The Planetary landing and planetside missions discussion Thread

Is it due to the lack of variety. No.

Is it due to the lack of income from them. No.

Is it due to the fact that I have limited time to play and I am unsure how long the mission will take. Yes.

Trading does allow play in one hour or less periods as does exploration and also combat.

I hope the planetary landings will allow play in periods less than an hour.


The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.
 
Failing missions causes a decline in rep and is hard to regain. I would not make a habit of taking any you fancy and then failing/abandoning. Missions are quote "crap".
So let us create interesting Missions right here, right now...
.
1. Rescue the Princess from the clutches of the Empire by entering a CZ and clearing a wave of fighters along with your Aliance NPCs. Then fly to a RES to find the ship holding her in a Wing of 4 (Anaconda & 3 Eagles or other). Take out the Wings and then persue the ship holding her which jumps to SC and then other Systems. Free her canister container by hatchbreaking before destroying the ship or you have limpets for a fast scoop to rescue her and get away!
NEXT...

I couldn't help but think that this is all I would see upon opening the container, once on board.

hqdefault.jpg
 
I find this thread a bit odd only because I haven't found a mission yet that has taken more than an hour and I do everything except mining missions. Even the kill 12 of this or that missions dont take more than any hour and they are almost always in systems where you end up having to actually interdict each one because for pirates lets say, they don't often actually have a res to go hunting for them. I think if you pick up a couple missions you will find that they don't take nearly as long as you might expect.
 

dayrth

Volunteer Moderator
I find this thread a bit odd only because I haven't found a mission yet that has taken more than an hour and I do everything except mining missions. Even the kill 12 of this or that missions dont take more than any hour and they are almost always in systems where you end up having to actually interdict each one because for pirates lets say, they don't often actually have a res to go hunting for them. I think if you pick up a couple missions you will find that they don't take nearly as long as you might expect.

I've got to agree with this. I don't do mining missions (no mining equipment), but I do most others. I can't think of one that took more than an hour.

If it does take you longer to kill 16 pirates, only take missions to kill 6 - 8. Plenty of them about.
 
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After ranking up to Baron, I have no interest in the missions either. However that is because I am aiming squarely at getting Elite for trading. That is my focus. I ranked up for the clipper for cargo and speed to further my rank to elite.

I am sure once thats achieved I will focus on elite combat and then elite exploration. The missions are merely a distraction for me at this present time. I may do some at some point in the future but for me missions and power play are something I have no interest in for now.

I enjoy the grind. Because Im a bloodyminded sort of chap and also a very determined halfwit.
 
I find most missions can be completed in under half an hour, even the assassination ones.

The only missions i have an issue with are the exploration ones. Someone deserves a kick up the jacksie for those.

"Dear Elite Explorer, you are so awesome, everyone knows you, your reputation precceds you, and we need you for this very important job. Fly to the next system over and scan a planet. We will give you 10 thousand".

The first time I saw one of those, i facepalmed. But i put it down to the RNG throwing a curveball. Until i saw the majority of exploration missions were equally silly, low paying, requiring high ranks, and not even requiring any exploration.
 
I am not trying to be a jerk and probably will come across as such...however, you need to match a game, and activities within, to the amount of time you have available to play.

Yeah, but still most games let you pause/quit as you please and then continue exactly from where you left, instead of keeping timers run while you are not even in the game. And in games where this is not true for all content, for example a typical MMO with dungeon instance that will eventually kick you out automatically and be repopulated the next time you come back, you lose nothing for taking a break, no reputation loss, no fee to pay just because you had to interrupt your gaming session and could not return until the next day.
 

dayrth

Volunteer Moderator
Yeah, but still most games let you pause/quit as you please and then continue exactly from where you left, instead of keeping timers run while you are not even in the game. And in games where this is not true for all content, for example a typical MMO with dungeon instance that will eventually kick you out automatically and be repopulated the next time you come back, you lose nothing for taking a break, no reputation loss, no fee to pay just because you had to interrupt your gaming session and could not return until the next day.

Elite is not other games. It was deliberately designed to be different to the normal type of game we have available these days. I like it that way and would not want it changed to conform to everything else. There are different levels of mission and a lot of game play that does not involve missions. Just about everyone should be able to find a mode of play that suits them.
 
I'm with the OP on this one. I find it frustrating to see lots of missions I want to do and am quite capable of doing popping up 10-15 minutes before I have to finish my gaming session. Given that I may not be able to play the next day, or even if I can it's probably not for at least 22 hours, the timer could be 1h or 21h on the mission and it would have the same effect of causing it to expire before I can complete it.

So if I want to do missions (for instance to gain Fed/Empire military rank) I have to do them at the start of a session and only pick ones I can reasonably expect to be able to finish before I expect my session to end. I'm lucky in that I typically don't get interruptions during sessions, but not everyone is.

There are some ways this could be mitigated. The first is much longer timers for some missions. The assassination ones already sometimes last nearly 2 days - for these having longer timers still wouldn't significantly affect play. For urgent shipment missions, the timers are fine and/or could even be shorter - they make sense in that context.

The second is to not have a rep penalty for all failing missions. That way taking missions and failing to complete them because of timer because of real life events would have no penalty. You could optionally have -ve rep for some missions but not all, as long as it was clear at time of collection.

The third is not to have timers at all for some times of missions. However you would need to mitigate this with a limit to how many missions a CMDR can accept at once to avoid massive overstacking. Indeed having a limit of only one of each type of mission at once would fix a couple of bugs at the same time. Currently I can accept 'kill 10 pirates' and 'kill 7 pirates' for the same faction in the same system and have both count down at the same time. (having them do that if they are for different factions seems a bit odd too, but one can spin that as sneakily getting paid twice for the same work). Ditto assassination missions. I once manage to complete 3 of those at once with a single kill even though my targets had different names! (all wanted pirate lords - so of the same type).
 
Is it due to the lack of variety. No.

Is it due to the lack of income from them. No.

Is it due to the fact that I have limited time to play and I am unsure how long the mission will take. Yes.

Trading does allow play in one hour or less periods as does exploration and also combat.

I hope the planetary landings will allow play in periods less than an hour.

When I was playing missions (noting that I play for two hours maximum at a time) I would get at least 8 missions done in that time...usually smuggling, some salvage, data delivery and some assassinations or bounty hunting missions. The only ones I ignored were the mining ones. You should be able to get 4+ in if you're careful about what you pick and check the destination distance...don't make the mistake of picking a delivery for Hutton Orbital or you'll have a very boring hour!
 
I'm with the OP on this one. I find it frustrating to see lots of missions I want to do and am quite capable of doing popping up 10-15 minutes before I have to finish my gaming session. Given that I may not be able to play the next day, or even if I can it's probably not for at least 22 hours, the timer could be 1h or 21h on the mission and it would have the same effect of causing it to expire before I can complete it.

So if I want to do missions (for instance to gain Fed/Empire military rank) I have to do them at the start of a session and only pick ones I can reasonably expect to be able to finish before I expect my session to end. I'm lucky in that I typically don't get interruptions during sessions, but not everyone is.

There are some ways this could be mitigated. The first is much longer timers for some missions. The assassination ones already sometimes last nearly 2 days - for these having longer timers still wouldn't significantly affect play. For urgent shipment missions, the timers are fine and/or could even be shorter - they make sense in that context.

The second is to not have a rep penalty for all failing missions. That way taking missions and failing to complete them because of timer because of real life events would have no penalty. You could optionally have -ve rep for some missions but not all, as long as it was clear at time of collection.

The third is not to have timers at all for some times of missions. However you would need to mitigate this with a limit to how many missions a CMDR can accept at once to avoid massive overstacking. Indeed having a limit of only one of each type of mission at once would fix a couple of bugs at the same time. Currently I can accept 'kill 10 pirates' and 'kill 7 pirates' for the same faction in the same system and have both count down at the same time. (having them do that if they are for different factions seems a bit odd too, but one can spin that as sneakily getting paid twice for the same work). Ditto assassination missions. I once manage to complete 3 of those at once with a single kill even though my targets had different names! (all wanted pirate lords - so of the same type).

While I agree - it can be a nuisance, I think it is part of the gameplay. I mean - if we are considering it as just gameplay, you are not missing the opportunity to complete the missions from a gameplay perspective, as they will come up again. The fact that you are missing them because you are not there or able to be there is simply part of the coherent narrative of the background simulation. I think to make the BGS less coherent, considering how it makes up the majority of the narrative we experience in the game, would ultimately make the game's 'emergent' story-telling shallow.
 
The current mission system is far from perfect in many ways.
The one thing that never bothered me were the timers though.
I always found enough to choose from, no matter if i had one hour or four hours of gaming time available to me.
Reason for the timers in ED is because they're tied into the rep system. Other than that there would be no need for them.
Similarity to eve actually, though that's 24 hour timers for all npc missions iirc.
 
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I feel you have the wrong idea about the timescale.

Terraforming a planet would take generations.
The installations to do it would probably strain corporate budgets, let alone the budget of individual players.

"See the continuous evolution of plants and animal species"? LOL.

How long do you plan to play this game? 100 million years?
Even the Cambrian explosion took around 25 million years.


Why play the game if you cant use your imagination? Do you think the technology of these days will allow you to jump from 1 start to another? But guess what, you can do it in this game. LOL.

To make it possible, why not add in genetic mutation to plants and animals for rapid evolution and mutation as part of the lore on technology? Why not imagine a ultra-quick terraform generator to terraform a planet in 4 weeks? If ED can bring players to sagitarrious A in a few weeks, why not imagine the possibility of things? LOL

oh right....its a game LOL
 
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Is it due to the lack of variety. No.

Is it due to the lack of income from them. No.

Is it due to the fact that I have limited time to play and I am unsure how long the mission will take. Yes.

Trading does allow play in one hour or less periods as does exploration and also combat.

I hope the planetary landings will allow play in periods less than an hour.

To put this in somewhat terse terms.

This isn't the type of game you can play in short spurts. You should have realised this before buying it.
 
It usually takes me approximately one hour to kill 20 pirates at a Nav Beacon. Much less at a RES. It pays to pick your battlefield.


A Nav beacon is not the place either then.... 20 = 1 every 3 minutes ... @ most Nav beacons you are lucky to see 1 wanted person in 5 minutes or longer... Apart from circling security and bounty hunters or T6's with security escort... it's probably the dullest place in a system to be.


IMO..... it's probably the worst place in space to hunt pirates and has been since about patch 1.1
 
Why play the game if you cant use your imagination? Do you think the technology of these days will allow you to jump from 1 start to another? But guess what, you can do it in this game. LOL.

To make it possible, why not add in genetic mutation to plants and animals for rapid evolution and mutation as part of the lore on technology? Why not imagine a ultra-quick terraform generator to terraform a planet in 4 weeks? If ED can bring players to sagitarrious A in a few weeks, why not imagine the possibility of things? LOL

oh right....its a game LOL

There's a lot that can be imagined. And I love imagination.

But that is simply not how evolution works, or can work.
What you describe would just result in senseless mutations and result in an environmental disaster.
It would make no sense from a terraforming perspective either.
If you set animals loose in an environment you want a human population to live in, then you want a certain minimum of control.
Having weird genetic stuff in there that evolves as rapidly as you describe it, only creates unnecessary risk.
It just makes no sense in any which way one can imagine.
I think there are other games if you want to do stuff like this. ED just is not that game.

Ultra quick terraforming in 4 weeks of entire planets is just too absurd in my mind.
I can imagine it, but it is so absurdly unrealistic that, even though I am extremely scifi minded, this is a step too far considering the level of technology human kind has in the ED universe. It just does not fit!

Perhaps extremely evolved intelligent alien creatures that are like gods to us, at the other side of the galaxy (or in another galaxy), could do it, but not humankind at the stage of development it has in the ED universe. There is no way FD could make that sound even remotely acceptable.

For these reasons I think none of this will happen.
Good science fiction abides by it's own internal rules. Your suggestions would break those rules.
 
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if the timers were gone, everyone would mission logg at stations till they got a BAZILLION kill pirate missions, head out to a RES kill a few and finish all missions at once.
 
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