Forums » Suggestions

Consolidate Escort, HS & Mining Missions

Dec 04, 2012 Kierky link
Much like the Trading Guild mission sets.
One mission, which gives you a choice of which escort/HS/Mining mission to take.

Would stop too much clutter in the main missions page, and improve load time for those with extreme latency. (Even with the latency fix, it is still annoying)
Dec 04, 2012 Alloh link
+1 to consolidade missions...

* Convoys and Logistic Departament - single spot offering all escort missions, and some hauling, as those datapad courier

* (Corporate/National) Defense Agency - single spot with all Hive Skirmish and similar

* Mining Operations - offering all mining/prospect/ore-related missions

> But convoy missions need a complete redux... I am preparing a post about it, basically, they should be micro-events, with fewer but larger convoys!
Dec 04, 2012 Pizzasgood link
-1. Why? Because that would make it so you have to actually dock to find out what escort/skirmish missions are available and from where. If you're doing the Critical skirmishes, you'd have to dock at every faction in the system to ensure they're all done, like we had to do back before the remote mission viewing was added.

A better solution would be to have a collapsible deal where all the escorts collapse into one entry that I could expand. That way it could be viewed anywhere.

I'd prefer to just leave it how it is until that can be done.
Dec 04, 2012 abortretryfail link
It would be cool if the group-based hive skirmish missions were expanded to include player roles for miners to mine ore while others fight the hive. They'd probably last longer than those terrible NPC Centaurs do.
Dec 04, 2012 TheRedSpy link
No No No Kierky, the suggestions forum is for posting elaborate dreams about features that will never happen like shields and player stations. Not posting sensible ones that could happen but won't anyway.

Silly Kierky.
Dec 04, 2012 PaKettle link
-1
This does not improve the over all clutter problem and in some ways makes it worse
Would much rather the missions were broken into sub catagories that could be collapsed
Dec 04, 2012 idd link
-1
Like Pizzasgood said, we'll have to go to every station to see whether or not there's a hive skirmish there.
Dec 04, 2012 abortretryfail link
Like Pizzasgood said, we'll have to go to every station to see whether or not there's a hive skirmish there.

Like we used to a year ago? Yeah that sucked too.
Dec 04, 2012 Kierky link
How hard is it to go to a station now? Takes you a whole minute from anywhere. The mission list outside of a station shouldn't even exist, and as it is, the non-local list is completely broken.
Dec 05, 2012 Kabuloso link
@Kierky

No, my opinion is that it should not be necessary to dock, to take a mission.
Make pilots not to need docking all the time.
Dec 05, 2012 Alloh link
Seems that you are confusing...

By adding the different "Offices" for Hive, Convoy, Mining, etc, we are effectivelly reducing the mess in mission system, by grouping them under a single entry.

Almost like an expandable drop-down. But with a good "corporate" appearance.

As for Hive, a dedicated office would present you all Hive missions (operation sounds better) from all nearby/allied systems, including those Hive-related missions as "collect N boX cores".

For Convoys, a single office should centralize operations, offering regular Escort missions, as well as Hauling options, incorporating the weird "Trade Guild" also. Fewer, longer and larger convoys also makes more sense, almost as micro-events, allowing opposing force missions from enemy factions.

Trade Guild breaks immersion for me. Why a Guild would take care of core logistics operations for Nations and Corporations? Migrate it into a "Logistics dept." or "Convoys Office" and it would make more sense, from a business perspective.

Anyway, bottom line here is: Present Mission system is cluttered, an improvised mess instead of an organized layered system, as OP proposes and I proposed to extend... AND the Trade Guild makes no sense in corporate or nation environments, also being too prone to exployts due its repetitive nature...

Finally, on docking, it should be required, but also some missions offered from Capships in-flight, like joining a convoy, HS, Deneb, etc.
Dec 05, 2012 Pizzasgood link
No, I'm not confusing anything Alloh. The difference between the OP and what PaK and I want, is that with our version you can still find out the individual missions in-flight. Even if all local factions had their stuff available from all local stations as you propose, you'd still have to dock with one to find out what is available in the first place. With collapsible categories, on the other hand, you could fly into the system and know what is available without having to stop (as well as getting an idea of what is available in other systems, though some things may be omitted due to duplication in a nearer system).

Kierky, sure it doesn't take long. So what? Obviously the devs don't want to force us to dock at a million stations just to know what is available - otherwise, they never would have implemented remote mission viewing in the first place. And no, it isn't "completely broken". Unorganized and (to newbies) confusing, sure, but it does work.

edit: removed unnecessary crankiness.
Dec 05, 2012 abortretryfail link
It is sometimes hard to know when the mission list is actually done loading stuff. I'll post a new thread for that though.
Dec 05, 2012 incarnate link
- We are not going to have more missions that spawn other missions. The whole point of the new architecture is to move away from that. I never wanted that, not even the original trade guild mission, which was made that way against my design goals. The old trade-guild mission will be replaced.

- Moreover, the expectations that condensing tons of missions under one "virtual mission" will somehow improve performance are misguided. The performance issue is the very dynamic nature of the available missions. Instead of spending time downloading 100 new missions, you'll be downloading 1 "mission" with 100 new.. missions in it. Dynamic missions aren't going away.. they're the point, so that when you own a station you can post missions requesting that people deliver components to your station so it can continue manufacturing stuff while you're.. doing whatever else. It's better for us to deal with the challenges presented by dynamic missions and make them as robust as possible, with regards to the network issues and everything else.

- The current system for handling, parsing and viewing missions is not ideal right now, as we all know. But the goal is to fix that, rather than revert to some far more limiting system that will also negate a lot of my long term gameplay goals. So yes, in the process of moving forward there will be time when the "new" is more broken than the "old", but we are still improving stuff and that doesn't make the "old" better than the eventual goal for the "new".

- You will eventually be able to take a lot of missions while in-flight (without docking). You can't right now because of limitations to the existing mission mechanics and a lack of development time to re-work every existing mission. So the current situation is a development stepping-stone.

- So no, we're not going back. Let's focus on criticizing the specific issues in the current system (like the "loading indicator" point that now has its own thread, as opposed to reverting to some idealized previous system.
Dec 05, 2012 Kierky link
Potassium.
Dec 06, 2012 Kabuloso link
"- You will eventually be able to take a lot of missions while in-flight (without docking)."

:) :) :)

It's good to know that! And even better that there is a diferent long term goal, about these missions.
Wonder how will it be...

If I get some time, I'll make an alt, to review all newbie missions and post some sugestions for them. But right now, can't even play the game...