well, I was bored with my missions ingame and started to ramble... On RelayeR's request I'm here posting my ingame chatter, unedited. :)

<Spider> the main "issue" about missions right now is that they are really dull
<White Wolf> how would u spice them up?
<Spider> to start with Id make longer missions actually pay more, both standing + XP
<Spider> subclass long/short distance missions
<Spider> add a lovely heap of new bots that actually have a target driven ai
<Spider> things like targetted interception + intelligence
<White Wolf> like the idea of intelligence
<Spider> also splice out some missions like "we need <foo>, you can get them in <someplace across the universe>"
<Spider> and then leave it up to in-game to find it on other places
<Spider> so you won't -have- to go from.. bractus to geil to fetch something, just that thats only what the AI tells you
<White Wolf> broken mission bot has all the goods loaded
<Spider> yep
<Spider> also make the mission bot try to level out the supply/demand factors
<Spider> so, if you have a high price on <foo> widgets, those become the "priority" widgets
<Spider> Which means that you'd get missions to get those, in order to supply for the demand at that station
<Spider> so, basically you make the missions even out the economy
<Spider> actually having the bots move towards the storm focal points in sectors where there are storms would improve it
<White Wolf> the economy.isnt that similar to other games?
<Spider> dunno
<Spider> right now we have a slow demand-increase for widgets
<White Wolf> yes
<Spider> as it goes up, the price you get paid to bring things increases..
<Spider> but why aren't missions hooked into this?
<Spider> we have a large enough universe right not to support that
<Spider> erm.. "not" should be "now"
<White Wolf> yes and as a test base that is something we should be able to test out thoroughly
<Spider> yeah. might be that a mission equalized economy won't give enough room for profits with more traders
<Spider> but thats easily improved by increasing the demand factors
<Spider> making charting and bot-counting a mission would be possible too
<Spider> "map the strenght of itani presence in Metana, sectors E6-E9, D6-D9, F6-F9
<White Wolf> that is a really good idea
<Spider> "see over the maps of Geil, E12-14"
<Spider> (where bots would slowly "change" in count and type over time, so you'd need mapping missions to make the nav map "up to date" )
<Spider> for a serco.. "map the strengh of defbots around Itan II"
<Spider> making followup missions worth anything would be good too
<Spider> currently I can get a lovely mission from SolII to bractus and back for 19 cargo...
<Spider> thats -not- something I'm about to spend time on for +650 trade
<Spider> "Transport this marauder to Pyronis outpost"
<Spider> Then you get a marauder, and have to move it there.. you can ofc. steal it, and then lose standing and so on.....
<Spider> and trust ;)
<Spider> But if you succeed, you're there, and suddenly there is a marauder in stock there for you or others to buy at a hideously expensive price
<Spider> And you can go back with a bus, or buy another ship ;)
<Spider> And really. Why do they send me with manufacturing tools to a place which sells manufacturing tools cheaper than the one I brought it from?
<Spider> "We need a large quantity of Van Achtec ore, you and your group will have to provide us with 300 untis. We will pay 57c / unit."
<Spider> We need a provider of Personal Defense units. Find a provider who will sell them below 180c / unit
<Spider> longterm missions: "infiltrate TPG, we want their ship blueprints"
<White Wolf> how do u get the blueprints tho?
<Spider> by infiltrating TPG, taking missions for them until you get ordered to transport a datapad..
<White Wolf> i like the sound of it!
<Spider> after that, you bring the datapad to (original employer) and get paid
<Spider> and during that time you are unable to take more missions for your original employer
<Spider> of course, infiltration missions are only avaiable to trusted players (standing >300 ?) and if you fail them... well.. ouch.
<Spider> noone needs a failed spy, right?
<Spider> standing drop of ~3-400?
<White Wolf> a failed spy could be a disaster
<Spider> Well, there are multiple ways of failing, but yes. it would be
<Spider> and if you are a "good" spy, you only lose one mission for the ones you infiltrate, and they never suspect you
<Spider> however, if you do it several times in a row, you will get caught and fail
<Spider> of course, this will not have anything in the game to actually tell you about that
<Spider> other ideas ...
<Spider> factions only know about their own groups per default, and only send you to trade with those first..
<White Wolf> spider have u posted these ideas?
<Spider> for more missions to become avaiable you'd have to "establish trade"
<Spider> That includes finding prices (bring a price-catalog widget for example) and do a trade-establishment
<Spider> to make a trade establishment you have to take that mission, and be at least respected by both factions
<Spider> this would then open up more missions for yourself, and other players with this group
<Spider> and nope, I'm just throwing ideas right now
<Spider> hmm. You should also make different kinds of widgets have different demans
<Spider> so, fex. Defense systems are consumed when you sell weapons, so in a "high tech" station, they need more defense systems delivered
<Spider> and that means they will pay more for defense systems, and the demand will rise higher than for others
<Spider> pitching two groups against eachother could probably be doable as well
<Spider> TPG and Axia have a trade agreement, but orion wants that deal with TPG, so they send somone who's admired with both Orion and TPG to re-establish that route..
<Spider> leaving axia out of it ;)
<Spider> of course, trade agreements are on a time basis...
<Spider> And, given "market change" a faction might want to terminate that before the agreement expires, and that would require another kind of diplomacy mission
<Spider> Or simply use of force ;)
<Spider> fex. Corvus and NS3 have an agreement that corvus wants out of... They hire pirates to kill NS3->corvus pilots so they can terminate the contract.
<Spider> :-)
<White Wolf> spider u devious!
<Spider> or, TPG->axia have the deal, axia wants out, that implies a "diplomacy" mission with corvus, to make a new deal to terminate TPG pilots...
<Spider> This then requires a high-risk information retrival between Axia->corvus about traderoutes...
<Spider> (if those are caught... ohh shit how your reputation with TPG drops ;)
<Spider> and then a group-Combat mission from corvus to apprehend the TPG pilots
<White Wolf> it could all work
<Spider> of course, this sort of mission will only work in a fairly populated universe
<Spider> I can imagine a group mission of "empowering the front" for both Serco and Itani...
<Spider> Simply shipping ships from Sol II to Geil, and weapons in cargo crates
<Spider> Then you could also have an information retrieval mission from itani about Serco movement.
<RelayeR> Spider: when you go to post all this in the forums, cut and paste it from your log...you laid it all out very well
<Spider> RelayeR: okay, i will.
<RelayeR> those are my kind of missions! :)
<Spider> hehe :)
<Spider> I guess that with the data they store, you could give such "information retrieval" missions only to pilots that are fairly non-combattant (not many pk's)
<Spider> but still "high level" enough to survive such things without incident
<RelayeR> that would be someone like me
<Spider> and if I understood correctly, they have a lot of data about such things stored, so you could key different kinds of missions with different requirements
<Spider> yeah. I wouldn't be a good choice for information retrieval
<Spider> however, I could take the "disrupt Itani tradline" missions ;)
<Spider> subcategorizing such "objectives" with both combattant and pacifist methods would also work
<Spider> Fex. "disrupt trade" could be both for a "diplomat" (admired + experienced) pilot, or a "combattant" (kill the pilots! )
<RelayeR> no, a diplomat would never risk such a mission...it would have to be a mole...like you said, a non-combatant that is trusted but capable of defence
<Spider> might be true, yes.
<Spider> still, "go to TPG and convince them to stop trading with Itani" ;)
<White Wolf> sry Relayer, disagree, a diplomat would be ideal for i.e. smuggling
<Spider> I guess it depends on what you classify as "diplomat"
<White Wolf> looks like it!
<Spider> I just used the term for people who have "high standing" and "low aggression" points
<RelayeR> smuggling, yes...but disrupting trade, no
<Spider> So, most traders would classify as "diplomats"
<Spider> I can imagine somone like Ruby being the "ultimate diplomat" ;)
<Spider> As would you be, RelayeR .
<RelayeR> we have diplomats now...ambassadors, negotiators, hierarchy of nations
<Spider> Aye.
<RelayeR> an unofficial ambassador is what you are thinking of...a trader that shows all Serco are not blood lusters
<Spider> Actually, for the kind of mission here last, it'd be somone who fulfilled the demands:
<Spider> a) high standing vs. TPG
<Spider> b) Low violence predecent vs. TPG
<Spider> c) high standing with Serco (big trust)
<Spider> if they fail (not sure how? intercepted by somone?) they lose a LOT of standing vs. both TPG and Serco
<Spider> if they succeed, they gain Serco, but drop like a rock vs Itani
<RelayeR> fr them to continue to take missions, there can be no big hit by any nation...what you are describing is an 'operative'...like a CIA type individual...maybe eve
<RelayeR> even a NT player that does service for Serco
<White Wolf> cool spider!
<Spider> Might be, yes, "RelayeR" .
<White Wolf> would that take u back to 'moles' again?
<Spider> something like that :)
<Spider> however, personally I'd work just fine with dropping my nonexistant Itani standing, and I have high enough status vs. TPG and Serco to be "trusted"
<Spider> though I'd fail on the aggression ;)

More ideas... "diplomacy" (mole, as per RelayeR's description) missions could be multi-step involved:

*bring proposal
*return proposal

(this is the simplest level of such a mission. Trade route establishment and so on)

*counterproposal
*recounter (harder)

And so on. For "really hard" missions, you get several of theese, and the lower your standing with a faction, the more turns you might have to run for it to "work". Of course, the reward has to match the effort in cases like this. (current missions don't.)

Some cool ideas in there, Spider! perhaps you could take a few of the key points and bullet them in another post for ease of reading.

One of my favorites was "steal blueprints by doing trade missions for TPG until they tell you to deliver a blueprint."

Some other new mission types I'd like to see:

*Group trade missions

*NT PvP missions: these could include contract hits on Itani or Serco pilots with very low standing with NT. When the mission was accepted it would give you the name of your target and some intelligence (reliable or not) where they were last seen.

*Corvus PvP missions: destroying traders and bringing the cargo back to Corvus. These missions could be generated when people take a group convoy mission. It would read something like "A convoy carrying cargo of plasma cores is headed from Geil C-3 to Pyronis J-12. Intercept the convoy and bring back 10 plasma cores."

Some other ideas that might be a little out there but would be fun:

*Racing missions: Would go from sector x to y to z etc.... with an NPC judge at every waypoint. The race would start once every certain number of hours, and people could join the race by accepting the mission at the starting station. NPC racers could also be generated to make the race more interesting.

*Search and rescue missions: an NPC trader would be disabled somewhere in a particular system: "He was last seen headed for Odia M-14" or something to that effect. The player would be required to find the trader, drop an emergency beacon (cargo widget) and defend the trader from any pirates or bots until the rescue squad arrives.

trade races... after all, we already have timers on how long it takes us to complete trade missions!

In addition to all the wonderful trading ideas, I like the idea for bounty hunter or hitman types of missions, but it would be better if other missions could be taken at the same time, since who would want to take such a mission, only to wait 3 days before the target logs on fearing for their life?

And speaking of that, how would they know when the target gets online? Maybe polling or a counterpart to the buddy list. Would it be plausible that the mission bot gives their (current) home sector at the start of the mission?

For starters we could maybe have bot hit missions ("Take out the ... bot in ... sector ...") once we have some intelligently targeting bots to hunt. I'm sure that's the direction AI development is going, but it sure will open up new possibilities to have "menace" bots that deserve destroying, etc. We could eventually even have a bot nation to contend with, since at first much of the large-scale happenings will be AI anyways, right? That would certainly put a different spin on the Serco/Itani conflict. (approaching off topic for this thread..)


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BTW, that's not "thgin krej" but rather "thgink rej" -- my name backwards -- back then, I wasn't creative enough to come up with a fancy pseudonym.

Nice ideas here, Spider and White Wolf and RelayeR.

At this moment, the game is made for pirates: Fighting is fun, you get a lot of XP and great new Items (weapons/ships/...) and (!) you get a reputation in the community as a good fighter.

But you cannot make a game with all goodies given to pirates. That is no Roleplaying or "choice of your beeing", that is Spacequake.

We _need_ a lot of traders. Only with a lot of traders, there is room for pirates (_pirates_! not murderer/griefer/...)
How many real pirates did you see during the last year?
I like to see pirates like Spider: "stop now! Give me 4 of your tradewidgets now, or i will kill you!"
Hey, i know. 4 tradewidgets is nothing, you will not get much profit out of it, but _that_ is a pirate.
The pirate-branch for XP shouldt honor that.

I definately do _not_ want to see those players, who kills traders only because "they cannot defend themself, so i kill them. Nice XP for me!" in the final game.

We _need_ technology for traders only, and interresting missions!

And: We will get all things, i wrote above :) i trust the devs

P.S. Sorry for my bad english and the off-topics

Unfortunately, the way the game is set up now, money is not worth much, and experience is everything. So I don't think the game is set up for pirates at all, for the very reason you state (4 trade widgets is not a lot of income for a hard earned kill). Rather, the game rewards PKers that can rack up a lot of kills. I seriously doubt that there will be many pirates (aside from those who do it for role-playing's sake) that let a target live and give up that xp bonus.

Agree phaserlight, but hopefully that can change.

Also, with the current universe, there is more incentive to be the "nice" pirate, simply because a vult / hog cannot hold that much, either you team up, or you get only your minor fill, and let them get away with the rest. Simply cause the cargo times out otherwise.

( It would be nice if cargo had the motion-vector of the original ship, and then timed out when it had more than 5 minutes + 3km from nearest large object. )

As for that, Making things too hard for pirates will not make the game fun, especially since it will dissuade Roleplaying pirates :-/