Hesheit said that first there was going to be a trial. However...
...this is not a trial. This is a joke. A lone, idle, crewless, defenceless S ship conveniently spawned 30km off the war room, all for me to prove myself? Such awesome initiation. What's worse, when, after much hardship and woes, severely damaged and wounded, I manage to dispatch this fierce opponent, what do I get? Hurray, another trip to that same war room I just left less than a minute ago, all for the guy to tell me that I can now access missions! He couldn't have said this on the radio? Why not? Random irritants, such as police and "station security" seem to find no issue in abusing my comms and monitor. But no, this war chief or whatever hesheit is does not stoop to such menial forms of communication... Seriously, talking to, and working off debt to that pesky "Captain of Teladi Company Spaceship Phoenix" in XBtF was way more fun than this so-called trial.
And of course, actual war missions also leave loads to be desired, mainly because they're too generic and do not resemble any coherent story or progression. They're... just there, like background noise.
So here's an idea. Instead of this placeholder "initiation", and generic un-progression in war missions, how about introducing some form of a war score? Killed 10 HOP ships? That's your "trial". Now it would make sense for GOP to approach you and suggest enlisting. If you agree, you may be called upon (i.e. guidance) into combat zones to dispatch fighters. Killed 50 fighters? Get a rank, with it get a reward, and access to more difficult (and lucrative) missions. Missions such as "destroy freighters (not fighters)", "capture/destroy S and/or M ships", "disrupt mining operations". Completed 10 missions? Get another rank, maybe a ship, and strategic tasks like destroying specific stations or killing capital ships. Complete more missions, kill more ships, get another rank. Receive a mission to capture a freighter, allow that freighter to be recognized by HOP as friendly for the next 5-10 minutes. In that time, you're supposed to get to a HOP shipyard or factory, dock there and hack its production or defenses... And so on, and so forth. The main idea is to not just generate "random" situational missions, but track player's standing in the war and allocate more (or fewer) tasks to them. If player hasn't participated in war for a while, penalize them somehow, or give an option to sign off from the effort.
Also, IMHO any hostile action against a faction that is currently at war should be punished much, much more severely than it is now. To a point where player may be deemed colluding with enemy, and therefore their ships and assets targeted for seizure or destruction. That would spice up other generic missions. For example, the "family heirloom/data packet/kill that guy" tasks would require much more of the "think". Do I go after this ship? If I do, a whole sector may go red for a few days... Oh, would that be not my first offense? They'd think I'm declaring war on them!
