Hey all,
Now I recently posted about this idea to rework how mission rewards work on twitter here: https://twitter.com/BrandonDrinken/status/972297806361739264. I was then directed to this forum and this should give me a little more room to expound on the rework on this forum as opposed to twitter. So, with the disclaimer out of the way, lets dive in.
So lets get a bit of context. After discussing the current mission reward calculation is based on a few factors; faction reputation, mission difficulty rating (expressed as rank) and distance. That is to say that you get better missions as your rep with the faction you're accepting missions from goes up, the payout is better based on the rank of mission it is, and pay is affected by how far you need to travel in order to complete the mission.
As to that I'd like to suggest that we add in another factor to that equation, or at the very least, alter the factors in play. I'll also hopefully be able to write up an equation for this in order to show that this isn't being made out of salt, but out of a want to improve the balance of the game in order to be a more rewarding experience.
Were your rank to play a more impactful role on gameplay, more than simply being a measure of play length and how difficult the NPC's that get sent after you are, this would alter how the game is perceived from a play perspective. If your personal rank in your chosen field were higher, you'd expect to get paid more, wouldn't you? If a Harmless ranked Sidewinder can pick up the same missions as someone who's Elite and in a fully fitted ship. doesn't that seem a little broken? Hell, to me, you shouldn't even be able to see missions that're ranked more highly than you are. And I know it has been similar to this before, and I'm suggesting a return to that, but with better rewards for attaining higher rank.
So, for a look at what it'd be like for a veteran who's done a lot but hasn't achieved everything, I'll give an example.
You're deadly ranked in combat, got your Corvette, Cutter and Anaconda as well as various smaller ships. You're also Elite in trade and a Ranger in exploration. So, not the most complete but still not a fresh faced newbie. You go to your mission board at your home port and find some missions that catch your eye. There's a wing trade mission, fitting of your rank, hauling 2.5Kt of coffee 25ly for about 17mil per member. There's a massacre mission, not the biggest bounty you've seen but by no means laughable, 85 ships for 9mil, only 12ly out. Over to the passenger lounge you find a couple of decent pay long range tourism missions, 12kly round trip for about 21mil, not bad.
What you pick is up to you, but my suggestion is that these kinds of payouts and mission difficulties should be based on rank, making you want to be a higher ranked pilot so you get the most well paying jobs. Think of your rank less of an "achievement" in the gameplay sense, and more as the amount of a name you've made for yourself in those fields. A measure of your renown, so to speak.
As I've said previously, if this kind of system were to be in place, you'd have no idea about better missions were it not for ranking up. So the base pay should be enough to keep newbies engaged and the rate of increase should be enough to warrant wanting a higher rank.
Starting at a base of 20,000 credits for something like a 3 pirate massacre mission, ignoring factors such as distance from destination, the rate of increase would be an exponential value, with the value doubling for every Pilot's Federation rank up you get. So at mostly harmless for a 3 pirate kill mission with a max pre-range factor distance of 10ly, you get 20k. For simplicity's sake, range isn't going to be a factor for anything under 10ly, it's a short hop in most ships. At mostly harmless you need to kill 6 targets and you get 40k, at Novice 80k and 12 targets. Finally, at Elite rank in Combat, you would have a base wage of 10.24mil with a base target count of 196. (Edit: while this seems to be too many targets for too little cash, this is actually a tapered down value. May need a new equation for some values)
That's the gist of it. The higher your rank, the better missions you can see and the more reward you get for doing them. Of course, if missions were made more rewarding and the factor of pay was better for those who put in the time for it, then the issue of where to spend those credits comes into play. That's not the point of this, the point of this is to have a look at an option of make missions more rewarding whilst also making ranks have an affect on missions.
No tl;dr on this one. This issue has a lot of nuance to it which would be better seen to in depth.
Now I recently posted about this idea to rework how mission rewards work on twitter here: https://twitter.com/BrandonDrinken/status/972297806361739264. I was then directed to this forum and this should give me a little more room to expound on the rework on this forum as opposed to twitter. So, with the disclaimer out of the way, lets dive in.
So lets get a bit of context. After discussing the current mission reward calculation is based on a few factors; faction reputation, mission difficulty rating (expressed as rank) and distance. That is to say that you get better missions as your rep with the faction you're accepting missions from goes up, the payout is better based on the rank of mission it is, and pay is affected by how far you need to travel in order to complete the mission.
As to that I'd like to suggest that we add in another factor to that equation, or at the very least, alter the factors in play. I'll also hopefully be able to write up an equation for this in order to show that this isn't being made out of salt, but out of a want to improve the balance of the game in order to be a more rewarding experience.
Were your rank to play a more impactful role on gameplay, more than simply being a measure of play length and how difficult the NPC's that get sent after you are, this would alter how the game is perceived from a play perspective. If your personal rank in your chosen field were higher, you'd expect to get paid more, wouldn't you? If a Harmless ranked Sidewinder can pick up the same missions as someone who's Elite and in a fully fitted ship. doesn't that seem a little broken? Hell, to me, you shouldn't even be able to see missions that're ranked more highly than you are. And I know it has been similar to this before, and I'm suggesting a return to that, but with better rewards for attaining higher rank.
So, for a look at what it'd be like for a veteran who's done a lot but hasn't achieved everything, I'll give an example.
You're deadly ranked in combat, got your Corvette, Cutter and Anaconda as well as various smaller ships. You're also Elite in trade and a Ranger in exploration. So, not the most complete but still not a fresh faced newbie. You go to your mission board at your home port and find some missions that catch your eye. There's a wing trade mission, fitting of your rank, hauling 2.5Kt of coffee 25ly for about 17mil per member. There's a massacre mission, not the biggest bounty you've seen but by no means laughable, 85 ships for 9mil, only 12ly out. Over to the passenger lounge you find a couple of decent pay long range tourism missions, 12kly round trip for about 21mil, not bad.
What you pick is up to you, but my suggestion is that these kinds of payouts and mission difficulties should be based on rank, making you want to be a higher ranked pilot so you get the most well paying jobs. Think of your rank less of an "achievement" in the gameplay sense, and more as the amount of a name you've made for yourself in those fields. A measure of your renown, so to speak.
As I've said previously, if this kind of system were to be in place, you'd have no idea about better missions were it not for ranking up. So the base pay should be enough to keep newbies engaged and the rate of increase should be enough to warrant wanting a higher rank.
Starting at a base of 20,000 credits for something like a 3 pirate massacre mission, ignoring factors such as distance from destination, the rate of increase would be an exponential value, with the value doubling for every Pilot's Federation rank up you get. So at mostly harmless for a 3 pirate kill mission with a max pre-range factor distance of 10ly, you get 20k. For simplicity's sake, range isn't going to be a factor for anything under 10ly, it's a short hop in most ships. At mostly harmless you need to kill 6 targets and you get 40k, at Novice 80k and 12 targets. Finally, at Elite rank in Combat, you would have a base wage of 10.24mil with a base target count of 196. (Edit: while this seems to be too many targets for too little cash, this is actually a tapered down value. May need a new equation for some values)
That's the gist of it. The higher your rank, the better missions you can see and the more reward you get for doing them. Of course, if missions were made more rewarding and the factor of pay was better for those who put in the time for it, then the issue of where to spend those credits comes into play. That's not the point of this, the point of this is to have a look at an option of make missions more rewarding whilst also making ranks have an affect on missions.
No tl;dr on this one. This issue has a lot of nuance to it which would be better seen to in depth.
