While things have gotten more expensive in the last couple months, its also become harder to make money with missions (trading can still yield a healthy profit, but without a large database its hard to get a feel for the economy at this point... tutorials explaining how some things work would be useful, but that aside). I for one have spent a couple hours over the last week on an old favorite money-earner: escorts. But all of a sudden escorts that used to return 400k are returning 9k or 50k. I think it would save us all a lot of time if we were to allow the user to see how much a mission would yield him.

It would also be cool if a user could negotiate said offering price with the person offering the mission. If you have high levels, you can request that you be paid more. If you fly a specific type of ship (that is ideal for escorts), you can request to be paid more. If you have high standing... etc. I know negotiations and the like are a bit of code and would take a long time to be implemented, and I don't think its a high priority; it would just make the game more interactive.

But what I believe is important on the short-term would be to at least give an idea how much money a specific mission will earn.

Also, on a less-important note, it would be cool to be told what kind of cargo you are escorting... just would make things more interesting.

Indicating the ballpark payout, at the very least, is something we definitely want to do, but it's not as easy as just printing a variable we already have into the mission text. The start of the escort mission triggers the two stations in question to finalize an order for whatever they need/have at that moment, using the price difference of the moment to calculate profit, a portion of which is the escort's reward. This was, perhaps, not the best way to have implemented it, but it seemed like the right way to me at the time, and changing it now would require a lot more work than many other things which would improve the game more. So, in short, we'll try to do this as soon as it's an effective use of our time.

Escorts were never supposed to return 400,000 credits for a hop, skip, and jump. Silly, spoiled n00blets :P

That actually one of the best ways to do it... I guess the only thing would be have them set at a certain time, whenever the "order" is going out, and have a length of time they're actually alive for. Or something like that. Oh well.

Isn't it a hop, skip and a jump?

I was putting some thought to it and ....

10k per jump + 2k per storm + 10 percent of cargo

also 20k bonus if killed while defending convoy
also 5 k bonus per attacker killed
waver of penalties if combat ensues

Or do we have to go on strike? LOL

Different corporations work different ways. I'd like to see set prices, prices that range on distance, and prices that range on kills... or more then one.

Oh, and a Q to PaKettle. Why would they give you money if you died?

Storms should be worth more than 20% of a jump. Hell they give you 4x in HS...

The point of Hive Skirmish is to blow stuff up. The point of Escorting is to... escort. Meaning, fly around hoping you don't have to blow stuff up. If you *do* have to, you will most likely get less money from the mission (cause stuff of yours might be blown up too.)

Maybe you could do that as another possible variable.

life insurance.....