Prisoner Missions - Bugged or not?

[Khamelion]

Hey Up,
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I took a prisoner mission last night as I was after gaining rep with the faction that advertised it and the short of it is, after searching the system stated in the mission brief and every USS I came across, I didn't find anything that would've suggested or out right showed what I was shooting was a prisoner, or scout ship.
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Now, either I was unlucky, looking in the wrong place, the scout ships are rarer than rocking horse poop, or the mission is bugged, needless to say after 5hrs searching the mission ended and I'm now unfriendly with the faction and the caret red and downward.
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Has anyone had any success with the prisoner missions?

 

[Ydiss]

I'll be honest. I saw that mission, thought "never heard of that, never seen a prisoner target before" and left it well alone.

So I haven't a clue. I imagine it's not a lawful contract, so it might involve killing clean ships.

 

[Feldspar]

No, I was offered a mission to kill propagandists last night, naturally I declined as I had no idea what to look for.

 

[Ydiss]

The only thing I know for sure is that the game's NPC spawn mechanic works by assigning a type to the NPC. But this type is hidden to the player.

Each type has its own load-out and the ships that that type can be is often limited.

For example, the type "pirate" can be a cobra and will always have a cargo scanner. The type "bounty hunter" will be always using a kws.

The only way to work this out the type is to either look for obvious clues, or to systematically destroy targets, whilst the mission is active, pay close attention to ship type and load out, then when a target counts on the mission quota, work out what modules may be unique and remember the ship model.

Sadly, the latter is likely to require someone willing commit a lot of crimes, unless you're lucky enough to be given the mission in an anarchy system.

So, if you are willing to do the research, accept these missions and start logging. Otherwise, we'd need to wait for someone else to do it and be kind enough to share.