[Suggestion] Fleshing out Follow-on missions

Conceptually speaking, I believe that Follow-on, or Chained, Missions are the single best addition to the game since its original release.

Sadly, though, I am still left feeling that the potential of this mechanic has not yet been fully fleshed out. Most notably in the variety of different follow-on missions a single mission can potentially lead to.

For instance, as it currently stands-at least from what I've seen-an Assassination mission will only result in another Assassination Follow-on (the "wrong target" follow on), Courier Missions will only generate Surface Scan or Liberation Missions & Donation Missions will only generate Assassination or Haulage missions. I think all of these can be greatly expanded upon, as follows:

Assassination Mission: Why stop at only more assassination missions. This mission type could lead to any one of the following missions.

VIP/Bulk Passenger Mission: Just like a massacre mission, the killing of this assassination target has now made it safe for these passengers to travel.

Haulage/Data Courier Mission: Identical Rationale to the VIP Mission.

Salvage Mission: Information gleaned from the wreckage has revealed the location of an important item for salvage-either in space or on a planetary surface.

Massacre Mission: The Faction that the assassination target belonged to is spoiling for revenge. To take the wind out of their sails, you need to go kill X number of ships belonging to that faction.

Surface Scan Mission:
This mission type could span all kinds of follow ons-as follows.

Data Courier Mission: The mission giver has gone over the data you received, & compiled the most relevant intelligence. They now want you to take the Data to <System Name> for further analysis.

Liberation/Piracy Mission: The Data from the Settlement has revealed the location of a vital piece of cargo, or perhaps VIP hostages that you now need to rescue or pilfer.

Salvage Mission: The Data from the Settlement has revealed the location of some vital salvage.

Assassination Mission: The Data has revealed the location of an important target for assassination.

Massacre Mission: Same as for the assassination mission follow-on, except it reveals multiple targets.

Passenger Mission: Based on the data you retrieved, we have learned of an important place where some passengers need to be delivered to.

Donation Mission:

Salvage mission: The Faction has used your donation to research the location of some important salvage, planet-side or in space.

Liberation/Piracy mission: The Faction has used your donation to research the current location of a pilot who has either taken something valuable from them, or that is carrying something valuable that the Faction wants stolen for them.

Surface Scan mission: The Faction has used your donation to investigate the location of a surface settlement that they want you to scan for them.

Data Courier Mission: As with Scan missions, Data missions could spawn all kinds of follow-ons.

Liberation/Piracy Mission: The Data provided gives the location of a potential Liberation/Piracy target.

Assassination Mission: The Data provided gives the location of an NPC that needs to be assassinated.

Haulage Mission: The Data provided suggests an ideal location for some cargo to be shipped to on behalf of the faction.

Salvage Mission: Again, the Data has provided the location of some vital piece of salvage, either planet-side or in space.

Passenger Mission: The Data provided gives the location of where a passenger needs to be delivered.

Salvage Mission: The variety of follow-on missions this mission type could generate would depend on the type of salvage in the initial mission.

For instance, Black Box & Encrypted Data salvage could result in Liberation/Piracy missions; Surface Scan Missions; Surface Salvage Missions; Data Courier Missions or Massacre Missions.

Prototype Tech, Rare Artwork, Trade Data, Commercial Samples & pretty much any other kind of salvage is most likely to result in either Data Courier Missions or Haulage Missions....or possibly even a rare passenger mission (as in the case of salvaging occupied escape pods or hostages from planetary surfaces)

Liberation/Piracy Mission:

Haulage/Passenger Mission: The People/Goods need to be transported on to somewhere else.

Massacre Mission: The Faction that the goods were obtained from need to be punished.

Data Courier Mission: Sometimes the item/person recovered has valuable data that needs to be couriered somewhere else.

Assassination Mission: Kill the person who ordered the original theft (Liberation only).

Massacre Mission:

Data Courier/Haulage Mission: The same logic can be applied to these as to the Passenger missions. It is now safe to transport this data/cargo

Mining Mission:

Data Courier or Buy & return missions: In the former case, the faction might want you to take data on what you have mined to another system, or else they might want you to go & purchase equipment that they can use to refine the metals & convert them into manufactured goods.

Passenger Mission: There are a number of follow-on mission Passengers could generate, tailored to the *type* of passenger you are ferrying.

Secondary Passenger Mission: Completing one Passenger mission could lead to the Faction offering you an immediate follow- up....perhaps the same passenger(s) needing to go elsewhere, or cohorts of the original passenger(s) who need to be transported to the same location.

Haulage Mission: The original passenger might require certain equipment delivered to their current location (rebels might want weapons or explosives, Doctors might want legal drugs or medical equipment, a criminal mastermind might want you to bring in nerve agents, illicit drugs or slaves, for example).

Data Courier Mission: The original passenger, or the faction you transported them for, might have some valuable info-linked to the passenger-that needs delivering.....either to the original passenger or somewhere else. This might be secret data for a rebel group, or data for a scientist or doctor, or information for a General.

Salvage Mission: This could be something vital to the original passenger....maybe the personal effects of a refugee, or encrypted data/rebel transmissions for Rebels or a General, Trade Data or Commercial Samples for Business People/CEO...to name a few.

Liberation/Piracy: Maybe a General or Rebel Leader needs you to recover something vital to the war effort, or maybe a Criminal Mastermind just wants you to pilfer something on their behalf.

Massacre Mission: Maybe a Criminal Mastermind wants you to go kill some cops; maybe the Rebels want you to kill ships belonging to the other faction; maybe the General wants something similar to the rebels; maybe the refugees want you to kill those responsible for making them refugees.

You can see from this less than exhaustive list that, by having each type of mission potentially generate 3+ follow-on mission possibilities, you allow for much greater narrative variety.....without the need for hand-crafting missions. This is even more the case when you allow for 2nd, 3rd & 4th follow on missions (like a Passenger Mission (General), that follows on to a black box salvage, which could then follow on to a Hostage Liberation Mission, which could then lead to a final Passenger mission) & allowing for a more beefed up Mission Wrinkle System.

Another thing which could help create greater narrative variety would be to have follow on missions skewed by the System and/or Faction State that applied to the primary mission. For example, a Boom Data Courier mission would be much more likely to lead to Haulage Missions, Salvage of Trade Data or Purchase & Return Missions than any others, whereas an Outbreak Data mission might be more likely to result in a mission to haul Medical Equipment or drugs, transport medical passengers, or massacre ships carrying plague-bearers.....just as a couple of examples.

Apologies for the length of the post, but I hope my suggestions all make sense.
 
I thought these suggestions, by JManis, for improving the Mission Boards, deserved to be reposted here. I hope he doesn't mind.


As far as overhauls of the mission system go, I was planning to do a post in the suggestions forum, but it's likely to just go past unseen like usual in there, and I'm running out of spare time to actually do it.

The short-hand version is that the various faction agents shouldn't offer missions on their boards.

They should offer mission categories. Those categories are based off the type of faction, the economy and the state.

So in the one station you would have:
Corporate - Boom
- Source high-value commodity missions (money to spare)
- Trade missions (money to spare)
- Rare Mineral Mining missions (money to spare)
- Piracy missions (with good economic times, they have extra liquid cash to do some covert sabotage of their opponents)

Corporate - Bust state
- Donation missions (need things badly)
- Common Mineral Mining missions (back to basics)
- Massacre Smugglers/Traders (desperate for any advantage)

Dictatorship - Boom
- Source weapons missions
- Legal and Illegal assasinations/massacre missions (spare money to put bounties on criminal or political targets)
- Cargo Theft missions (Money to strike at opponents)
- Powerplant strikes (Money to strike at opponents)

Cooperative - Boom
- Salvage missions (Spare cash to put bounties on valuable cargoes)
- Hostage/HVT liberation missions (Spare cash to help those in need)
- Massacre pirates (spare cash for bounties)
- Assasinate pirate lords (spare cash for bounties)

Now, remember. You don't get offered instances of these missions. You just get offered these categories.

Then when you select a category, you get offered a randomly generated instance of that mission. You can decline it, but there's a very small rep penalty for it (we're talking, you'd have to decline 10-20 missions to drop from full Allied to Friendly). Reason for this is, well, imagine you went to someone asking for work, and you were saying No to everything. They'd get annoyed with you fast.

This would fix a whole bunch of issues...
- People want to do different mission types. Pretty simple concept... but take a look at what happened during beta when long-range missions were introduced. Wouldn't it be nice if you could just ask for these when you want them. Likewise, BGS runners, mission stackers, or just people who want some kicks from doing a mission or two, or if you want to spam donation missions for rep gain, you can now just select the mission they want when you want it.
- Being able to do this means you can actually go on and play the game. Some nights I just want to jump on and do a couple courier missions to fill some time, or because for whatever reason I can't commit to a pitched battle. But when I jump on and find everything *but* the mission I'm interested in, I put the game down and just play something else.
- The rep-loss introduces a penalty for mission stacking, but keeps it viable. Not enough happens around rep loss, and this introduces the concept of rep as currency.
- Also addresses issues around mission board generation and timeouts. When I go to a mission board, I want missions from one faction only. This means of the 50-odd missions sent to my client (remembering large volumes of mission requests are what causes the Transaction Server timeouts) I'm only interested in about 7 of them (so, lets say 20%). That's 80% wasted effort by the server. Now it just sends one, and it's likely to be one I'm interested in (unless I'm stacking missions to a single destination)
- Mission Category selection also massively buffs luxury passenger cabins, which are exclusive to the dedicated passenger haulers, if luxury passengers are their own category.
- You could even introduce negotiation like back in Frontier: Elite 2 and introduce questions like "I want a different destination", "I want a different target", "I want a different type of cargo" etc.
- You could also tweak what missions are more effective in terms of BGS results. Data courier missions could be ++ inf for Democracies because bureaucracies, but only +inf for Dictatorships, whereas massacre missions are ++ inf for dictatorships, and only +inf for Democracies.
- Generated mission would be tailored to your ship type, capacity, and various elite ranks.

So there we go. Rep grinders can spam donation missions, BGS runners can grab missions from just their faction, people doing missions for fun can just do what they like, stackers can stack, and a load is taken off the server.
 
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