopayanye find me in Alrai Sector 123?
TL;DR: improved alternate mission spawning in patch 1.05 made doing missions + USS unbearable.
Kill authority, kill traders, kill bounty hunters - salvage black boxes, rebel transmissions, military plans, rare artifacts - bring is food, liquor, computer tech, bertrandite, coltan and so on - deliver packet to system you have to go to anyways to deliver cargo or package - yes yes accept accept accept accept I'll do it all. Except authority, because I don't think those can actually spawn in anarchy or uninhabitated systems.
So off I go to Alrai Sector IHV 123 and whatever they're called and do these missions.
USS USS USS USS, sometimes, very rarely, I get an alternate mission offer. I'm not interested, I picked this station for a reason to work my reptuation, so I'm doing the missions as originally offered, but nice touch, every now and then. So more USS USS and when my Viper's 12t cargo hold is full, back to Irrational Exuberance to deliver. Accept new missions from the BB, including more "fetch us this", and so on. To the next system, murder people, steal goods, deliver secret messages to The Blue Mob, USS USS USS USS and another Alternate mission path. Cute, still not interested, don't care, moving on, part of the game. Cargo hold maximum capacity, back to Irrational Exuberance. More missions, only accept fetch missions, complete everything else that is on a short timer, back to Irrational Exuberance, deliver all missions but the "Fetch me X" missions, accept all remaining "Fetch me X" missions.
Trip back to the high tech system, getting my space truck. Pick up all high tech they want, fly to extractor / industrial system, pick up all the Rocks GOD DAMNIT MARIA THEY'RE MINERALS they want, pick up clothing, food cartridges (most disgusting item in the game, right?), computer components, fly to Agricultural system, pick up the booze and the food, fly to a refinery, pick up the metals. With around 150t of mission items demanded by Brothers of Forculus and the other smaller factions in Forculus and the rest Tobacco for bonus profit, I return to Irrational Exuberance. Click, click, click, click, deliver all the cargos! I feel like the hero of the people, coming in with my big space truck, filling everyone's needs and desires. Reputation raised to friendly with the main faction. I call it a day.
The next day, truck flies back to high tech, viper returns, I start over. Kill, salvage, Deliver missions 3-4 trips back to Irrational Exuberance, stacking up those Fetch missions. I see maybe again 2-3 USS that turn out to be alternate missions. Once I stacked up another 15 or so fetch missions, I repeat the round trip with my Type 7, return to Irrational Exuberance, deliver everything. Bam, Allied in 2 days @ 3 hours each. That was fun, rewarding and also not exactly bad cash. It was great gameplay all around and I was very satisfied.
Then patch 1.05 came.
- Fix salvage mission branching
I moved on to a second anarchy system, because I had fun and I wanted more. Why not two allied pirate factions?
So parking the Type 7, get in the Viper, ACCEPT ALL THE MISSIONS!!! This time even authority, because the Oompa Loompa system is nearby, independent and ugly, so here I can kill traders and cops, who gives a damn, they're not protected by the Big Three unlike the systems the Brothers of Forculus wanted to send me to for their kill missions.
So off I go, starting my salvage run in an unpopulated system which may or may not consist of just 1 star to find a single black box. Let's start slowly for now.
First USS: A trader offering alternate mission for my kill traders
Second USS: Some guy offering alternate mission for my fetch Rebel transmissions in a different system
Third USS: Alternate reward for deliver package to Oompa Loompa Port #1.
and so on.
First 7 or 8 USS I found were all alternate mission rewards, until my transaction log had every single contract updated. Since it's around 3 minutes for an USS to spawn on average in these systems, that means I spent half an hour getting hit with alternate missions. Half an hour of not progressing whatsoever. In fact, this is detrimental, as completing the missions now would result in a reputation penalty with factions I have no power over choosing or even knowing before I accept the mission.
Some of these alternate missions did not even make sense, for example someone asked me to fetch 6 units of agri-medicines. So I find an USS, and the guy tells me he can't find agri-medicines at all, if I could provide him some if I came across any?
Not a single word about my current contract, let alone abandoning it. The way the mission was worded, it should have copied the existing one, allowing me to deliver Agri-medicines to both. It says in the patch notes just for salvage missions, but I also got far more alternative missions for the Fetch missions as well, which made collecting up fetch missions every time you hit your home port even more of a pain, because I know if I accept these three missions here, my progress will be slowed down by three wasted USS contacts.
This system is so unintuitive to use now, it makes more sense to pick a faction you can afford to ruin, then accept every mission for that faction, and hope you get an alternate mission from the faction that you actually want to improve. If you do it the way I did it at Forculus, the way that makes sense, you would end up with dozen unfriendly factions from mission failure by the time you reached allied with your chosen faction. I do not even begin to comprehend why the Alternate mission offer finds you in the wrong system. If I have a mission to salvage a black box in Alrai Sector 123, why would the Kill Traders Mission NPC in Mopayanye find me in Alrai Sector 123?
TL;DR: improved alternate mission spawning in patch 1.05 made doing missions + USS unbearable.
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