Please Remove Mission Timers

[SergMx]

Ooh, it's even better in Odyssey. Take a mission from an NPC in a settlement, leave the planet. Later some other player comes in and murders the whole settlement to death. Your "guestgiver", gone forever. And there's nothing you could do about it. If missions didn't have timers the chance of some other player killing your guestgiver approaches 1 over time. Or maybe the faction goes into a war state and the settlement becomes a conflict zone, or they are hit by an infrastructure failure.

Yes, but missions
1.) reward engineering materials and extra credits (10...15 millions in bounties for destroying 40 pirates, 40 millions for mission reward, and you can stack 3 or 4 of these missions)
2.) give you a reason to sneak into a settlement and do some thieving or assassing, while also providing failstates and operational complications (eg the McGuffin you need to steal is in a well-trafficked restricted area or the whole settlement is on full alert as you arrive to wipe everyone there out).

1. Maybe it used to happen, now it's enough to get knocked up once in HGE and it's not a mission either.
2. Strangely enough, I did a large amount of materials for Odyssey outside of missions.

And then, I don't like to get out of my FC for the sake of missions.

 

[HRDiagram]

Different strokes for different folks.
Yesterday I was in a station and found a mission to eliminate scavengers from an abandoned settlement.
I boarded an Apex, silently sniped the scavengers without the need to use my shields, and taxied back to 15 Manufacturing Instructions.
And during the trip in the taxi I was cleaning home

 

[Shurimal]

1. Maybe it used to happen, now it's enough to get knocked up once in HGE and it's not a mission either.

There are certain stuffz you can't get from HGE-s, like data and raw materials. Whenever I see some mission offering G5 materials of a type that I've used up, I take the mission, trade down that type at a mat trader and fill up the G5 bin from mission. Quite efficient and no need to go hunting HGE-s.

2. Strangely enough, I did a large amount of materials for Odyssey outside of missions.

Mission rewards are now way more efficient and way more fun than relogging at a downed sattellite for manufacturing instructions or resetting an extraction settlement for weapon components.

 

[SergMx]

There are certain stuffz you can't get from HGE-s, like data and raw materials. Whenever I see some mission offering G5 materials of a type that I've used up, I take the mission, trade down that type at a mat trader and fill up the G5 bin from mission. Quite efficient and no need to go hunting HGE-s.

Mission rewards are now way more efficient and way more fun than relogging at a downed sattellite for manufacturing instructions or resetting an extraction settlement for weapon components.

I think what's more exciting and what's not is for everyone to decide for themselves. I said that we can do without missions, as an option to solve the issue.
I'm not interested in your objections to me, do you have anything to offer on the topic ?

 

[Shurimal]

I think what's more exciting and what's not is for everyone to decide for themselves. I said that we can do without missions, as an option to solve the issue.
I'm not interested in your objections to me, do you have anything to offer on the topic ?

You asked:

Why do you need missions? Can't you fight, kill pirates, mine minerals, explore, trade, etc. without missions ?

I answered that--they're fun and give you good rewards, in certain cases better rewards than you could get otherwise. If you don't want to do missions, fine, don't do them, relog at POI-s to your heart's content if that's what you find preferable. I just earned 18 Ionized Gas for a relatively simple in-out theft job, gathering these via the old method (raiding settlements) would've taken 5 times longer.

 

[SergMx]

You asked:

I answered that--they're fun and give you good rewards, in certain cases better rewards than you could get otherwise. If you don't want to do missions, fine, don't do them, relog at POI-s to your heart's content if that's what you find preferable. I just earned 18 Ionized Gas for a relatively simple in-out theft job, gathering these via the old method (raiding settlements) would've taken 5 times longer.

I'm happy for you
And I have never re-logged in the game, because for me the very mining of materials is the game itself.

 

[Jay8454]

It's up to you to be a responsible player, this game has a BGS generator and it's affected to a slight degree if you do or don't finish a mission. All missions give a posted time before you select them. If you can't complete something than that faction waggles their finger at you. If you complete it then they reward you and want you to do more for them and better missions open up. I like your post but strongly disagree that it needs time taken out; it may need a slight adjustment. I have a mission now that gave me 6 days I will have it done shortly "45 pirates", which will be under the clock time by 4 days.

 

[SergMx]

It's up to you to be a responsible player, this game has a BGS generator and it's affected to a slight degree if you do or don't finish a mission. All missions give a posted time before you select them. If you can't complete something than that faction waggles their finger at you. If you complete it then they reward you and want you to do more for them and better missions open up. I like your post but strongly disagree that it needs time taken out; it may need a slight adjustment. I have a mission now that gave me 6 days I will have it done shortly "45 pirates", which will be under the clock time by 4 days.

Am I understanding you correctly? If you just kill 45 pirates in this system without a mission and cash that amount at the local station, it won't affect the BGS and the faction won't give you a reputation boost ?

 

[Fizzatron]

I'd never have guessed ED missions had anything to do with British doctors and nurses.

Doc Scott enters the chat (only 90s kids will get this reference).

I think this thread was a good learning opportunity for OP to understand the BGS, just in time for PP V2 as well. I distinctly recall my first realization that hitting escape to the menu didn't pause the game all those years ago when I was alerted to the sound of my SRV exploding after running out of fuel..

 

[apophis13]

Doc Scott enters the chat (only 90s kids will get this reference).

I think this thread was a good learning opportunity for OP to understand the BGS, just in time for PP V2 as well. I distinctly recall my first realization that hitting escape to the menu didn't pause the game all those years ago when I was alerted to the sound of my SRV exploding after running out of fuel..

Listen, man, thanks, I guess, but I'm not going to do any of that stuff. I'm not going to do engineering. I'm not going to do power play. I just want to play solo for one day a week on my main computer while I multitask prepping my Pathfinder 2E game on the laptop while waiting to reach the station, land, take off, etc. I just realized that the get-out-of-your-ship missions probably aren't the best for that and am now just transporting passengers in a space taxi I don't need the money because I have more than I'll ever spend from finding space plants. I don't need the mats because engineering is more complicated than I want to deal with, and also, I don't need it, like, at all, to do the stuff that I feel like doing. I really have no reason at all to be doing what I'm doing other than something to break up my time while writing because, for whatever reason, I write better that way.

Also, I love that as a UPS delivery man in Elite, if a police officer says that they wanna scan you, and you're like, sure, buddy, I'm just delivering space packages, then the guy gets stuck walking to you behind a box that he can't path around for like 30 seconds while you wait for him, and then, you decide to make it easier for him by taking two steps towards him and walking off the platform that he's having trouble getting up, then he goes psycho and starts trying to murder your UPS butt. Yeah, and you can't, like, say, woah, bro, chill out. Nope! Everyone in the entire station immediately, scientists, worker, the frigging cook, EVERYBODY...all start running out of their workplaces intent on murdering one UPS delivery guy. So, as you run away from the rampaging mob of insane space-psychos, you call a taxi because apparently this job was for an armed mental institution. Then, the taxi shows up, and these absolute crazy people start shooting at the taxi too as you fly away.

So, moral of the story is that Odyssey is a neat idea and stuff, but, like, coding the AI behavior for it is probably more than they bargained for. Granted, I've heard that they'll also blow you up if you get stuck trying to leave a station. Which, like, makes sense! If you are, say, driving down the road and your tire gets stuck in a pothole or whatever or you get a flat, or, you know, whatever, the most logical thing to do is for the police man to walk up and just open fire at the stuck driver at point blank range. Totally logical behavior!

We can all just be thankful that the Devs don't design police use of force policy in whatever country they live in.

 

[Miscellaneous]

I just realized that the get-out-of-your-ship missions probably aren't the best for that

Yeah that's like what I was saying, how the on-foot terminal missions and then ship terminal missions don't blend too well. Because I got so used to, over a couple of years, so used to being able to bite off more missons than I could chew - and, when necessary, sleep on it. But the short on-foot missions are often just like 6 hours! Yep.

Oh yeah you are right too that Elite is a good game to play for breaks doing anything like writing, or just flipping back and forth between. Especially exploring! Ohhhh yeah

Keep it up duders!

 

[apophis13]

I think a better approach would be to let them rot in Transactions. If you do stuff late you get bad results like:

"Who are these for? Oh no, we kicked them out months ago."
"You're here to collect the stuff I wanted to move a week ago, you're too late bud. I got someone else to do it"

Then fail the missions.

That would be AWESOME if they did that!

 

[BackToTheMud]

You know a lot of missions are faction state sensetive right?

 

[lunarplasma]

And, thus, you just need to get rid of this terrible idea and allow people to play your game at their pace. Presumably, you want people to play your game, right. You don't want the design choices to be so unpleasant that people just give up and go do other things because if you want to play this, you're forced against your will to keep playing whether you want to or not. If you want to condition people to dislike your product, this is how you do it. So, just, get rid of the timers.

Gets my vote.

 

[varonica]

Gets my vote.

Yeah, new player takes missions, players for a few weeks, goes to turn missions in, finds many have all failed due to BGS changes, gets big fines and/or sent to prison, way to make new player experience enjoyable.

 

[lunarplasma]

Yeah, new player takes missions, players for a few weeks, goes to turn missions in, finds many have all failed due to BGS changes, gets big fines and/or sent to prison, way to make new player experience enjoyable.

That is not what the OP was suggesting at all. They were just suggesting to remove mission timers.

If the system state is such that the mission should no longer be valid, then just ignore the effect it would have on the system but give the player the reward they've earned.

 

[Jmanis]

That is not what the OP was suggesting at all. They were just suggesting to remove mission timers.

If the system state is such that the mission should no longer be valid, then just ignore the effect it would have on the system but give the player the reward they've earned.

How? The mission's invalid. You can't go scan the megaship on system X, if it's no longer in system X. You can't deliver goods to faction Y, if faction Y is no longer there. You can't kill pirates of faction Z, if faction Z get retreated.

 

[lunarplasma]

How? The mission's invalid. You can't go scan the megaship on system X, if it's no longer in system X. You can't deliver goods to faction Y, if faction Y is no longer there. You can't kill pirates of faction Z, if faction Z get retreated.

I understand what you're saying - the BGS will influence whether a mission can be done or not. The OP's suggestion was that mission timers are removed, which cannot be completely done because of BGS effects.

To me, a reasonable compromise would be that missions have no time limits, but the BGS itself dictates whether the mission continues to be valid or not. The game updates the player's mission list when a mission can no longer be done.

 

[varonica]

I understand what you're saying - the BGS will influence whether a mission can be done or not. The OP's suggestion was that mission timers are removed, which cannot be completely done because of BGS effects.

To me, a reasonable compromise would be that missions have no time limits, but the BGS itself dictates whether the mission continues to be valid or not. The game updates the player's mission list when a mission can no longer be done.

Which leads to them being failed missions and fines applied to the player or loss of reputation with the faction for failing the mission.

 

[Jmanis]

Which leads to them being failed missions and fines applied to the player or loss of reputation with the faction for failing the mission.

In other words, sounds like a timer