Wartime Massacre Missions could be like a Mini-CG or "Faction Goal"

[Controllerface]

Currently, when two factions are at war in a system, they will spawn massacre missions targeting each other with varying amounts of kills required. After doing these for years now, the thought occurred to me... It would make sense if the opposing factions spawned what (in my head) is like a mini community goal or "Faction Goal" with tiers that increased based on your participation via kill count.

I would love it if it worked like this: You go to a system with an ongoing conflict between two factions, go to a mission board and "enlist" in the "Faction Goal" mission. Once you have signed up, head out to a combat zone and participate just as you do now. The low end "tier" could be say 10 kills. So say you sign up and hit 10 and you feel like maybe you're done in this system (or, let's say real-life issues arise making that 90 kill massacre mission a little harder to finish). No prob, go cash out and be on your way. But if you want to keep going, by all means get more kills, and as you get more the rewards of course should increase.

In my imaginary world where this missions exists, unlike a "real" CG that finishes at a specified time, you'd turn these missions in whenever you wanted to in order to complete them, getting whatever rewards for the highest tier you reached. And then of course, if the conflict ends, you simply can't move up in tiers anymore and when you turn in, just get the rewards for whatever tier you were at when the conflict ended. I would also imagine the "FG" would be repeatable, so say you turned in at 10 kills.. but then decide you'd like to try for a higher tier you should be able to start the mission again as long as the conflict is still active.

For me, the main reason I'd prefer this kind of setup is I don't always know how much play time I'm going to have. On more than one occasion I've taken one of the higher kill count missions (like 90) and either had some real world issue make it impractical to finish, or honestly just gotten tired. I don't always know if I've got 90 kills in me, but then sometimes I've got 3 days with nothing to do (like a long weekend) but there's no combat CG going on, and I'd definitely be down to sit in combat zones all day, maybe try out new builds while I'm at it.

Anyway, I know these threads basically just get ignored, but figured I'd get it the idea out anyway. o7

 

[metatheurgist]

Mmm, the CG mechanic is rather dry, I don't think it's something that should be looked at as a design template. It's fine for what it does, essentially a community poll where you vote with your ship.

For wars I'd rather there were specific conflict zones around faction assets that represented the contest (as opposed to just random spots). The scale and intensity of these would grow out of the areas contested. The war would then progress with the contested areas changing to represent who's winning or losing (as opposed to invisible buckets being filled and emptied). Then you tie in the BGS so other events can influence the progress as well (supply shortages/blockades, etc). But that would require the BGS to be more than an infant.

 

[RamirezKurita]

The simplest solution I can see here is, rather than create a whole new tiered success system for missions, would be to simply remove wartime massacre missions and increase the regular amounts of combat bonds we get to compensate.

It would achieve the same effect as OP's post of offering variable success levels, but would also remove all possibility to abuse said missions by whatever exploits appear in the future.

To be honest, I'd be in favour of the removal/rework of all "do normal money-making activity, except with extra pay" missions as they serve no purpose except to further push credits into irrelevance and keep normal money-making activities as irrelevant as possible, which then dissuades enterprising players from finding the most profitable combinations as the most profitable is visible already on the mission board. It's absolutely impossible to balance the current wartime massacre missions with regular mercenary work as the massacre missions give the regular combat bonds on top of their own pay. Similarly the "source and return" missions in their current position make no real sense, as they completely invalidate trading those goods on the commodity market and the exact same effect could be obtained by simply ramping up that commodity's price on the market.

To be honest, I'd much rather they involved more targeting and less grind. For example, rather than "destroy 20 ships", they could be "destroy 3 captains", "destroy 10 SLF-equipped ships", "destroy 15 small ships", "destroy 5 Elite-ranked ships" etc. This would cause players to then behave differently in a CZ, as they would have particular targets to go after rather than simply being there to destroy enemy ships.

 

[Controllerface]

Mmm, the CG mechanic is rather dry, I don't think it's something that should be looked at as a design template. It's fine for what it does, essentially a community poll where you vote with your ship.

For wars I'd rather there were specific conflict zones around faction assets that represented the contest (as opposed to just random spots). The scale and intensity of these would grow out of the areas contested. The war would then progress with the contested areas changing to represent who's winning or losing (as opposed to invisible buckets being filled and emptied). Then you tie in the BGS so other events can influence the progress as well (supply shortages/blockades, etc). But that would require the BGS to be more than an infant.

I agree with the sentiment that the CZs could spawn in a less random way, around actual assets. I don't really mind the CG mechanic so much, but yeah I guess it is a bit dry. More or less using it as an example of an existing system applied to a different part of the game.

The simplest solution I can see here is, rather than create a whole new tiered success system for missions, would be to simply remove wartime massacre missions and increase the regular amounts of combat bonds we get to compensate.

It would achieve the same effect as OP's post of offering variable success levels, but would also remove all possibility to abuse said missions by whatever exploits appear in the future.

To be honest, I'd be in favour of the removal/rework of all "do normal money-making activity, except with extra pay" missions as they serve no purpose except to further push credits into irrelevance and keep normal money-making activities as irrelevant as possible, which then dissuades enterprising players from finding the most profitable combinations as the most profitable is visible already on the mission board. It's absolutely impossible to balance the current wartime massacre missions with regular mercenary work as the massacre missions give the regular combat bonds on top of their own pay. Similarly the "source and return" missions in their current position make no real sense, as they completely invalidate trading those goods on the commodity market and the exact same effect could be obtained by simply ramping up that commodity's price on the market.

To be honest, I'd much rather they involved more targeting and less grind. For example, rather than "destroy 20 ships", they could be "destroy 3 captains", "destroy 10 SLF-equipped ships", "destroy 15 small ships", "destroy 5 Elite-ranked ships" etc. This would cause players to then behave differently in a CZ, as they would have particular targets to go after rather than simply being there to destroy enemy ships.

My initial reasoning here is not really so much about credits, I actually like the idea of wartime specific missions. The idea of more targeted goals within the CZ either as you suggest, would certainly spice things up a bit.

Really I'd just like to be able to participate in minor faction wars in a way that was less "commit to X kills" with random values for X, and several of these missions just spawning on the boards. Instead would prefer some type of more narrative-like approach, say "Join our cause and do things to aid us in our war effort. The more you do the more you get rewarded" with the rewards being credits or materials, etc.

I guess I would rather feel more of a privateer when participating in these faction wars than just the normal one off mercenary thing. Like I said, my main goal would be for my current playstyle to be a little more convenient, but hey.. a little bit more sensible RP aspects wouldn't hurt either.