Rescue Search Missions

[PBSF Pendragon]

Idea for a Mission Type - Rescue / Salvage

We can already hand in black boxes and things, and there are some basic salvage missions for black boxes etc, but I'd love to see some harder but much higher paying missions which require a little more searching.

EXAMPLE -
Rescue Jean Val Jean in the XXXX Area (perhaps even more cryptic than that, with higher payout)

Pilot Jean Val Jean has gone missing. His last known location was in XXXX system. He is flying a Diamondback Explorer, ID JV-F5S
You would then have to search in star systems around that point to try and find him. Maybe find him alive to refuel or repair, or even with a crippled ship so you'd have to grab his escape pod. maybe find him dead but have a lot of salvage items there (maybe materials / data too).

Maybe he's crashed into a planet. been attacked by pirates, etc. etc.

What would you think to missions like that?

 

[Kotuma]

Love it. Would be tons of work in some areas, to search every body within a search perimeter. Would be handy if the mission gave a jump range of the vessel. Just hope your quarry isn’t lost in the galactic core in an engineered jumpaconda.

 

[sandkid]

Look Down! Look Down!

Erhem...sorry...

+1

 

[MK Regular]

Love it. Would be tons of work in some areas, to search every body within a search perimeter. Would be handy if the mission gave a jump range of the vessel. Just hope your quarry isn’t lost in the galactic core in an engineered jumpaconda.

You wouldn't necessarily need to check every body, just FSS the systems to find the 'mission critical USS' or the planet with a POI labeled 'other'.

As for the mission idea itself, I'd say that there would at least need to be some type of bread crumb trail that would need to be followed:

• go to the system listed in the mission description, find a beacon dropped by the missing ship
• scanning the beacon gives a list of systems that the missing ship may have jumped to
• scan each of the systems listed, only 1 of which is actually the correct system with the rest being dead-ends
• upon finding the correct system, the player will either find the missing ship or another beacon
• repeat

The trail should have a set maximum length and a set number of potential dead-ends (both of which are hidden from the player) that are determined by the rank requirement and payout of the mission. For example:

• a S&R mission that is listed for an aimless CMDR would have the missing ship in the system listed in the mission description, or in the only system listed by the beacon. Payout would likely be in the region of 100k CR depending on the distance from the location the mission was accepted and the starting system
• a S&R mission that is listed for an elite CMDR could have the missing ship found after as many as 10 beacons, with each beacon giving up to 4-5 dead-end systems. Payout would likely be in the region of 100m CR depending on the distance from the location the mission was accepted and the starting system

additionally, the distance to the systems listed by the beacon could also be dependent on the rank and payout of the mission, with low-ranking missions having systems 10-20 LY away, and high ranking missions having systems 100-200 ly away.

 

[Kotuma]

Would be great if in 1% of such missions you find the ship in question and it’s totally fine, then an assassin pops out of supercruise, having misled you to find their target. Have the choice of helping your search target or abandoning them to the slaughter.

 

[MK Regular]

Would be great if in 1% of such missions you find the ship in question and it’s totally fine, then an assassin pops out of supercruise, having misled you to find their target. Have the choice of helping your search target or abandoning them to the slaughter.

If it was a rare mission wrinkle, I would be perfectly fine with it. I suspect most players would be using unarmed ships for these kind of missions, and I could image that quite a few people would get very salty about having to watch the ship they spent a decent amount of time trying to track down get blown up in front of them. At least they'd still get paid, and the mission would still be legal since they aren't actually killing committing any crimes.

An idea for another mission wrinkle would be getting a message from an opposing faction offering to pay you more to make sure you find the ship in question with a few additional requirements. You might need to make sure the ship is destroyed once you find it, you may need to liberate some cargo (especially if they original mission giver wanted that cargo), etc....