Poll follow up: Missions

[Darkternal]

War effort is surrogate, and cannot replace a plot. Without the plot the game has no lore. Without interesting lore- it's just another game, without goal, soul and atmosphere. People still discuss lore from x1-x3, what they will discuss about x4?

[Graaf]

What would be neat would be a kind of requisition mechanic. Complete a chain, and you can get a Requisition Token. You use tokens and lots of money to buy limited numbers of faction-specific stuff. Paint jobs, skilled crew, special faction-only weapons, unique ships or ship variants. That kind of thing. It's more complicated than unlocking licenses, but would give the player impetus to repeatedly engage in hostilities with one or more of the in-game factions along with suitable rewards for doing so.

That would just lock parts of the game out for people not interested in the war efforts.

[cole2839]

We need more missions like the player HQ mission. I think it was really well done. I haven't gotten around to the guild missions yet. Honestly I don't see a point in doing them but I will try them.

[mistervec]

That would just lock parts of the game out for people not interested in the war efforts.

Sure, the same way that acquiring ATF ships from X3 was 'locked out of the game' for people who were not interested in grinding Terran rep or committing acts of piracy. Or how getting the player HQ was 'locked out of the game' for people who weren't interested in doing the associated missions. Or even how certain station sections are 'locked out of the game' for people who don't have the required rep to purchase them or desire to steal them.

[Zealoth]

I've done some of them and the idea from afar is nice, but the execution is somewhat poor. I've mostly done the Teladi ones, but it didn't took me long to realise they are usually just a bunch of random generic missions bunched together, with little synergy or effect on the world.
Sure, I ended up with a LOT of the sectors covered in resource probes and random stations...but it doesnt seem to do anyting anyway, the miners do miner things and it was drearily repetitive and grindy

Anyway, my idea about bringing missions to life was based on civillian city stations: viewtopic.php?f=146&t=407095#p4785308

Most of the writeup is based on helping to balance economy, but it also touches upon sensible generating of skilled crew for players and AI, as well as themed quests and questlines that can be made to provide players with tangible, unique rewards, feeling of progression as well as stake in the game and wars

[Sujic]

I played a couple of missions, but I didn't enjoy many of them.

• Station Building missions are all right. It would be nice to see the Guidance Marker for the location in the Plot Creation view, though.
• Nothing really to say about salvaging mined ships
• I just recently got a mission to supply some cargo to a sector, but none of the stations there wanted the goods. Some even produced them. Abandoned the mission.
• Joined the war effort against HOP on both the Argon and Paranid side. Started some missions, but they are not really well balanced:
  • Espionage is trivial, albeit tedious when you are tasked to scan a ship with a certain designation and have to find that
  • Assassinations are borderline impossible. Three of the targets I got were Destroyers, each in a wing of up to 6 capital ships with fighter and frigate support
  • Invasion is nearly as impossible. You basically have to clear a full sector by yourself, since their support is lacking at best
  • Building a navy is also a bit strange. 100k credits reward for a fleet that includes multiple destroyers and a carrier is not worth it
  • Generally, the payouts for these missions are magnitudes to low for the task (except espionage)
  • I wish these were a bit less generic and more hand-crafted. And they should cancel each other out. If I do a mission to destroy a certain station, the opposing side should not give me the mission to defend that station afterwards (but before the station is destroyed I could decide which side to join). After the mission was successful, both questlines should advance and the whole thing should end up in the losing side being wiped off the map. I know this goes a bit against the sandbox-idea where stuff like this should be emergent instead of 'scripted', but currently it is just too little. The difference between joining Argon against HOP and wiping HOP out myself is miniscule.
• I saw a mission to acquire 4 5-star pilots for the Teladi...if I had access to 5-star pilots, I would definitely not give them to the Teladí, no matter the pay. Especially not with the current state the Skill System is in. Fittingly, the mission was labeled as "impossible"

[consiefe]

[*]I saw a mission to acquire 4 5-star pilots for the Teladi...if I had access to 5-star pilots, I would definitely not give them to the Teladí, no matter the pay. Especially not with the current state the Skill System is in. Fittingly, the mission was labeled as "impossible"
[/list]

+1

Loved the signature by the way.

[Kalantris]

• /cut/
• I just recently got a mission to supply some cargo to a sector, but none of the stations there wanted the goods. Some even produced them. Abandoned the mission.
  /cut/

If anyone has a problem with that sort of mission:

1. Load one trade ship with enough cargo to finish the mission,
2. Put the ship in the correct system,
3. Set up Tater Trader with 0 jumps on both buy and sell and set it to the required goods,
4. Forget about this trader for a couple of hours.

This usually completes the mission, as there's usually buy orders for 40-50 appearing on stations from time to time.

[Socratatus]

I like theindividual missions. I do them so much I haven`t even completed the base missions. But need more, lots more. There can`t be that many fathers with daughters who want their wedding ring back!

I have not even seen war missions or `subscription` missions yet, whatever they are. And i`ve played a LOT.

I guess my style is much more explore the sandbox, then gradually do something that involves me with a faction.

[Tanvaras]

Main reasons I disliked the effort missions:

• Complete lack of story
• Complete lack of voiceover
• No need to complete them to become an ally, rep is better farmed by traders
• Insane missions (like finding a Xenon ship with spaceweed)
• Not enough missions forcing you to choose a side /I mean there's no response from HOP because you complete most of the Argon vs HOP chain for example/
• Not enough incentive to participate
• A lot of reasons not to participate
• Complete lack of impact of the war effort missions /it's not like factions start fighting over sectors or anything/

This quoted comments I totally agree with and my reasoning for what I chose in the poll.

[Nini]

Havn't started yet - because I don't want to make enemies.. yet..
Don't like losing reputation..

Would like to do them though.

[pref]

I tried to do some for SCA but all of them seem impossible so far - posted results on tech support with a save.

Anyone has advanced through with such a chain?
What are the results? Anyone managed to have AI factions take over sectors like Bernd said? How far you have to go for that?

[csaba]

Anyone managed to have AI factions take over sectors like Bernd said? How far you have to go for that?

I didn't do any chains but I joined the PAR war effort and HOP died on itself after a while and what I see is that NPCs can kill their ships but not their stations. So by the time you finish a single chain you would just speed up this process and then it will be up to you to destroy their stations I guess.

[pref]

I didn't do any chains but I joined the PAR war effort and HOP died on itself after a while and what I see is that NPCs can kill their ships but not their stations. So by the time you finish a single chain you would just speed up this process and then it will be up to you to destroy their stations I guess.

But did they manage to destroy the admin module(s)? And build one on their own perhaps?
Think there is a bug with station destruction - in case they build/repair anything they are near immortal, assume that will be fixed later on.

[csaba]

I didn't do any chains but I joined the PAR war effort and HOP died on itself after a while and what I see is that NPCs can kill their ships but not their stations. So by the time you finish a single chain you would just speed up this process and then it will be up to you to destroy their stations I guess.

But did they manage to destroy the admin module(s)? And build one on their own perhaps?
Think there is a bug with station destruction - in case they build/repair anything they are near immortal, assume that will be fixed later on.

That was fixed with 1.5 only the build storages are bugged now that sadly aggro patrols.

The only station I saw blown up by NPCs was the defense station in the Xenon sector just off the left of the gate where the Teladi rep sits. They did not try to build their own there.

[pref]

That was fixed with 1.5 only the build storages are bugged now that sadly aggro patrols.

The only station I saw blown up by NPCs was the defense station in the Xenon sector just off the left of the gate where the Teladi rep sits. They did not try to build their own there.

So they still get stuck on build related components.. who knows how far NPCs could get if they wouldn't waste their time on such bugs.

Think it ES should release some kind of documentation on such features which aren't obvious and need serious time investment - without too much spoilers, so we know what to expect when starting these subscriptions, how far we have to go for what results, and to be able to distinguish between bugs and misunderstood features etc.

[Vandragorax]

I've 'joined' almost all of these war effort missions, and was really excited to do more of them. However unfortunately I found that it was severely not compelling. I tried a few ARG vs. Xenon ones, and the only ones I could reliably do were "kill a Xenon P" x2. Got very boring very quickly. Then I tried one to board a HOP ship but soon found that the only way I could do it was by becoming enemies with HOP and I didn't want to do that whilst I was still building my assets up.

All of the other ones I looked at seemed impossible to me, or didn't give me anywhere near enough information about what I would have to do for each step in order to pass. I tried taking a few of the 'end game' ones but gave up as it was too ridiculous asking me to build some station or a fleet somewhere when I barely got my own feet off the ground with my own shit. By the time I could possibly do those, the rewards will be pointless.

Rewards need to be balanced a lot higher than they are now, and we need more info about what we will be required to do. Also give us a LARGE rep boost for completing these missions. They are a fantastic idea, but need a lot more work and focus to make them really really good!

I will likely go back to some of the ARG vs HOP ones once I've built up more and can afford to fund a war effort.

[SimB]

There is no real connection and / or emotion with these missions.
They are just menial work, that does not even bring that much in term of benefits.

You need to bring some form of endgame for the players to truly be involved with this part of the game.

[mr.WHO]

There are two main problems with missions:

1) Missions do not scale with your trade/fight rank:
- if we have destroy mines mission then it should scale - more mines, more types of mines (e.g. tracker mines, maybe hidden lasertower that activate when you fly close).


2) Missions lack variety:
- Argon vs. Xenon - only "hunt 2x Xenon P" - there should be more types of the same mission - hunt 10 fighters, hunt 10 miners, hunt destroyer, hunt carrier, destroy station module, destroy defence platform.
- Argon vs. Xenon - for "war mission" there is lack of actual combat missions - you have recons, you have build, but for combat you only have "hunt 2xP"
- No Pirate assasination/ bounty hunter missions - there are tons of pirate constantly harrasing NPC freighters, but no one actually post "wanted dead or alive - preferably dead" missions?

[LordJorge]

How many of you already joined a subscription mission (e.g the war effort) and how do you like that part of the game? Can this be a replacement in part for a plot?

Subscriptions can be really good but right now they lack two very important things "Feedback" and "Goals"

Those things can be solved with timers and gauges:

For example with wars, a gauge that fills on their own over time signaling the next wave agains the xenon or the HOP. With every mission complete this gauge fills a little more, and when it´s full a notice pops up with a timer and the location of the next raid. Also a "Warning Sistem" calling reinforcements to certain sector because a raid aproaches from the enemy would be really nice.

What about trade guild subscriptions? You make missions and fill the bar to the next reward, a new paint job, a blueprint or a spaceship variant.