I agree for now there are a lot of other things that would be of more benefit and less time-consuming, but are there any thoughts on switching over to multi-mission architecture at a later time?

I think it's important to reiterate the idea of multiple missions. being able to make many deliveries or search/mine for many minerals while gathering scrap metal, etc, etc would make the game feel a little less.. one dimensional.

What, you mean something like this?

Note: that screenshot is pre-UI update, on the test server, and it's a bug. It really did happen.

Man, that is old. I remember that. That's back when Convoys were still single Atlases and the new system of convoys was buggy as hell >_>;

The interface was the biggest thing keeping us from doing this. You can actually have multiple missions in the new mission interface; only the mission board prevents it.

But... there are a lot of potential conflicts and exploits with having more than one at a time, and testing each combination of missions is obviously prohibitive. For the short term, we will probably continue to allow only one at a time. From there we could make certain missions available in combination with each-other, and, maybe, any one of the other missions. Hopefully that's readable enough; I don't see a simpler way to explain it just now.

That makes sense... you could be getting double bonuses by taking both the advanced combat and hive hunt missions simultaneously, or who knows what else and on what level, and testing this internally would take a lot of time.

What about giving it a shot on the test server?

I could be wrong, but I think most people's "we want multiple missions" impulses come from wanting to have multiple non-combat missions simultaneously (the biggest one of course being taking 2 procurement missions, duh). I will reiterate my suggestion of custom trade missions (which would let a player select what non-combat tasks they want to sign up for) and suggest it could be one of the FEW missions that may be taken irrespective of what else you are currently doing.

http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/14251

An alternative idea: what if all non-combat missions were always visible? That way if you bring stuff to a station that fulfills one of its available missions, it gives you the option of completing the mission. It would also mean traders would have to compete with each other to see who made the delivery first instead of each trader having a temporary monopoly on some transport/acquisition task.

LostCommander;

Here's another wacky tidbit. When I run the procurement missions, I sometimes purchase extra of the materials in question. After all, if the station is sending me to some other location to purchase for them, then those items must be in short supply, right?

However, at least half the time when I return to the station I find that the selling price is drastically below what I paid for the materials. This throws me a bit. Isn't there some kind of shortage? Wasn't that why I was sent out into the inky, starstudded blackness of deep space to brave the rapine of pirates and the risk of blisters on my trigger finger?

This might be something that is going to be fixed in the economy update. Or, it might be something so small that no one else has noticed it. Has anyone else run into this and thought, however briefly, "WTF?"

~D.
"Nigel"

The station currently merely sends you after items it doesn't produce since it doesn't "need" anything in specific for production at the moment. This part will be fixed by the economy update.

Also, the station's base price (the point to which the price will rise, given time, after any amount of an item is sold there) and the sell price of the item elsewhere (which currently does not fluctuate as far as I can tell) may provide a profit, but if someone already dumped off a ton of stuff, the price will fall below sell prices. I HOPE this is also fixed in the economy redux (i.e. stations not having infinite production at price X and not making missions for things they doesn't need).

That's true, but the mission text usually says something about "drastic need" for a particular item.

Another odd thing that I ran into. Once or twice I've seen missions to procure items that are for sale in that station. I simply loaded my ship, launched, and docked to get both the reward and the time bonus. THAT is probably a burp in the program.

~D.
"Nigel"

How about taking simultaneous missions, but only having one active at a time.

Or it'd be nice if certain missions could be accessed without docking. I don't see why a Serco in Deneb B-12 couldn't call up his superiors and say "I'm going to kill Itani now! Make sure to keep track of my kills. K THX BI", but maybe I could see why Border Patrol wouldn't be offered to that same Serco who's chillin' in Sedina, nowhere near the border.

Mynt, it sounds like your suggestion of having missions accessible outside stations would go hand-in-hand with the devs' ideas that resemble communicate with this random npc to start a mission tree.

The Player Contribution Corps should be looking at this topic VERY closely.

We should make new missions that are compatible with multiple other missions. Perhaps write a flag to each mission: 0 means it stands alone, 1 means it can be taken in conjunction with any other mission, 2 - it can only be accepted in conjunction with another mission, 3 - it MUST be accepted in conjunction with another specified mission.

...and I just had a great idea for a mission that will fit right in with larger sectors and a current mission...