Note: This is not my content All Credit to CMDR Pretagonist, but I felt it deserved a cross post:
Original source: (Go upvote his post!) https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/7slt40/proposal_careers/
Proposal:
There should be a new selection in contacts called "Career Agent" or similar. You should be able to have a list of known Agents and one or two "Active Agents".
Your active agent is always present in stations with the agent facility (which should be most of them).
Every agent has a specific career description. Say "military, federation", "Trader, smuggler", "pvp, criminal" or "Empire, bulk trading" and so on as well as a class. Higher classes of agents are harder to find and unlock but gives better advice.
Basic interaction
Your agent would either via the message window in-ship or via the tab in stations give you advice or even missions that relate to the specific career.
Examples:
"Hey cmdr, there's a civil war going on in <sector> and I'm friendly with the locals there. I've talked you up with <person> at <faction> so you could get a nice bonus by going there and taking part in clearing out the <enemy faction> scum. Give <person> my regards.
"Hi, I've just been informed that there's a heavy shortage of <commodity> in <system> getting some there fast would help me a lot."
"One of my contacts told me there's a lot of commanders hauling precious cargo from <system> to <system>, why don't you try to cut down their ROI a bit?"
Getting agents
Agents should be unlockable in different ways, kinda like engineers. Agents should also rank up if your actions help the agent. Some agents might take a cut of your profits to keep providing their services.
Further development
If this system works well there are other deeper interactions possible.
Getting friends to help
Having other players help you would increase your agents influence faster
Referring friends to your agent will boost your agent
Noob agents
Every player gets a noob agent at first. This agent will help you through the early game kinda like an extended in-game tutorial.
noob agent would refer you to other agents if you'd like to delve into other areas like trade, mining, bounty hunting and so on
Scripted events
Following a career track would sometimes give you missions directly from your agent with scripted events, voice acting, rank progression and unlocks
This could be combined with noob agents to give you tutorial missions for various activities in-game.
Possible tie-ins with powerplay, engineers and the research of ancient lore
Agents dropping you if you do things counter to their interest
PVP coordinating agents
Agents for hire
A player could pay an agent to get other players to influence the bgs to his advantage
Allegiance. Having high standing with one active agent might cause your influence/rep to drop faster with other factions and agents. And it might get you enemy NPCs on your tail.
Mini-CGs that only appear to players with the correct career path or might give you alternative ways to complete regular CGs.
Open only agents that only communicate or influence your interactions when playing in open.
Wing/squadron agents that give out more complex tasks
Agents should mostly not give out actual missions but rather give pointers to in-game places where you can perform activities that you enjoy.
Inactive agents won't forget about you but they won't interact with you or change your interactions with the bgs. Activating agents should require some kind of work like going to the correct station or similar. Deactivating agents should be possible from inside your ship. A deactivated agent should have some kind of cooldown.
As a side note there should be an active part of the bgs that autonerfs popular missions or too high paying activities. Finding a good earning spot should be an active meta (that agents help with). Thus sharing your newly discovered gold mine would give you better standing with your agent but would also deplete the earnings faster.
Original source: (Go upvote his post!) https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/7slt40/proposal_careers/
Proposal:
There should be a new selection in contacts called "Career Agent" or similar. You should be able to have a list of known Agents and one or two "Active Agents".
Your active agent is always present in stations with the agent facility (which should be most of them).
Every agent has a specific career description. Say "military, federation", "Trader, smuggler", "pvp, criminal" or "Empire, bulk trading" and so on as well as a class. Higher classes of agents are harder to find and unlock but gives better advice.
Basic interaction
Your agent would either via the message window in-ship or via the tab in stations give you advice or even missions that relate to the specific career.
Examples:
"Hey cmdr, there's a civil war going on in <sector> and I'm friendly with the locals there. I've talked you up with <person> at <faction> so you could get a nice bonus by going there and taking part in clearing out the <enemy faction> scum. Give <person> my regards.
"Hi, I've just been informed that there's a heavy shortage of <commodity> in <system> getting some there fast would help me a lot."
"One of my contacts told me there's a lot of commanders hauling precious cargo from <system> to <system>, why don't you try to cut down their ROI a bit?"
Getting agents
Agents should be unlockable in different ways, kinda like engineers. Agents should also rank up if your actions help the agent. Some agents might take a cut of your profits to keep providing their services.
Further development
If this system works well there are other deeper interactions possible.
Getting friends to help
Having other players help you would increase your agents influence faster
Referring friends to your agent will boost your agent
Noob agents
Every player gets a noob agent at first. This agent will help you through the early game kinda like an extended in-game tutorial.
noob agent would refer you to other agents if you'd like to delve into other areas like trade, mining, bounty hunting and so on
Scripted events
Following a career track would sometimes give you missions directly from your agent with scripted events, voice acting, rank progression and unlocks
This could be combined with noob agents to give you tutorial missions for various activities in-game.
Possible tie-ins with powerplay, engineers and the research of ancient lore
Agents dropping you if you do things counter to their interest
PVP coordinating agents
Agents for hire
A player could pay an agent to get other players to influence the bgs to his advantage
Allegiance. Having high standing with one active agent might cause your influence/rep to drop faster with other factions and agents. And it might get you enemy NPCs on your tail.
Mini-CGs that only appear to players with the correct career path or might give you alternative ways to complete regular CGs.
Open only agents that only communicate or influence your interactions when playing in open.
Wing/squadron agents that give out more complex tasks
Agents should mostly not give out actual missions but rather give pointers to in-game places where you can perform activities that you enjoy.
Inactive agents won't forget about you but they won't interact with you or change your interactions with the bgs. Activating agents should require some kind of work like going to the correct station or similar. Deactivating agents should be possible from inside your ship. A deactivated agent should have some kind of cooldown.
As a side note there should be an active part of the bgs that autonerfs popular missions or too high paying activities. Finding a good earning spot should be an active meta (that agents help with). Thus sharing your newly discovered gold mine would give you better standing with your agent but would also deplete the earnings faster.