Changes to Agents in Patch 1.2?

[Novvak]

Were there any changes to the rate at which Agent missions are generated and the "quality" of agents?
Ever since the official Steam update from 1.1 to 1.2 (I wasn't playing on Beta versions), I have noticed a steep decline in the amount of Taxi missions.

It's hard to quantify, but prior to updating, I had no problems with getting 5 agents at the same time, which I believe is the maximum amount player can have at a time. I was also quite frequently awarded with agents with 6,7 and 8 tasks.
Now, while playing on 1.2, I often see Hard or Very Hard taxi missions that reward me with quite a good sum of money, but no agent - I don't remember seeing cases like that before the update. The agents usually have 4 - 5 tasks and better ones are quite rare. I have also noticed that "scan illegal wares" missions are far more abundant than they were before. I struggle to accumulate more than 3 agents at any one moment, and at times when I have no agents at all, finding missions to acquire them is still rather rare.

I haven't seen any mentions of changes to Agents / Diplomacy on the changelogs, hence the question.

Thank you.

[Da-V-Man]

Anecdotally I've noticed less taxi missions as well. Not sure if it helps you at all, but you can also get agents with "Defend station" missions sometimes, so if you've got a combat-ready ship it can be an additional source. I haven't seen a lot of them either, but prior to 1.2 I wasn't doing too many combat missions so I don't know if it's a significant change there as well.

[Novvak]

Hi Da-V-Man,

Thanks for your reply.

Yes I am doing "Defend Station" missions sometimes, but due to being heavily focues on getting agents via Taxi missions I'm flying with a highly tuned Ocelot, which struggles with anything bigger than a Bomber.
It's excellent against fighters, but an M6 can cause some trouble, and I'm not to eager to micro-manage my own corvettes every time I see a fight mission...
I did that for a while but their short jump range just makes the whole thing laborious, and on top of that they are doing a lot of friendly fire to the station I'm hired to defend, which pisses the AI off quickly.

[Hwitvlf]

It's easy to see that the Agent missions spawn more often when you have less agents on hand. I find that it's still easy (1.2) to get them if I only have one or two left, but the 'curve' might have changed to where it's harder to keep 5 in stock at a time. I just send them out as soon as I get them and have had no trouble finding missions for more.

[olsch]

Can confirm.
I noticed the same thing, but then thougth it was just some freak chance, that there are hardly any good missions for my TP.
But this shows that it's not just my game.
Like it was said before my agents list was usualy quite full. Now it's almost empty.

[Novvak]

It's easy to see that the Agent missions spawn more often when you have less agents on hand. I find that it's still easy (1.2) to get them if I only have one or two left, but the 'curve' might have changed to where it's harder to keep 5 in stock at a time. I just send them out as soon as I get them and have had no trouble finding missions for more.

Yes, it is noticeable that the agent missions are generated more frequently when player's agent pool is depleted.
It just is more difficult now to save agents for specific tasks, eg. getting a blueprint for a station that will require 8 actions just to give you about 50% of success.
I find that the best approach to agent actions is to get 1000 influence saved up with everyone using whatever agent you have available, and then just grind missions until you come across a good agent with 8 actions that can succeed with more demanding tasks.

Can confirm.
I noticed the same thing, but then thougth it was just some freak chance, that there are hardly any good missions for my TP.
But this shows that it's not just my game.
Like it was said before my agents list was usualy quite full. Now it's almost empty.

From where I stand, it looks like the composition of missions has changed, e.g agent missions used to account for 20 % "lightbulb" missions and now they account for 15% (numbers made up for the sake of the argument).
Maybe the intention is to incentivise players towards doing more Defend Station missions, as they seem to pop up fairly often. It may be a stroke of luck but I think the agents acquired from combat missions are of better quality than the ones you get from Taxi missions.

[Midnightknight]

It's sometime now i am looking for agents and have a lot of issue getting them, i was wondering if they changed something too. So i'm not the only one unable to get agents to do my stuff now, it's shame when you consider how much stations and equipment blueprints you need to steal ...

[phantomrock2]

OMG if it's not broke then dont go fixing anything because ya going to end up breaking things
Do we want the game to be challenging? Yes
Do we want things just handed to us? No
Now how many hours does one have to put in on this game to get things rolling to where the player is IN the game?
No wonder I am down in Grand Exchange Seizewell and other Teladi sectors looking for missions with the lightbulb and could not find them I just ended up quitting the game because I was not getting the missions needed to get things rolling even more
Why did we mess with the player's experience like this and from the looks of this this was not eluded to in the list of fixed, improve, and removed

[Hwitvlf]

I've been using agents tons lately in 1.2 and have been paying attention to ratios and rarity because of this thread. When I have one agent, I usually find 1 or 2 agent missions within a couple sectors - usually 2 or 3 agent rewarding missions in the same sector. The balance seems split close to 50/50 between defend station and Passenger Transport.

If anything was changed, I don't think it has had a significant effect. Maybe they are rarer now if you're holding on to several agents, but just send them on missions as soon as you get them and you'll have more than you can use.

[Novvak]

I have modified my method of getting agents slightly - instead of flying in Ocelot TP hunting for Taxi missions, I'm now flying in Heavy Dragon looking for Defend Station missions. When I am lucky and manage to come across a Taxi mission, I'm calling my Ocelot and swap ships.

This seems to be the most effective way to get agents now.
The only thing that I'm thinking about is if it's sustainable long-term based on enemy fleets spawned by missions. Can someone say how big the enemy warparties are and what is the biggest class of ship the mission can spawn?
I wouldn't want to have to fly in a frigate just to be able to complete a mission to get an agent ...

[olsch]

That seems like a good method, but not for me. I want to keep my fight rank low as long as possible and my strongest ship is still the Nemesis from the plot (currently saving money for something bigger).

[Hwitvlf]

Can someone say how big the enemy warparties are and what is the biggest class of ship the mission can spawn?

I'm at Battlemaster rank and a Very Hard agent mission spawns 3 M7s or one M2, and a few small escorts. I think that's the same as a regular station defense mission. So I expect at max rank, you'd be fighting a few M2s to get an agent!!

You can 'force' missions to spawn by flying back and forth through a gate, and FL also included a mission filter in the "Gameplay " menu. It might help spot the taxi missions.

[Novvak]

Can someone say how big the enemy warparties are and what is the biggest class of ship the mission can spawn?

I'm at Battlemaster rank and a Very Hard agent mission spawns 3 M7s or one M2, and a few small escorts. I think that's the same as a regular station defense mission. So I expect at max rank, you'd be fighting a few M2s to get an agent!!

Oh wow, that is not good news at all! Thank you for clarifying, it's definitely good to know that. This means that in practical terms combat missions are not sustainable in the long run ...

You can 'force' missions to spawn by flying back and forth through a gate, and FL also included a mission filter in the "Gameplay " menu. It might help spot the taxi missions.

The filter tip is excellent, I wasn't aware of that! Thank you, I will play around with it once I got some spare time.

[Ramdat]

Can someone say how big the enemy warparties are and what is the biggest class of ship the mission can spawn?

What is your rank now? It scales a lot depending on it. For example, if you have X-TREME rank (1, max), a "very easy" mission might spawn two M7s + fighter escort, while a "very hard" mission might spawn two M1 + two M2 + fighter escort. At Assassin rank (10), a "very hard" mission typically spawns one M7 + fighters.

I want to keep my fight rank low as long as possible and my strongest ship is still the Nemesis from the plot (currently saving money for something bigger).

Why do you want to wait? It takes exponentially more time to level up, so by the time you level it up you'll have the money to buy something that can kill the new ships.

[chip56]

What is your rank now? It scales a lot depending on it. For example, if you have X-TREME rank (1, max), a "very easy" mission might spawn two M7s + fighter escort, while a "very hard" mission might spawn two M1 + two M2 + fighter escort. At Assassin rank (10), a "very hard" mission typically spawns one M7 + fighters.

That rank 10 seems too low to actually spawn M7. I am pretty sure that M7 only started spawning for me when i was combat rank 20 while flying an M3+ for very hard defense missions that awarded agents.
Rank 10 sounds more like spawning M8 bombers in my experience.

[Ramdat]

That rank 10 seems too low to actually spawn M7. I am pretty sure that M7 only started spawning for me when i was combat rank 20 while flying an M3+ for very hard defense missions that awarded agents.
Rank 10 sounds more like spawning M8 bombers in my experience.

I'm using rank 1 as the highest ranking, starting from the top. Are you starting from the bottom? If that is the case, rank 20 would be Militant, which I would consider to be rank 12 in my ordering system.

In my current game I am Assassin rank (10 in my ordering), and they spawn an M7 for a very hard station defense agent mission.

[chip56]

I am starting at 0 so that it ends at 30 which would mean its 20 Warrior (i consider counting from lower to higher to make more sense since the regular ranks are ranked like that too). But okay if you start counting from the top that means we are actually talking about similar ranks.
Generally i prefer numeric ranks since its pretty clear if rank 10 or 11 is higher. But without looking it up:
Warlord or Crusader or Battlemaster: what is the order?
Economist or Industrialist? Which one is higher?

[Ramdat]

Yeah, but FL does not have standard numerical ranks for combat/trade, and they even removed the numerical ranks for notoriety. We are indeed talking about similar ranks.

I have no idea what the rank names are off the top of my head, so that's why I also listed my own numerical ranks and gave "XTREME" rank 1 as a reference point for others. In my ranking order the lowest number is the highest rank, which might be confusing. But, it's like how 1st place in something like the Olympics is the best position.

[X2-Illuminatus]

We didn't remove anything in rank display. Trade/combat rank display is the same in X3FL as in all 'old' X-series games: Just the rank name and the progression percentage towards the next rank. For race/faction notoriety we added the notoriety change indicator, the bar display and the police licence icon.

Lists of the names and reputation values for each of the race, faction, combat and trade ranks can be found in our FAQ.

[Cycrow]

There has been no changes to the agent missions in 1.1 or 1.2
the mission quotas have also not been changed