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Post by Alex Fury on Oct 4, 2017 8:36:05 GMT -5
I do understand overall the desire for Contacts to want to give you harder/longer-distance missions as you rank up.
But at times, it would be nice to have an option to go back with the 'more missions' button and effectively ask 'anything closer'?
Especially for captains a bit low on funds due to unexpected loss in combat, or just massive damage fix. Or perhaps having just purchased a new ship, you're a bit leaner on funds.
Now, I'm not expecting to go back to beginning of being able to cherry-pick same-system only missions like the first couple. But it'd be nice to have the option of doing a few quick local-system runs even for small cash to pad the wallet a bit before the crew mutinies because the only mission you can get is 12+ hops away.
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Post by fallen on Oct 4, 2017 9:36:57 GMT -5
Alex Fury - the mission system looks at your Captain and crew and picks your "tier". Then, based on your tier it approximates the type of mission and the maximum distance you could survive. Then, based on the mission type and the Faction it opposes or helps, it finds workable options within that range. Perhaps this is a suggestion that the mission system should sniff out Captains who are low on credits and treat them as lower tier? That might have very good impact on the games ability to help players survive instead of suiciding them. Thoughts? What type of "low credits" were you having?
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Post by contributor on Oct 4, 2017 9:44:12 GMT -5
I think I can agree with Alex Fury. Maybe their just needs to be a bit wider field of mission difficulties/distances offered after the tier is picked. It would give the player more freedom to choose. Do I want to run some short missions right now to stay in this area, or do I want to take the big mission for big money. When I just want to build up some rep with a contact it is kind of annoying to have 5+ jump missions that are going to take half a year to accomplish. It might be tedious, but there are times when I want short missions and am willing to work for less money. Though in reality I haven't found farther missions to offer better rewards. The margins on a 1-2 jump 16k mission are probably better than a 4-5 jump 30k mission. |
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Post by fallen on Oct 4, 2017 9:56:24 GMT -5
contributor - thanks for the feedback. We keep hearing that far off missions don't pay well enough, so I will try to address that now with a stacking payment bump that gets bigger every jump.
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Post by En1gma on Oct 4, 2017 10:14:14 GMT -5
For context right now, my Faction Rank 13 Spy, who is level 15 is being given missions that are at least 4-7 jumps total, and only one out of maybe 10 of them are giving over 75k after all bonuses are counted. Most of them are 25-55k, and a few have been for 15k.
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Post by En1gma on Oct 4, 2017 10:16:24 GMT -5
Having a higher pay on these missions would go a long way in terms of pacing, as I wouldn't need to go Spy for a year to refresh the missions.
Also limiting the number of missions a contact will give at any one time makes it even more important for the long missions to pay enough, and for the diversity to allow the player to at least have an option to remain in the area.
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Post by MintDragon on Oct 4, 2017 18:14:07 GMT -5
The 2 cents I would add is that I really appreciate missions that are long completion time. If it's in my scope of abilities, will take them on every time (almost look at them as gold!), as I can complete them while I'm trying to accomplish other things (trading, story arcs, etc...)
So perhaps, if a mission's completion time is 2 or 3 years, it's less important as to how much I get paid, almost don't consider 'how many jumps'.
Also perhaps, if there was a way to understand how much REP/INFLUENCE a given mission completion would provide, that would be helpful. 5000 turns into the game, I'm often less concerned about the payment, just trying to build rep or influence a trade ban. Maybe the mission could provide a range of potential impact to rep, conflict influence or contact influence as well (during mission offer/acceptance phase)?
Thought from a different viewpoint, if I'm trying to gain influence with a certain contact through missions, which offered mission should I select to maximize his influence and/or my effective rep?
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Post by Alex Fury on Oct 5, 2017 14:04:16 GMT -5
fallen It's the type of game where you just have a few unlucky encounters and basically unable to pay crew/buy fuel/repair ship/spice crew, etc... It can happen at any Captain level, and often quite a deep while into the game. It's simply that set of a few unfortunate events. Got a new ship, got slammed by a pirate or such. Just spent all your money for a permit-trade and got robbed before you could sell it. Suddenly you're sitting on 6k credits, when repairs are 50k+ credits, morale is shot, etc. That's the time when you go in for a mission to help, and it's 12+ hops away through high danger, and attack a ship.. Or the like. Need a way to either have them check your amount of credits, or perhaps even have an option for difficulty or the like.
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Post by Alex Fury on Oct 5, 2017 14:05:22 GMT -5
I think I can agree with Alex Fury. Maybe their just needs to be a bit wider field of mission difficulties/distances offered after the tier is picked. It would give the player more freedom to choose. Do I want to run some short missions right now to stay in this area, or do I want to take the big mission for big money. When I just want to build up some rep with a contact it is kind of annoying to have 5+ jump missions that are going to take half a year to accomplish. It might be tedious, but there are times when I want short missions and am willing to work for less money. Though in reality I haven't found farther missions to offer better rewards. The margins on a 1-2 jump 16k mission are probably better than a 4-5 jump 30k mission. : This --^ |
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Post by fallen on Oct 5, 2017 14:48:15 GMT -5
"A wide range" verus "I get to pick the parameters" is pretty different. A wide range is offered, in my opinion. However, you can only get a few pending missions per contact, so you have limited options.
Unless we were to offer "I want a short jump" button, I don't see how we'd do it any differently. I guess we could do this and just crush the mission payment hard for picking the short option. We'd also have to crush the Rep/Influence bonuses down for short missions, otherwise they would always be optimal.
Pretty decent solution is to look at the Captain's current status (credits) and determine if the tier should be reduced to help get them out of a jam.
P.s. the next release already includes a big bonus to how prices scale for jumps, so hopefully that will help make that 5 jump worth it.
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Post by contributor on Oct 5, 2017 15:50:22 GMT -5
There's something to be said for giving players more choices, provided those choices have significant trade offs and are balanced within the game system. I'm curious about the rationale for giving such a limited number of missions. I'm sure you guys have thought it all through though.
One idea that occurs to me is to have lower tier contacts, that will always offer low tier/low reward contracts. They would offer very minimal services but if you could meet a Staff Sergeant who would give low tier missions and sell crap weapons, maybe they would have their uses... But that sounds like a big add at this point of the game. I don't envy you guys the decisions you have to make.
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Post by fallen on Oct 5, 2017 17:13:14 GMT -5
We will not be adding a lower tier of Contacts to the game, that would lead to major bloat.
We'll keep working to improve.
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