War/Civil War State & Non-Combat Missions

[Alone Wulff]

EDITED:

Ok, so I've been proven wrong in that there are in fact non-combat missions that contribute to winning a war. However, of the few missions that were available to me (system just outside of the bubble, maybe a contributing factor to lack of engaging non-combat missions?) only one of them made a difference to the war status and the others were broken i.e. target location stuck underground or not very immersive.

Please introduce non-combat missions that provide a more engaging and immersive experience, with empahsis on improved mission narrative and ONLY affecting/related to the two factions at war. Covert data courier missions, war-related commodity fetch missions, enemy black box recovery, enemy escape pod recovery (prisoners of war), planet-side missions to destroy weapon/ammo caches with skimmer/goliath guards etc (OK combat, but SRV combat doesn't require engineering and is just 'different' to ship combat), donating credits to help the war effort, smuggling poisoned food/water to enemy controlled stations (pilots can't fight if they're sick), transporting Vip Navy Generals - mission types already exist, they just need different wording. Yes, strategic data transfer and rescuing hostages from the surface are 'related' but they are pretty boring and nothing in the mission details says 'how' it will affect the mission giver or target faction. For example - a covert surface scan mission could include the narrative "we need to find the location of enemy Spec Ops bases" which could lead to a follow-on missions of delivering that data to another location with narrative "we can carry out pre-emptive strikes to slow them down a bit" or whatever, I'm not a writer.

Personally, I work BGS expanding my own PMF and for the last couple months there's been a war I've needed to fight almost one after the other across several systems. I'm a bit bored of combat and non-combat missions would mix it up a bit whilst adding a bit more realism and life to the game overall. There must be many Commanders who hate combat, or are not good at it.

 

[Jmanis]

Last time i tested, non combat missions did help a faction in war.

There are already almost all the missions you ask for as well. The problem is a hangover from a bad "fix" from a while back.

The problem was that some factions weren't detecting war states for the purposes of mission generation.

So instead of "massacre opposition ships" missions, you got "massacre pirates" and none of the war themed mIssions such as "strategic data transfer, "

The proper fix was "get factions to properly detect state for correct board generation ". But it got reported by players as " no massacre missions for war targets"... so FD addressed that, "guaranteeing" those missions would appear. That still didn't fix the core issue, but it meant unaffected factions went from having 3-4 of their missions be massacre targets, to upwards of 10 massacre missions on a typical board.

Eventually, the state detection was fixed, but the "guaranteed generation " which didn't fix squat never got rolled back... so today the mission boards are overwhelmingly massacre missions and rarely anything else. But the following do exist in the war state:

• strategic data transfers
• strategic surface scan
• covert surface data retrieval
• destroy power plants
• destroy skimmers/ juggernauts
• source/ deliver weapons and armour
• donate weapons and armour
• donate credits for the war effort
• transport prisoners of war
• transport security personnel

 

[Alone Wulff]

Last time i tested, non combat missions did help a faction in war.

There are already almost all the missions you ask for as well. The problem is a hangover from a bad "fix" from a while back.

The problem was that some factions weren't detecting war states for the purposes of mission generation.

So instead of "massacre opposition ships" missions, you got "massacre pirates" and none of the war themed mIssions such as "strategic data transfer, "

The proper fix was "get factions to properly detect state for correct board generation ". But it got reported by players as " no massacre missions for war targets"... so FD addressed that, "guaranteeing" those missions would appear. That still didn't fix the core issue, but it meant unaffected factions went from having 3-4 of their missions be massacre targets, to upwards of 10 massacre missions on a typical board.

Eventually, the state detection was fixed, but the "guaranteed generation " which didn't fix squat never got rolled back... so today the mission boards are overwhelmingly massacre missions and rarely anything else. But the following do exist in the war state:

• strategic data transfers
• strategic surface scan
• covert surface data retrieval
• destroy power plants
• destroy skimmers/ juggernauts
• source/ deliver weapons and armour
• donate weapons and armour
• donate credits for the war effort
• transport prisoners of war
• transport security personnel

I know the missions are there but none of the ones I've completed shift war status from draw. Nor are they very realistic or immersive in that most of the target factions (for missions with target factions) are unrelated to the warring factions. And as far as I can tell, none of the non-combat missions have an effect. I completed numerous black box recovery and strategic data transfers last week that made no change to the war status. I found two different planetside mission types just this week - rescue 2x hostages and liberate 2x landmines. The landmine search location was stuck underground and the hostages had rolled down the hill so were no longer guarded by the skimmers from an unrelated faction. I completed a surface scan yesterday which was at a public data point - not very strategic or dangerous.

 

[Jmanis]

I know the missions are there but none of the ones I've completed shift war status from draw. Nor are they very realistic or immersive in that most of the target factions (for missions with target factions) are unrelated to the warring factions. And as far as I can tell, none of the non-combat missions have an effect. I completed numerous black box recovery and strategic data transfers last week that made no change to the war status. I found two different planetside mission types just this week - rescue 2x hostages and liberate 2x landmines. The landmine search location was stuck underground and the hostages had rolled down the hill so were no longer guarded by the skimmers from an unrelated faction. I completed a surface scan yesterday which was at a public data point - not very strategic or dangerous.

Was on phone so couldn't link...

This was my last experience: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/missions-might-affect-war-outcome-now.513743/

Are you sure you aren't hitting opposition?

 

[Alone Wulff]

Was on phone so couldn't link...

This was my last experience: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/missions-might-affect-war-outcome-now.513743/

Are you sure you aren't hitting opposition?

I'm certain I'm not hitting opposition. One of the missions I didn't take was my own PMF as the target faction.

Anyhoo... today a war I was trying to win without combat has ended on the fourth day and the faction I wanted to win has claimed success, so I guess the one single surface scan mission I completed was enough to turn the tide for the best-of-four rule. So I'm going to edit the original post because I guess there are non-combat missions that contribute after all. But I'd still like to see a bit more effort put into making dedicated war-related missions, with a bit more specific wording i.e. "Deliver covert data" with guaranteed harrassment from enemy Spec Ops instead of "Strategic data transfer" with no enemy interference (just one small example) to make it 'feel' a bit more immersive to the actual war.

I think the whole war scenario could be much more invigorating.