Forums » Suggestions
Escort Missions Needs Changing
Alright everybody - bear with me. You might just want to skip down to the "Suggestions" part of the post. Most of the post above that is just an argument for my case.
Out of sheer boredom one night, I decided to mess around with some escort missions... I had somewhat ignored them in the past, opting instead to pirate the convoys produced by them. Maybe it is just me (hopefully not), but I was pretty disappointed with how the whole mission ran. I don't really mean this as a cut at the devs (especially Momerath who has worked incredibly hard on these missions), because I can't really judge just how difficult it is to program in and design one of these missions.
But what I CAN say, is that the quality of the current missions just isn't going to cut it. I know some things regarding bot/npc AI and mission creation are in the works... but man, there really are a TON of things that need improvement if the current escort mission is close to the best we can get (which I'm really really hoping it is not). I guess I'll start out with the good news first...
Escort Mission Pros:
-• Convoy meets in adjacent sector! Very good idea.
-• Variety of cargo transports.
-• Missions readily available almost everywhere.
-• There are NPC convoy escorts.
-• Pirates that attack the convoy.
-• Missions do not start instantly, but give you preparation time.
Escort Mission Cons:
1-• Entire convoy in complete and total disarray. This leads to numerous problems. The "Convoy underway" messages come long before the convoy is actually underway and reaches the meeting sector, which confused me quite a bit until I realized what was going on. Also, who the hell am I supposed to protect? Once the convoy actually does leave, they split into 4 or 5 groups... some convoy members being as far back as two or three systems, making it impossible to successfully defend the convoy.
2-• Missions do not inform you of the size or type of convoy. If I knew the mission was asking me to defend one EC-101 from Pelatus to Pyronis, there's no way I would take that mission. This also makes it quite annoying for multiple people taking the same mission. There's no way to tell if you are going to need more people or not.
3-• Danger outside of greyspace is extremely minimal. Not only this, but there are no rewards for fending off attacking bots in ion storm sectors..?? (devs probably aware of this)
4-• Instructions on how/where to claim reward is nonexistant (or maybe I'm getting a bug with this?). It was somewhat unclear if the standing reward was from the destination or departure faction, and if I had to dock with the station or not (I know I have to dock... but I'm just saying...) Missions with KOS destinations were still available, but I was unable to claim the reward.
5-• Reward system for killing pirates is a bit useless. While I understand the need to minimize mission exploiting, it is fairly impractical to only allow rewards while the first group of the convoy is in the sector. It is next to impossible to defend the smaller ships if you are actually escorting them, even in a very fast chaser. Defending the convoy just isn't anywhere close to the fun that it could be.
6-• Severe lack of ship diversity with convoy escorts and pirates. Also, the only smaller cargo transport class ship that has any self defense capabilities is the Behemoth Heavy.
Suggestions:
1-• The "Convoy is underway" message should really come about 10 seconds before the convoy leaves the the gathering sector. Maybe extra messages saying that the cargo transports are heading from the station to the gathering sector would be a good idea as well. The convoy needs to stick together. This might mean going slower in some cases, but what is the point of gathering, organizing, and going in a convoy if everybody just suicidally speeds off towards the destination sector?
2-• Have different classes of escort missions. Single trader missions, where you are defending a single transport ship. Small group missions, where you defend two to eight transport ships with a few NPC escorts. Large group missions, where you defend six or more small transport ships with NPC escorts along with likely capital-class ships. Capital class missions, where you escort one or two cargo-frigates. Larger missions would become available with higher standing, licenses, or successful mission completions. Maybe something like a mission tree, but more of a mission quota (I.e. completing eight to twelve single trader escort missions would allow you to take the small group missions. But you could only take the Capital Class missions if you were taken as a group or guild). Also, it would be a good idea to give highest possible reward wages for a fully successful mission IN the mission info.
3-• Have rewards for dealing with bots. I haven't come up with any good ideas yet on how to make escort missions in 'safe' space more interesting... I'm sure others have though.
4-• Either make KOS destination missions hidden for the specific player, or allow a temporary one-time docking of the player to the destination station to collect their reward. Make the SF go on standby mode against the player as well. Perhaps disable all purchasing/selling of goods and services (even repairing) while in this one-time KOS docking mode.
5-• Rewards would be given to the player for killing pirates / hostile bots within one system of where the convoy is headed (i.e. no rewards would be generated if the player was killing pirates in Bractus even though the convoy was going from Sedina to Odia.... OR had already left Bractus heading west. Players would be able to go _ahead_ of the convoy to clear the path or cause a distraction, but wouldn't be able to exploit the rewards by killing pirates just anywhere.
6-• Add some more variants of NPC ships! Wraith mkII trader... Railgun hornet mkIII escorts... faction-specific ships... etc. It would be nice if the occasional cargo transport ship dropped a couple of concussion mines every now-and-then as well.
Alright. I know some of these things have been suggested or discussed already... for the sake of completion, I kept them in anyways. Heck, I don't even know if some of this would be possible... but to be blunt - I don't care! We want quality mission options! But honestly, I'm not ripping on the devs - I know they work hard, and not everything is possible at once.
So whaddya think?
P.S. Please excuse the grammatical error of the thread title that makes me look like a fool. It's 3:00 AM here for cryin' out loud.
Out of sheer boredom one night, I decided to mess around with some escort missions... I had somewhat ignored them in the past, opting instead to pirate the convoys produced by them. Maybe it is just me (hopefully not), but I was pretty disappointed with how the whole mission ran. I don't really mean this as a cut at the devs (especially Momerath who has worked incredibly hard on these missions), because I can't really judge just how difficult it is to program in and design one of these missions.
But what I CAN say, is that the quality of the current missions just isn't going to cut it. I know some things regarding bot/npc AI and mission creation are in the works... but man, there really are a TON of things that need improvement if the current escort mission is close to the best we can get (which I'm really really hoping it is not). I guess I'll start out with the good news first...
Escort Mission Pros:
-• Convoy meets in adjacent sector! Very good idea.
-• Variety of cargo transports.
-• Missions readily available almost everywhere.
-• There are NPC convoy escorts.
-• Pirates that attack the convoy.
-• Missions do not start instantly, but give you preparation time.
Escort Mission Cons:
1-• Entire convoy in complete and total disarray. This leads to numerous problems. The "Convoy underway" messages come long before the convoy is actually underway and reaches the meeting sector, which confused me quite a bit until I realized what was going on. Also, who the hell am I supposed to protect? Once the convoy actually does leave, they split into 4 or 5 groups... some convoy members being as far back as two or three systems, making it impossible to successfully defend the convoy.
2-• Missions do not inform you of the size or type of convoy. If I knew the mission was asking me to defend one EC-101 from Pelatus to Pyronis, there's no way I would take that mission. This also makes it quite annoying for multiple people taking the same mission. There's no way to tell if you are going to need more people or not.
3-• Danger outside of greyspace is extremely minimal. Not only this, but there are no rewards for fending off attacking bots in ion storm sectors..?? (devs probably aware of this)
4-• Instructions on how/where to claim reward is nonexistant (or maybe I'm getting a bug with this?). It was somewhat unclear if the standing reward was from the destination or departure faction, and if I had to dock with the station or not (I know I have to dock... but I'm just saying...) Missions with KOS destinations were still available, but I was unable to claim the reward.
5-• Reward system for killing pirates is a bit useless. While I understand the need to minimize mission exploiting, it is fairly impractical to only allow rewards while the first group of the convoy is in the sector. It is next to impossible to defend the smaller ships if you are actually escorting them, even in a very fast chaser. Defending the convoy just isn't anywhere close to the fun that it could be.
6-• Severe lack of ship diversity with convoy escorts and pirates. Also, the only smaller cargo transport class ship that has any self defense capabilities is the Behemoth Heavy.
Suggestions:
1-• The "Convoy is underway" message should really come about 10 seconds before the convoy leaves the the gathering sector. Maybe extra messages saying that the cargo transports are heading from the station to the gathering sector would be a good idea as well. The convoy needs to stick together. This might mean going slower in some cases, but what is the point of gathering, organizing, and going in a convoy if everybody just suicidally speeds off towards the destination sector?
2-• Have different classes of escort missions. Single trader missions, where you are defending a single transport ship. Small group missions, where you defend two to eight transport ships with a few NPC escorts. Large group missions, where you defend six or more small transport ships with NPC escorts along with likely capital-class ships. Capital class missions, where you escort one or two cargo-frigates. Larger missions would become available with higher standing, licenses, or successful mission completions. Maybe something like a mission tree, but more of a mission quota (I.e. completing eight to twelve single trader escort missions would allow you to take the small group missions. But you could only take the Capital Class missions if you were taken as a group or guild). Also, it would be a good idea to give highest possible reward wages for a fully successful mission IN the mission info.
3-• Have rewards for dealing with bots. I haven't come up with any good ideas yet on how to make escort missions in 'safe' space more interesting... I'm sure others have though.
4-• Either make KOS destination missions hidden for the specific player, or allow a temporary one-time docking of the player to the destination station to collect their reward. Make the SF go on standby mode against the player as well. Perhaps disable all purchasing/selling of goods and services (even repairing) while in this one-time KOS docking mode.
5-• Rewards would be given to the player for killing pirates / hostile bots within one system of where the convoy is headed (i.e. no rewards would be generated if the player was killing pirates in Bractus even though the convoy was going from Sedina to Odia.... OR had already left Bractus heading west. Players would be able to go _ahead_ of the convoy to clear the path or cause a distraction, but wouldn't be able to exploit the rewards by killing pirates just anywhere.
6-• Add some more variants of NPC ships! Wraith mkII trader... Railgun hornet mkIII escorts... faction-specific ships... etc. It would be nice if the occasional cargo transport ship dropped a couple of concussion mines every now-and-then as well.
Alright. I know some of these things have been suggested or discussed already... for the sake of completion, I kept them in anyways. Heck, I don't even know if some of this would be possible... but to be blunt - I don't care! We want quality mission options! But honestly, I'm not ripping on the devs - I know they work hard, and not everything is possible at once.
So whaddya think?
P.S. Please excuse the grammatical error of the thread title that makes me look like a fool. It's 3:00 AM here for cryin' out loud.
I'll address your cons point by point, and maybe respond to your suggestions later today.
1. The only cases of this that I've ever seen or had reported are with one or two traders falling one or two sectors behind. But, regardless, this definitely needs to be fixed, and some major work is under way that will address this and many other issues, some of which you were lucky enough not to encounter yet.
2. Good point. At the moment, the composition of the convoy is determined randomly when the mission starts so I can't list the ship types in the mission description without changing that, and I'm going to leave it for now pending more important changes that may result in that code being replaced entirely. On the other hand, I could certainly give an indication of the maximum reward in the extended description. Since trade ships are added until their cargo capacity exceeds the goods being transported, and the smallest convoy load is over 100cus, a "one EC101" mission should never happen. Good enough for now?
3. I wasn't aware that you aren't getting rewarded for Hive kills on Escort missions; I think this must be a recent bug, and I'll fix it today. As for nation space not being challenging, I'm not sure I understand. Is it that the types of hive bots in nation-space storm-sectors aren't tough enough?
4. I'm not sure if the message wasn't clear or if you ran into the bug (class of bugs really) that currently plagues my existence. Sometimes the mission doesn't end because it thinks there are still traders on their way. One way or another, this bug will be fixed soon. You should have received a message when all the traders either made it to the destination or were destroyed. The message indicates how much of the convoy made it, and tells you to come to the destination sector for your reward. You do *not* need to dock. You can therefore do escort missions to factions who hate you. Furthermore, you get a standing increase with the source faction and half of that with the destination faction.
5. I could easily broaden it up to all sectors which the convoy will pass through, or just those ahead, or whatever else. I'll discuss it with the other guys.
6. Adding variety is relatively easy, and something we do intend to do. It does take time, though, and it has to come somewhere on the todo list. I don't tend to think it belongs at the top yet.
Thanks for your comments- I appreciate the tactful and organized way you laid them out.
~Michael
1. The only cases of this that I've ever seen or had reported are with one or two traders falling one or two sectors behind. But, regardless, this definitely needs to be fixed, and some major work is under way that will address this and many other issues, some of which you were lucky enough not to encounter yet.
2. Good point. At the moment, the composition of the convoy is determined randomly when the mission starts so I can't list the ship types in the mission description without changing that, and I'm going to leave it for now pending more important changes that may result in that code being replaced entirely. On the other hand, I could certainly give an indication of the maximum reward in the extended description. Since trade ships are added until their cargo capacity exceeds the goods being transported, and the smallest convoy load is over 100cus, a "one EC101" mission should never happen. Good enough for now?
3. I wasn't aware that you aren't getting rewarded for Hive kills on Escort missions; I think this must be a recent bug, and I'll fix it today. As for nation space not being challenging, I'm not sure I understand. Is it that the types of hive bots in nation-space storm-sectors aren't tough enough?
4. I'm not sure if the message wasn't clear or if you ran into the bug (class of bugs really) that currently plagues my existence. Sometimes the mission doesn't end because it thinks there are still traders on their way. One way or another, this bug will be fixed soon. You should have received a message when all the traders either made it to the destination or were destroyed. The message indicates how much of the convoy made it, and tells you to come to the destination sector for your reward. You do *not* need to dock. You can therefore do escort missions to factions who hate you. Furthermore, you get a standing increase with the source faction and half of that with the destination faction.
5. I could easily broaden it up to all sectors which the convoy will pass through, or just those ahead, or whatever else. I'll discuss it with the other guys.
6. Adding variety is relatively easy, and something we do intend to do. It does take time, though, and it has to come somewhere on the todo list. I don't tend to think it belongs at the top yet.
Thanks for your comments- I appreciate the tactful and organized way you laid them out.
~Michael
A possible addition to the todo list (at the bottom with ship & loadout variety): Make the convoy to be escorted be of the origin or destination faction/nation, and note who's it is in the mission description. That way we can avoid escorting for certain factions if we wish.
momerath32: You don't get rewards for *old* hive kills. In sedina it rewards you if you happen to stumble across the new hive but anywhere else it does not.
Also, PLEEEAAASE fix the missions not ending right. it is driving me up the wall to completley save a voy then just have it never end cause the capship decides to leave at the end
Also, PLEEEAAASE fix the missions not ending right. it is driving me up the wall to completley save a voy then just have it never end cause the capship decides to leave at the end
2. Ahhh, ok... my example with the "one EC101" was hypothetical.
3. Nation space not being challenging - well, I did just take a few missions is all through UIT space... and we didn't run into any ion storms. I guess it would have been more interesting with the ion storms. Which actually reminds me of something else - is it possible for the AI to recognize when other bots 'engage' them? Like, being able to see which bots are chasing them, even though the bots haven't shot at them yet? That might be a way to improve NPC convoy escort behavior.
4. Ah, what I was experiencing was probably a bug, then. I just always thought we had to dock in order to receive the reward.
Thanks for the reply. I understand that the changes wouldn't come immediately. Especially since I hear a lot of things are going to be moved around with some of the new UI elements.
3. Nation space not being challenging - well, I did just take a few missions is all through UIT space... and we didn't run into any ion storms. I guess it would have been more interesting with the ion storms. Which actually reminds me of something else - is it possible for the AI to recognize when other bots 'engage' them? Like, being able to see which bots are chasing them, even though the bots haven't shot at them yet? That might be a way to improve NPC convoy escort behavior.
4. Ah, what I was experiencing was probably a bug, then. I just always thought we had to dock in order to receive the reward.
Thanks for the reply. I understand that the changes wouldn't come immediately. Especially since I hear a lot of things are going to be moved around with some of the new UI elements.
I think I never was rewarded for killing bots in ion storms in escort missions. Isn't it supposed to be so? LOL...
I remember the time when you got faction increase only for destination station's faction. Know I get a bit of standing for source station's faction too. But does mom says it should be more source station standing then destination?
Oh, and I should mention that I didn't play after Tuesday, maybe something changed in that time
P. S. And PLEASE PLEASE make it possible to find my group in gathering sector. I hate it when it spawns at 3000+!!!
I remember the time when you got faction increase only for destination station's faction. Know I get a bit of standing for source station's faction too. But does mom says it should be more source station standing then destination?
Oh, and I should mention that I didn't play after Tuesday, maybe something changed in that time
P. S. And PLEASE PLEASE make it possible to find my group in gathering sector. I hate it when it spawns at 3000+!!!
thread hijacking in progress...
Can you amke it so a trader can join the convoy and benifit from it's protection?
Can you amke it so a trader can join the convoy and benifit from it's protection?
Another thought - Can the entire convoy eventually be made into a special "mission group"? It would be exactly like a group, but you can be in a regular group too. That way you could get a list of the convoy pilots, message them to locate them (anything the NPC said in return would note its location), and always be able to find them in-sector as well as view convoy damage in-sector.
Heh:) *All* Deliverator missions are taken by "special mission groups." They aren't currently reflected in the UI because there are some fundamental issues to work out before UI-grouping with NPCs will be possible, but that is coming. Furthermore, the traders that the Escort Mission accompanies, and the miners in the Guard Mission, *are* taking missions. These Trade and Mining missions don't yet have some of the elements necessary to make them available to player's, but that is the idea, and it won't be long.
~Michael:)
~Michael:)
Way to go Michael, oh great god... er, dev of teh Deliverator!
-Calder
-Calder
I reiterate my previous point that ALL bots should be able to realize when somebody's attacking them, even if they haven't been hit yet. I've chased Assaults around sectors for long periods of time shooting at them and they don't notice you're attacking them until you actually land a shot. They're like the Borg or something.