Horizons What is going on with kill pirate missions?

Dimensions · Jul 6, 2016

I took three kill pirate missions that were based in different systems. One I completed after a very long time (kill 8 pirates) because the pirates were spawning at a poor rate.

The second one was to kill 12 pirates, but absolutely none of the pirates I found were the mission targets. After an hour of checking the nav beacon instance and SC, I realised that they just weren't in the system even after logging out and back in. The main faction was in retreat state, so I'm not sure if this influences things, but in the end I had to drop the mission because the mission pirates just were not there.

Third mission is to kill 30 ships for 4.4 million. Checking the nav beacon, signal sources, and SC I've found one after 30mins.

Are these missions just broken, or are these unintended consequences of the background sim determining system and faction states?

Chaz · Jul 6, 2016

I don't know what it's like now as I've not done a pirate kill mission for a while but the best way to find them used to be in super cruise, for which you'll need to have an interdictor equipped of course. Just hang around in SC in the target system, not far from the main star is usually the best place, and target and scan passing ships. Most wanted ships should show as mission targets. Then get behind them and interdict them.

Edit: It can take a while to get your quota sometimes, but that is why some of these missions give you 3 days or so to complete them.

Dimensions · Jul 6, 2016

Chaz said:
I don't know what it's like now as I've not done a pirate kill mission for a while but the best way to find them used to be in super cruise, for which you'll need to have an interdictor equipped of course. Just hang around in SC in the target system, not far from the main star is usually the best place, and target and scan passing ships. Most wanted ships should show as mission targets. Then get behind them and interdict them.

Edit: It can take a while to get your quota sometimes, but that is why some of these missions give you 3 days or so to complete them.

Thing is I'm not finding them in SC either. The mission description says can find targets in SC, SSs, and nav beacon. But they just aren't appearing.

Certacito · Jul 6, 2016

I always used to find them in RES sites, it was easy money as I would stack about 10 of them and go killing. I am not sure if this is still the case though as I haven't seen a pirate kill mission since 2.0 dropped!

Dimensions · Jul 6, 2016

Certacito said:
I always used to find them in RES sites, it was easy money as I would stack about 10 of them and go killing. I am not sure if this is still the case though as I haven't seen a pirate kill mission since 2.0 dropped!

Oh yes it mentioned RES sites, but in all three systems for the missions there are no RES sites, just leaving 3 methods.

Cliffson · Jul 6, 2016

I've run into this problem, i think the issue is.:

The mission specifies the pirates have to belong to a specific faction.

However sometimes the sprcified faction is not a type that spawns pirate archetype npcs by default.

This leads to you having to wait for missions specific spawns which are slow.

If the faction is one which spawns pirates normally the missions are easy as you can just rely on res/nav/uss

Nerwan · Jul 6, 2016

Deleted, I was talking rubbish..

Dirk Verbeek · Jul 6, 2016

"Mission Target" NPC pirates seem to spawn only in SC.
What you can do to get a better spawn rate is drop out of SC when you only get normal ships as spawns.
This will "soft reset" the instance when you enter SC again (I always do this when no tagets spawn).
Also using solo instead of open helps with a quicker spawn rate.

Trinity Star · Jul 6, 2016

Seems only one faction will spawn in res sites the others are all supercruise, in the system I was using they res pirates were 'clan of...'. I did take a big 11m mission to kill 48 ships, expecting a long haul in supercruise I was interdicted by a clean conda which made the usual comments but never attacked, then security arrived and all of sudden wanted mission targets that dropped two at a time and I was able to kill all 48 condas/pythons/fdls with sec help in a very short time.

GG7 · Jul 6, 2016

I'm doing a couple of these right now. Completed a few more over the last few days.

DEFINITELY SLOWER GOING than it was before because of the "faction specific" addition. The jumping in and out of SC and interdicting targets when they spawn in SC is hands down the most efficient way to complete these.

But... Don't expect to complete a 18 or higher count in an hour. Or even a couple of hours! Generally takes me an entire session to complete just ONE of the 24 pirate versions. Thats why I never accept these unless the payout is well over 2 million credits. Otherwise its just not worth all the time these take now.

If the game spawned the mission target pirate ships on a more reliable schedule it wouldn't be so slow going, but as others have said here... The spawn rate on most of these is horrible. Another previously common aspect of these is the LACK of wings. I only saw ONE wing of 3 ships that were mission targets during my entire session last night. All the rest were single ship targets. This "One by One" reality largely responsible for the time suck these have turned into since 2.1 dropped.

I really miss the old versions where you could complete a 60 pirate version in under 2 hours or less. Now, I don't think I would even consider accepting anything higher than the 24 counts I have been getting. It just takes too long and I get totally burned out by the repetition.

Funny thing.... The actual killing of the pirates only takes 30 seconds or so most of the time with my A rated Python or Corvette. All the rest of the time is spent flying around in SC scanning ship after ship to find the next "single" mission target!

DonBardon · Oct 28, 2016

Are the Devs looking into this, or is it hopelessly "working as intended"?

[VR] Mad Mike · Nov 10, 2016

Hi

I too am having this issue.... at 1st i thought no problem, do my homework, make sure there was a RES in the target system before accepting... great!

except not because the correct faction did not spawn in hrs.. funnily enough i enjoy bountyhunting in super cruise and interdicting pirates, but imo this is only really sensibe for missiosn of 5 or less. imo the mission generator needs to be more intelligent and if it is for more than kill 5 targets, it needs to be at a RES OR a nav beacon and the game needs to give us a helping hand by spawning plenty of targets.... not EVERY pirate needs to be mission specific but at least a good percentage of them.

logically if the mission is to kill 30 pirates, then there should be a pirate infestation problem in the system imo.

its not like killing pirates makes so much money as to destabilise the economy or anything..... passenger missions and skimmer missions will still pay way more, even if i can do a 5 million rated kill 30 pirates mission in an hr.

FrogsFriend · Nov 10, 2016

I've found it helps if you're Hostile or at least Unfriendly with the faction whose pirates you're looking to kill.

Trafalgar Law · Nov 10, 2016

These missions are just borked at the moment as the spawn rates just aren't high enough.

The problem is that the pirates are extremely mission specific. Not only do they have to be of the correct faction but they also have to be of the correct ship classes and ranking based on the difficulty of the mission. e.g. For a dangerous ranked mission all the mission targets were either Master or Expert ranked Pythons and FdLs, a pirate from the correct faction but not in the correct ship doesn't count.

I've basically given up with them after spending over 4hrs to kill just 16 pirates.

rrobes · Nov 10, 2016

This goes hand in hand with the "encouragement" the game has gotten to have passenger missions be the ones you must take to get high payouts.

Does FD want everyone to be flying around outside the "Bubble" on missions just to promote the new passenger option or are they trying to increase the odds of CMDR's running into something "different" while out conducting all these long range trips?

[VR] Mad Mike · Nov 11, 2016

Bit of a wall of text warning but I tried to get some more solid info on these missions last night.... Perhaps it will help others ...... There is 1 way these missions are doable in a timely manner (at the bottom of message) but anyway here we go..........i think its time for me to give up on these missions for now which is a shame as i like them to a point....

i took on a "kill 16 pirates mission" with no RES site in the system, and no mission targets at the nav beacon it was a matter of trolling super cruise and then i was finding maybe 1 target every 5 mins. boring as hell!.

i cancelled it and tried a "kill 32 pirates" this time in a system I KNEW had a RES... but the mission was for a very minor faction and after an hr saw none of the correct faction in the RES. no way i was doing 32 interdictions.

I like the interdiction tactic for assassination missions, it feels far more like bounty hunting than farming... but 32 targets only seeing 1 every 5 mins.... no chance.

There is 1 exception to this, and i did it last night. These missions scale ok in a wing!. So if 4 of you have the same mission, which will happen because in a wing you all see the same mission board. when you go into super cruise you will get mission targets for each person in your wing... so, if you get 1 target every 4 mins on your own, with 2 of you you will see 1 target every 2 mins, and with 4 of you 1 target every min.

so long as you each get a hit on the target when you kill it, 1 kill will count for all wing members....... so long as you stay within a few hundred LS of each other, you just work out who is best aligned to interdict a target, so as not to bother trying to get behind it etc, and this is the 1 way piracy missions can be done in a timely manner.