I would really like to see the SAR missions on planet surfaces (and missions in general) given more direction. At the moment you are essentially told that the escape pod is "somewhere", and you then fly around looking at blue circles until the game randomly spawns a crashed ship. This is pretty unrealistic and disconnects me from the game a little. It makes sense that escape pods would have some kind of transponder that can be used to deduce their approximate location, which would in turn allow the wreck to be spawned at a mission-specific location (no more completing 4 SAR separate missions with the pods you found at a single crash site! :S). You would search for by this location by listening for transponder pings that increase in frequency when you get closer or a similar mechanic (something like the mechanics for the surface vehicle scanner). This location would only be approximate, so the craft would still need to be searched for visually over a large area. To reduce this search area ships or surface vehicles could be allowed to drop relay beacons (new limpet type?), and once three had been dropped at appropriate locations (at least X distance apart, perhaps on top of hills—line of sight required?) they could be used to triangulate the transponder pings to give a much smaller search location. Also why are the crash sites defended by hostile drones? It makes no sense within the mission lore... Make the challenge finding the crash sites, avoid the arbitrary fighting that occurs IMO far too often. SAR missions could be split into two types, with one being recovery after an accidental crash, and the other being recovery after hostile action. The first would not spawn enemies, while the second could have the surface drones, or even a hostile ship present at the crash site.
This transponder/triangulation mechanic could actually be applied to a lot of other missions and mechanics; the source of surface "points of interest" could be determined by triangulation, various space missions could have transponder/triangulation mechanics integrated to enable finding the specific mission objective. This would go a long way towards giving missions direction and alleviating the "search randomly to locate a specific mission objective" problem that is complained about so often.
-Thanks for your time,
Proply.
This transponder/triangulation mechanic could actually be applied to a lot of other missions and mechanics; the source of surface "points of interest" could be determined by triangulation, various space missions could have transponder/triangulation mechanics integrated to enable finding the specific mission objective. This would go a long way towards giving missions direction and alleviating the "search randomly to locate a specific mission objective" problem that is complained about so often.
-Thanks for your time,
Proply.