I think VO could borrow a little from Escape Velocity in the trading department. I don't like how you can only accept one trade mission at a time. I loved making my own "trade routes" with multiple trade missions in Escape Velocity. I felt as if I was accomplishing more, and I had more to improve on by bettering my trade-routing skills. Also, having more cargo would be beneficial. those with a freigher, like the centaur, would be able to handle more trade missions at once.

I get the vibe that Guild doesn't like EV much, but honestly, I had FUN doing trade missions in EV. I find trading in VO monotonous and laborous. easy, but repetetive.

I don't think i'm alone here. I'm sure there are plenty of EV vets that know exactly how I feel. The ability to gain more difficult/higher paying trade missions by getting better faction standing, would also make me feel like i'm accomplishing something. Overall, I think trading lacks a sense of progression, and ends up being a dissapointment when you finally get a high faction standing, to discover that all your work is for a ship that's worse in every way, than the one you're already flying. Even one that's just a TAD better than your next best option would be cool.

The Orion Centurion Rev C is what i'm talking about, now THATS a good reward. props to the devs for that. keep more of that up and I might take some time off of murdering serco to do some trading!

Id just like to point out you can get +100 in about an hour doing hte old trade missions. The new ones gain in faction is good imo, since now i dont have to spend a week trading to get a faction up to where they arnt trying to nueter me just for docking(i dont trade much)

I think the solution to 'bus /explode warping' is to restrict 'home station' setting to the local system, and make it the nearest station by default.

Having 'ready made trade route' from Itan back to Odia seems too artificial and just a thing to pacify faction grinders. (like me)

Great suggestions everyone! I will be taking most of them into account. (And even better, most of them will be really easy to implement!) A couple specific points though:

- Yup, I screwed up the reward on the bulk deliveries. It's been fixed, and will be in the next release.
- I will decrease the standing rewards somewhat. It'll still be better than the old trade missions.
- Each mission type does have its own rules for when it shows up. Most of them are purely random. (And it doesn't re-randomize if you log off/on or regroup, fyi.)
- Our mission system doesn't currently support multiple simultaneous missions. We are definitely going to look at adding this capability in the future, but we have more pressing matters right now.
- Apex: I've been concentrating on making a single run as fun as possible, but I will look at ways to improve trading over the course of the pilot's career.

And keep feeding me suggestions!

Here's a suggestion: Have the timer start when you leave the station - not when you accept the mission. I had about a min and a half to deliver some cargo, but had to change ships to take all the cargo in one haul. Time expired before I left the station.

Also, if the player accidentally sells mission cargo, it would be nice to be able to buy it back from the station, even if it did cost more. Or possibly give a warning message like "are you sure you want to sell the cargo you are supposed to deliver to station X for us? That would be most unwise." Instead, the station that wants you to deliver the cargo happily buys it back from you.

Just let me get some faction up first! :)

Since the new trade missions require a lot of chatting w/ the mission computer anyway, I think it'd be cool to have the option after completing a mission to decline the credit payment in exchange for a slightly higher faction standing gain. Or maybe just if you beat the bonus time, you can decline the credit bonus.

[edit in reply to Lonestar00]
Ideally, it'd give you more faction standing for declining more payment, so if you decline 2000 credits, you'd gain more standing than if you decline 300. I don't think it should ever give more than maybe 10 extra faction points, and usually less than 5.
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[edit 2]
Also, there could be an option to request MORE payment, which would decrease your faction standing bonus, and maybe even dock it if you ask for too much. And to keep the end mission dialogue as uncluttered as possible, have them say 'Here's the payment we offered,' to which we can reply either a simple 'Thank you' where we get the normal rewards, or 'About that...' which would lead into a submenu of bargaining choices.
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That's an awesome idea. I'd love to see that. How much should the gain be though when declining the payment?