Removing Non-Wing Missions and tweak WM - Or Overhauling Missions in General

[EWanderer]

So after 5 Months in ED, countless hours of doing salvaging missions for the Nobles of Mbukuravi, after selecting them as my go-to faction on a whim and a lot of Sothis Mining/Ceos runs, here are a few thoughts about the Mission System.

Merge normal missions with wing version​

So Wing Missions. Great Stuff on paper:

• Do things with your friends.
• Don't have to board flip so often.
• And most importantly: Do things on in your own pace.

Now we all know, that wing missions are effectively only in full wings reward wise. Many people already have suggested to bring the payout of a wing mission to the one of a regular mission of similiar size and then just split the rewards based on current wing size and I fully support that idea, soooo:
1. Make Wing Missions payout based on objective size and split that large pot between Participants at the end.

With the biggest issues solo people have with wing missions out of the way, a) that they are not worthwhile and b) they clog up the mission boards, let's continue:
What reason is there for non-wing missions now? Sure not all missions types currently have a wing aquivalent, but why not? Sure split up the already measly reward for data deliveries would not make sense, but I see here a great opportunity for example long range high profile deliveries that include a lot of hunters, so the postman might want to bring some escorts. More ideas for this further down
2. So make all mission types wingable and just create different objective size. i.E. Ammount of Cargo to deliver.

More Mission Types​

So this is not so much QoL suggestions like the previous ones, but rather a few ideas, that have been floating in my head for a few weeks. Most of them should not really include additional assets(beside a few lines of text) and spice up certain activities and give just more varity in general, since on a "tweaked WM" only board, people would collect like the most paying mission and could run after it for multiple hours or days.

• Long Term Transport/Source Contract - Much like Power Commodities, you can only pick up the cargo/have to deliver commodities every 2-3 real days(to accomodate for ppl with not so much gaming time), over the span of mutliple weeks. You could only pick up one mission of this sort one at the time(since the Factions want to make sure, you do your job) and to balance stuff. They could have a reward bonus for being reliable over such a long time span(much like our economy only works with reliable infrastructure and how Factions employ NPC Pilots for such things, I assume the latter at least).
• Tracking - Everyone who ever did a steal or assasination missions, knows that little piece about the timeframe and where to find your target. But why not let us see the other side.
  • For Assasination you get like last known location and have to pick up the trail just as you have, if you miss the time frame of such missions. But instead of having to interdict and kill the target, you just have to stay on their trail for a few minutes until the Killer comes up.
  • Piracy. You will have to look for ships carrying cargo at ports or by interdicting them and scanning them. Once you found a valid target, you would have to follow them until a pirates shows up and finishes the job. You could add bonus payout, if the Player jumps in and joins the combat.
• Great Salvaging - So I love salvaging. I made it from Cobra 3 to Type 9 with them. I did a little bit of salvaging in damaged stations and of course some mat farming. But I came across a few debris fields in my time and they are kinda empty right now and the few things there are mostly illagle salvage, but why should they stay that way? Great Salvage Missions are set in these areas, littered with stuff, that would hinder collection limpets. Maybe you even had to use mining lasers to tear apart larger chunks, to collect them or reach stuff. All in all it would just be a lot more interesting than dropping in at a location, deploy the limpet, get the loot and leave.
• Fuel Rat & Mobile Repair - So Fuel Ratting. I love it, great stuff can only recommend everyone to join the mischief. There are already NPC Distress Calls, but given how long range Communication works and how many real CMDR make such mistakes, the need for rescues under NPC should be huge. There should be an entire department in Galactic Insurance Co. to cut their losses down. So you go to the mission board or even the Search and Rescue contact and collect your calls.
• Installation Maintance & Harvest Collection - So Surface Scan missions and skimmer missions are more or less interesting. So why not use the surface instellation assets and give some more activties. Either drop some Commodity near the station(to repair them) or collect a few tons of cargo(like from a mining facility).
• Mining Harvest - Basically like salvage missions, but you would fly to a mining location, locate the miner, who would drop a bunch of cargo/already has a cloud of excess stuff around them, you had to pick it up and bring back to the station.
• Long Range Data Deliveries - So currently data delivery is kind of an easy early activity to make some quick bucks for starters. Sure most of the time Data Delivery is between close partners and Minor Faction only operate on a local scale. But given how PP might come to Missions, this would be a great opportunity. You would have to deliver the data across the bubble and would get incoming enemy alert multiple times and even spontanous hands out of a kill contract to players.

So this is all I've got for the moment. I really would have loved to have some idea for Exploration Missions, but I'm kinda short on these. For Tourism I have a few ideas floating in my head, but I will write a seperate Thread for them, since its rather long and complex. If you got questions, see issues or feedback, leave them below I would love to ponder on them.

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

FDev have stated that converting non-wing missions to wing carries an aunacceptable overhead.

 

[EWanderer]

FDev have stated that converting non-wing missions to wing carries an aunacceptable overhead.

How? We got wing missions already. Just fix Wing Mission Rewards, give more wiggle room for scale and throw normal versions out of the generator. That would be start and I've heard that they already working on Minin Wing Missions maybe. So besides Pirating, Smuggling and Data Deliveries, did I miss one. Most missions are already Wing Version or are Disguised Transport Missions. Even if they didn't convert all Mission Types, just collapsing Transport and Source Missions would be a great start.