The Problem with Massacre Missions

[Ziljan]

There are Three (3) significant problems with the current Pirate Massacre Missions that make them quite fruitless and nonsensical and wholly unrewarding:

1) In a logical universe, factions from a system offering massacre missions would have you kill pirates (or their enemies) in that same system, and yet all pirate massacre missions are for nearby, often wholly unrelated systems. This creates an unnecessary need for suspension of disbelief, and the roleplaying that a faction has some unknown motivation for killing pirates in an unrelated system. Can you imagine a faction at War offering CZ massacre missions for a different system?? No, because that would have ZERO impact on the BGS for the system at war, and seem like a low priority tangent at best. Yet, for pirate-killing-missions we are always sent away to a different system, with an unrelated BGS, often one that doesn't even have a RES or any significant pirate presence... which leads to issue #2:

2) The targets of Pirate Massacre Missions are only from a specific faction (instead of any wanted pirate) which means that you have to seek out a smaller subset of the often limited spawns of Wanted ships in that system. The target systems often have a limited number of spawns sites, or perhaps even ZERO spawn sites (no rings, no RES, no compromised nav beacon), which leaves you hunting in super cruise for specific wanted ships or SS with potential targets. Sometimes only 1 out of 5-10 bounty kills is an actual Mission Target. A frustratingly low ratio of success which means that progress for the mission is often at a snails pace and can take several days just fulfill even a couple dozen kills... which leads to issue #3:

3) The mission kill count requirements are often spectacularly high, and the mission durations are shockingly brief, maybe 1 or 2 days. Sometimes less! The Wing versions of massacre missions have a kill requirement that is often 4 times bigger!!! Which is laughably, maniacally, and perversely designed to almost invariably end in mission failure. On top of this, the rewards for actually completing these missions are shockingly small (a couple million Credits for dozens of hours of effort??). If Frontier wants to create missions completion requirements of such EPIC proportions, sure OK that's fine, but then the payout should be at a minimum 10 to 20 times the current reward amounts, especially given that the mission failure rate for these pirate massacre missions within my BGS group is roughly 99%, even with a herculean winged target search effort applied on non-wing missions!

 

[biohazard15]

I'm not sure if anyone even tries to do "Massacre X pirates" missions. CZ ones is fairly okay - go to LowInt CZ and shoot Eagles, Vipers and Asps, as a part of your BGS efforts or for extra money if you just want pewpew. But pirates... Sitting all day in SC or in RES and looking for specific pirates? That's just plain boring. And money isn't that good - you can earn more by simply going to HazRES for an hour and half.

 

[Ziljan]

I'm not sure if anyone even tries to do "Massacre X pirates" missions. CZ ones is fairly okay - go to LowInt CZ and shoot Eagles, Vipers and Asps, as a part of your BGS efforts or for extra money if you just want pewpew. But pirates... Sitting all day in SC or in RES and looking for specific pirates? That's just plain boring. And money isn't that good - you can earn more by simply going to HazRES for an hour and half.

Precisely. These pirate hunting missions could be awesome, meaningful, and highly popular, but their current inaccessible implementation means no takes these missions except by accident.

 

[biohazard15]

Precisely. These pirate hunting missions could be awesome, meaningful, and highly popular, but their current inaccessible implementation means no takes these missions except by accident.

They should change that to "Kill X wanted ships". Any faction, any ships - just wanted. Exclude player kills to prevent exploiting.

 

[h347h]

Once they were good. One thing that has always bugged me was point 1. It would be nice if you could go to the system nav point and get locations from local security of small gangs and travel around the system you got the mission from and snuff them out.

 

[Eldragon]

There are Three (3) significant problems with the current Pirate Massacre Missions that make them quite fruitless and nonsensical and wholly unrewarding:

1) In a logical universe, factions from a system offering massacre missions would have you kill pirates (or their enemies) in that same system, and yet all pirate massacre missions are for nearby, often wholly unrelated systems. This creates an unnecessary need for suspension of disbelief, and the roleplaying that a faction has some unknown motivation for killing pirates in an unrelated system. Can you imagine a faction at War offering CZ massacre missions for a different system?? No, because that would have ZERO impact on the BGS for the system at war, and seem like a low priority tangent at best. Yet, for pirate-killing-missions we are always sent away to a different system, with an unrelated BGS, often one that doesn't even have a RES or any significant pirate presence... which leads to issue #2:

2) The targets of Pirate Massacre Missions are only from a specific faction (instead of any wanted pirate) which means that you have to seek out a smaller subset of the often limited spawns of Wanted ships in that system. The target systems often have a limited number of spawns sites, or perhaps even ZERO spawn sites (no rings, no RES, no compromised nav beacon), which leaves you hunting in super cruise for specific wanted ships or SS with potential targets. Sometimes only 1 out of 5-10 bounty kills is an actual Mission Target. A frustratingly low ratio of success which means that progress for the mission is often at a snails pace and can take several days just fulfill even a couple dozen kills... which leads to issue #3:

3) The mission kill count requirements are often spectacularly high, and the mission durations are shockingly brief, maybe 1 or 2 days. Sometimes less! The Wing versions of massacre missions have a kill requirement that is often 4 times bigger!!! Which is laughably, maniacally, and perversely designed to almost invariably end in mission failure. On top of this, the rewards for actually completing these missions are shockingly small (a couple million Credits for dozens of hours of effort??). If Frontier wants to create missions completion requirements of such EPIC proportions, sure OK that's fine, but then the payout should be at a minimum 10 to 20 times the current reward amounts, especially given that the mission failure rate for these pirate massacre missions within my BGS group is roughly 99%, even with a herculean winged target search effort applied on non-wing missions!

I agree with all of these points, and this is the important bit that bugs the crap out of me.

The pay is terrible. Going out and killing 100 pirates, and being offered 2 million credits for the job. It's going to take at least an hour to kill that many pirates; and This is combat where you are risking your ship. Compare that to Cargo missions that pay 2x as much to haul 60-100 tons 1 jump away; its takes all of 10 minutes.

Edited because I mis-read point #3 (I originally said it was a missed point)

 

[Malkano]

I don’t mind the pirate killing ones IF I’m trying to gain rep with a faction. Sometimes money isn’t everything in these missions.

 

[Troy_McClure]

Never thought I'd see the day where I rep this OP - but having spent last night doing a 72 kill pirate mission (for the 5 MEF only), I flew to the system...one lowRES, 2 stations, neither with restock facility & every pirate that arrived in that RES was one of the others in the system. I spent 30+mins in that site & ONE pirate from the target faction turned up! I aborted for the night with 11 kills in about 2 hours.

It's like Frontier g do it on purpose!

TripAdvisor - "...would self-flagellate again, 4/5"

 

[h347h]

I don’t mind the pirate killing ones IF I’m trying to gain rep with a faction. Sometimes money isn’t everything in these missions.

Of course but bounty hunting missions are basically all that the player wants is the pay out. You already gain a ton of rep from the bounties. There are already missions that give lots of rep. The time investment vers the reward for these missions is what needs fixing.

 

[metatheurgist]

They should change that to "Kill X wanted ships". Any faction, any ships - just wanted. Exclude player kills to prevent exploiting.

That's how they used to work. Just X pirates, traders, bounty hunters - no faction. Dunno why they changed, maybe they thought it was too easy.

 

[Daniel Cloudsifter]

There are Three (3) significant problems with the current Pirate Massacre Missions that make them quite fruitless and nonsensical and wholly unrewarding:

1) In a logical universe, factions from a system offering massacre missions would have you kill pirates (or their enemies) in that same system, and yet all pirate massacre missions are for nearby, often wholly unrelated systems. This creates an unnecessary need for suspension of disbelief, and the roleplaying that a faction has some unknown motivation for killing pirates in an unrelated system. Can you imagine a faction at War offering CZ massacre missions for a different system?? No, because that would have ZERO impact on the BGS for the system at war, and seem like a low priority tangent at best. Yet, for pirate-killing-missions we are always sent away to a different system, with an unrelated BGS, often one that doesn't even have a RES or any significant pirate presence... which leads to issue #2:

2) The targets of Pirate Massacre Missions are only from a specific faction (instead of any wanted pirate) which means that you have to seek out a smaller subset of the often limited spawns of Wanted ships in that system. The target systems often have a limited number of spawns sites, or perhaps even ZERO spawn sites (no rings, no RES, no compromised nav beacon), which leaves you hunting in super cruise for specific wanted ships or SS with potential targets. Sometimes only 1 out of 5-10 bounty kills is an actual Mission Target. A frustratingly low ratio of success which means that progress for the mission is often at a snails pace and can take several days just fulfill even a couple dozen kills... which leads to issue #3:

3) The mission kill count requirements are often spectacularly high, and the mission durations are shockingly brief, maybe 1 or 2 days. Sometimes less! The Wing versions of massacre missions have a kill requirement that is often 4 times bigger!!! Which is laughably, maniacally, and perversely designed to almost invariably end in mission failure. On top of this, the rewards for actually completing these missions are shockingly small (a couple million Credits for dozens of hours of effort??). If Frontier wants to create missions completion requirements of such EPIC proportions, sure OK that's fine, but then the payout should be at a minimum 10 to 20 times the current reward amounts, especially given that the mission failure rate for these pirate massacre missions within my BGS group is roughly 99%, even with a herculean winged target search effort applied on non-wing missions!

No disagreements here. You've listed ALL the reasons why I've NEVER taken any of those missions. Only Massacre missions I take are for the conflicts in CZs (same system). Haven't taken any of them since 3.0 because the pay seems to have gone down while the kill count has gone up; it has always fluctuated, but right now the vast majority want me killing too many for too little reward (for me). And don't even get me started on the Wing versions... lol.

 

[Kaocraft]

I only really have an issue with point #3. The other two I think are understandable if point #3 is addressed. It seems like the designers of the pirate massacre missions are taking the same template that you would have used for a wartime massacre mission (which takes place in a CZ and spawns a constant flow of mission targets), and then just swapping in "pirates of faction X" as the target type. Nope sorry that's not gonna cut it. The designers need to actually know what these missions are like to play and set the numbers appropriately.

It's fine to have a mission type where you have to run around in supercruise interdicting a specific type of target. It's not OK to set the completion threshold at 50 targets, though. 3-30 should probably be the limit, even for wing missions, with the wing variants of this mission spawning engineered/more difficult mission targets rather than requiring more kills.

 

[Cmdr Esteban]

Spot on Ziljan. Agree wholeheartedly.

Let's hope the devs take notice.

 

[CMDR Terrorfirma]

I totally agree with all your points Ziljan,

However, it is not just Pirate killing missions that make no sense in relationship to point #1...

I constantly see assassination missions and other illegal activity missions that the offering faction gives... sending you out of system to do these illegal deeds in SYSTEMS THAT THE SAME FACTION OWNS!

For instance, our own player-owned-faction Representative will offer a mission to do assassination or other illegal type mission in the nearby system which our faction also owns, causing detrimental effects for the same faction that gave the mission, in that other system, and getting the player a wanted status with the same faction that gave you the mission in the first place!

If there are to be covert out of system missions like this it should be against systems not held by the mission giving faction!

It does not seem that it should be that difficult to make this kind of logical change in the mission generation code!

 

[Deleted member 115407]

Agreed and repped

 

[have_you_eaten_yeti]

There are Three (3) significant problems with the current Pirate Massacre Missions that make them quite fruitless and nonsensical and wholly unrewarding:

1) In a logical universe, factions from a system offering massacre missions would have you kill pirates (or their enemies) in that same system, and yet all pirate massacre missions are for nearby, often wholly unrelated systems. This creates an unnecessary need for suspension of disbelief, and the roleplaying that a faction has some unknown motivation for killing pirates in an unrelated system. Can you imagine a faction at War offering CZ massacre missions for a different system?? No, because that would have ZERO impact on the BGS for the system at war, and seem like a low priority tangent at best. Yet, for pirate-killing-missions we are always sent away to a different system, with an unrelated BGS, often one that doesn't even have a RES or any significant pirate presence... which leads to issue #2:

2) The targets of Pirate Massacre Missions are only from a specific faction (instead of any wanted pirate) which means that you have to seek out a smaller subset of the often limited spawns of Wanted ships in that system. The target systems often have a limited number of spawns sites, or perhaps even ZERO spawn sites (no rings, no RES, no compromised nav beacon), which leaves you hunting in super cruise for specific wanted ships or SS with potential targets. Sometimes only 1 out of 5-10 bounty kills is an actual Mission Target. A frustratingly low ratio of success which means that progress for the mission is often at a snails pace and can take several days just fulfill even a couple dozen kills... which leads to issue #3:

3) The mission kill count requirements are often spectacularly high, and the mission durations are shockingly brief, maybe 1 or 2 days. Sometimes less! The Wing versions of massacre missions have a kill requirement that is often 4 times bigger!!! Which is laughably, maniacally, and perversely designed to almost invariably end in mission failure. On top of this, the rewards for actually completing these missions are shockingly small (a couple million Credits for dozens of hours of effort??). If Frontier wants to create missions completion requirements of such EPIC proportions, sure OK that's fine, but then the payout should be at a minimum 10 to 20 times the current reward amounts, especially given that the mission failure rate for these pirate massacre missions within my BGS group is roughly 99%, even with a herculean winged target search effort applied on non-wing missions!

One thing I was able to do right before 3.0.3 dropped was stack the pirate hunting missions. I noticed the ones in the skimmer gold rush system 31 beta Leonis minoris(I think?) Had payouts that looked pretty good (3-8 mil per mission with a maximum of 34 killed pirates) I ended up with 11 missions and got 58 million for killing 34 pirates. One of the missions wouldn't stack with the others(had to kill those 16 ships after doing the first 34) and I can't figure why yet. They were all targeting the same faction and had similar difficulty ratings, it makes me think that them stacking is a bug, like the missions have to meet some criteria I am overlooking, might be worth checking into if someone has more time than I do right now. Honestly I think these pirate massacre missions should stack, I could understand the caveat of having to have each mission come from a different faction, but as long as the target faction is the same why wouldn't they stack? If 5 different factions ask you to go to the next system over and kill 20 pirates, you shouldn't have to kill 100 of them. As long as you've destroyed 20 pirate ships you've done what each individual mission giver has asked you to, it's not like the record of your kills disappears after you turn in the mission. Am I making sense?

 

[IndigoWyrd]

There are Three (3) significant problems with the current Pirate Massacre Missions that make them quite fruitless and nonsensical and wholly unrewarding:

1) In a logical universe, factions from a system offering massacre missions would have you kill pirates (or their enemies) in that same system, and yet all pirate massacre missions are for nearby, often wholly unrelated systems. This creates an unnecessary need for suspension of disbelief, and the roleplaying that a faction has some unknown motivation for killing pirates in an unrelated system. Can you imagine a faction at War offering CZ massacre missions for a different system?? No, because that would have ZERO impact on the BGS for the system at war, and seem like a low priority tangent at best. Yet, for pirate-killing-missions we are always sent away to a different system, with an unrelated BGS, often one that doesn't even have a RES or any significant pirate presence... which leads to issue #2:

I would agree, except for two sticking points:

1. Pirates of the designated factions often CAN be found in the system where you were given the mission, but they tend to congregate in very specific areas. This holds true for non-pirate massacre missions as well. The Brotherhood of Related Men may offer a mission to wipe out ships belonging to the Sisterhood of Related Women, who are headquartered in the next system over, but you will find their ships operating in a Haz RES of the 6th moon of the 8th planet in the system where you were given the mission.

2. Logic and Elite tend to mix like copper and nitric acid. However... if a particular faction has had issues with a particular group of pirates, it is certainly reasonable to think they would offer up credits for someone to kill them off no matter where they might be.

2) The targets of Pirate Massacre Missions are only from a specific faction (instead of any wanted pirate) which means that you have to seek out a smaller subset of the often limited spawns of Wanted ships in that system. The target systems often have a limited number of spawns sites, or perhaps even ZERO spawn sites (no rings, no RES, no compromised nav beacon), which leaves you hunting in super cruise for specific wanted ships or SS with potential targets. Sometimes only 1 out of 5-10 bounty kills is an actual Mission Target. A frustratingly low ratio of success which means that progress for the mission is often at a snails pace and can take several days just fulfill even a couple dozen kills... which leads to issue #3:

Yes, why would the Brotherhood of Releated Men care about pirates from factions that have never bothered them? They're looking for revenge - or to destabilize an opposed faction. Why bother with someone else? See above regarding spawns.

3) The mission kill count requirements are often spectacularly high, and the mission durations are shockingly brief, maybe 1 or 2 days. Sometimes less! The Wing versions of massacre missions have a kill requirement that is often 4 times bigger!!! Which is laughably, maniacally, and perversely designed to almost invariably end in mission failure. On top of this, the rewards for actually completing these missions are shockingly small (a couple million Credits for dozens of hours of effort??). If Frontier wants to create missions completion requirements of such EPIC proportions, sure OK that's fine, but then the payout should be at a minimum 10 to 20 times the current reward amounts, especially given that the mission failure rate for these pirate massacre missions within my BGS group is roughly 99%, even with a herculean winged target search effort applied on non-wing missions!

So here you are, a lone member of the Mongols, just a single, low-level guy who shakes down the local Minit-Mart for protection money once a month. A roving band of Hell's Angels catches you and stomps you out on the sidewalk like a half-lit cigarette butt. Quite the message they've sent, isn't it? Just imagine if, instead, they'd have gone to the Mongoose Shack, where your entire chapter was, wrapped the place in chains, and set it on fire, wiping out the entire chapter instead.

See how that works? Kill one man, and you're a muderer. Kill a thousand and you're a conqueror. Kill them all and you're a god.

Of course the counts for these are going to be high. And again, refer to #1 above when it comes to spawns. You're not going to find nearly as many Mongols in the suburbs of East Burpshire as you will in downtown Los Hombres.

And yes, I used motorcycle gangs to illustrate my point.

 

[IndigoWyrd]

I totally agree with all your points Ziljan,

However, it is not just Pirate killing missions that make no sense in relationship to point #1...

I constantly see assassination missions and other illegal activity missions that the offering faction gives... sending you out of system to do these illegal deeds in SYSTEMS THAT THE SAME FACTION OWNS!

For instance, our own player-owned-faction Representative will offer a mission to do assassination or other illegal type mission in the nearby system which our faction also owns, causing detrimental effects for the same faction that gave the mission, in that other system, and getting the player a wanted status with the same faction that gave you the mission in the first place!

Might be a good reason to trade that system for a different one, eh?

Or maybe this is just a prime example of why Elite is not a space politics simulator of any kind.

Perhaps if your faction numbered more than 0.5% of the these systems populations, and if control of a system actually meant something more than the legal status of beer, then you should probably have some actual influence in your chosen systems. But you don't, you don't and you don't.

The Background Simulation is far, far too "Foreground". Any singular player should have about as much influence as one drop of rain during a hurricane.

 

[Schlack]

Pirate massacre missions have not been helped by the 3.03 patch.

A bug was introduced which left many of the target faction pirates without a mission target tag meaning they didn't count towards the total. While frustrating this should be easily and quickly resolved (patch 3.3 perhaps ). What has now made them complete untenable is the introduction of NPCs from neighbouring systems. What target supply that existing is now severely curtailed. Plenty of pirates, few from the native target faction. (I even went to other systems in search of targets with no luck).

Supercruise isnt so bad, but 60 interdictions in one evening to try to complete a mission is not sustainable. Useless for BGS purposes, Useless for bank building, pretty poor gaming experience. It is now a megagrind mostly waiting for targets to appear

One of two things need to happen to make these missions viable again. Either dial back the level of visiting NPCs dramatically or reduce the kill counts.

 

[dp642]

As of yesterday, after 3.0.3 dropped, there is a vast difference in these missions.

I was stacking massacre missions, one from each faction, 4 factions, 8-10 million for 48 pirates, took about 2 hours in a Haz Res in the neighbouring system (I don't have a problem with that), earnings of around 30-35 million for 2 hours work, plus bounties.

Then came the update, and after, it took nearly 4 hours to find 28 pirates, one of the missions I didn't complete, with 48 kills needed. Mission targets are now about 1 in 10-15 ships, and with a 1 day 3 hour time limit on the mission, I'm going to take a hit to rep for not completing.

The rewards for the missions have dropped (I saw a wing mission for 2½ million for 80 pirates, previously would have paid at least 6 mill), but the bounties have increased a lot if you use a KWS. Only problem is you get a long list of bounties for other factions in other systems, I had 13 different factions, so it means losing 25% of the bounties if you don't fly around all the different systems cashing in, but just cash in with Interstellar contacts.

So earnings for 4 hours yesterday was just over 15 mill.

This is not a complaint, just observations of the changes with 3.0.3, I'll adjust my play style accordingly and find something else to do.

On a sidenote, lost shields twice on the Corvette, first time I have tried that, but the Corvette is engineered for PVE combat, so back to the drawing board to boost the stats on that Again not a complaint, makes a nice change to have a decent battle with wings of NPC's, it is as it should be, taking on a Conda with 2 Vultures in a wing shouldn't be a walkover.

Fly safe, o7