My dream of the new mission system

[Max Bain]

I think with a good missions system people could have a lot more fun and would not only see it as an easy way to make money.

Why not only add more diverse missions, but also add a rank system that makes harder/more profitable missions available in late game (rank for trade, build, mine, fight), make missions integrated into the real universe and add chain missions containing of several missions?

1. More diverse missions:

• Escort missions where you have to escort one or more traders/miners through a bunch of systems while they are beeing attacked
• Defense of a station
• Defense of a miner in a belt for a specific time while it will be attacked by enemies
• Patroling system
• Destruction of a specific enemy ship or a specific fleet (group of ships)
• Enemies should vary: Xenon, Pirates, Enemies of the mission offering race

2. Missions integrated into the universe:

I think we already have some of these missions, but I would expand this to combat missions

• Many of the above missions should target the enemy race and so the player will lose some reputation. BUT these missions should always pay higher than fighting against Xenon or pirates.
• Also targets could be real ships/stations instead of spawned ones. So why not have a mission where Argon wants to destroy the Defense station in the neighbour system? They would pay several million if the player will achieve this in lets say 2 hours.
• The missions could target specific patroling fleets or ships that already exists. They should of course only pay if the player is involved in the destruction of the targets.

3. Rank system:

Right now, the player still get mission offers for below 100.000 credits even if he has sevral star bases and billion of credits. We need a rank system that will offer more dangerous, but also more profitable missions. Thats why I ask for missions that forces the player to destroy defense stations or enemy fleets consisting of multiple and/orbigger ships.
The same for trading, mining and construction missions. Rank would go up by doing more missions and should be independant of race reputation, but reputation of a race should also have influence of offering better/more missions.
At lowest rank enemy ships will normally be fighters or drones, then M sized ships will be added and later L or even XL ships. Also the numbers of ships increase.
For trading missions the amount could be increased or more diverse wares have to be dekivered.
But even in highest rank, lower rank missions should sometimes appear. Failing a mission should reduce the rank a little bit.

4. Chain missions:

Why not make real mission trees where the player maybe first need to place some satellites in enemy teritorry (this will lead him next to an enemy installtion). In the next mission he has to destroy a specific installation. Then in the final mission the faction does not want that this installation will be rebuilt and spies have discovered a construction ship (of course escorted by some ships) is already on the way to rebuild that installation, so the player has to destroy it. At the end the payout will be very big (several millions, maybe even 10+mio, but the player should expect the loss of several owned ships).

What do you think?

[Azhukar]

Missions are not a good way to make money in this game, exception being station construction missions which take place entirely on the map view and are just about waiting. If the mission takes more than a few minutes of time to complete, I don't even bother taking it if I don't need reputation. Doing fetch quests for stations is not fun at all. Some just make no sense, sending me to collect 9 bandages from a lockbox when I can buy dozens at the same station. Then there's deploy missions that want me to spend 200k on laser turrets, then they will pay me 210k. They don't feel like missions, more like doing someones chores or picking up space litter. Multi stage missions don't even show exact objectives until you reach the next stage.

Worst of all are missions that make me destroy my reputation with an entire faction, just to get credit equivalent of a 10 minute mining trip. If a faction expects me to become an enemy of another faction, they better offer me equivalent or better reputation boost with their own faction and a fat credit check to go with it.

I would like a reliable source of combat missions that doesn't destroy my reputation. Even if it's just to destroy a pirate fleet hiding at the edge of some system, it would be better than any other currently available mission.

[phrozen1]

Those are good ideas but its also very questionable why they aren't allready in the game.
And yeah, why would anyone ever risk his reputation for those missions with laughable reward?

[Axeface]

My dreams for missions would be solved by a system that generates missions based on things that are actually happening. Ships under attack could generate a mission when they call for help (they already call for help by voice), stations under attack could generate lucrative missions. Enemies building stations could generate missions to destroy those stations (not sure if this already happens with war missions).
I really dont like spawning and dont think its necessary, theres loads of things going on in the game and plenty of opportunities to generate these missions without spawning, the player just needs to travel to border or dangerous systems (this is surely a good thing).

There are 2 places I think spawning would make sense and actually be great.
1. Wiped out factions making a comeback in a system where they have a planetery population. A large highly modified military fleet, a station or 2 and some supply ships could spawn FAR from the sector center, 1000km's or more and start to rebuild. I think it would be really exciting for end-game players to not know if a defeated enemy is rebuilding far out in a system, and this would really capitalise on the large sector feature and give us a reason to keep scouting patrols.
2. Kha'ak resurge. I mentioned it in another thread but the Kha'ak could return or something slightly different even with operation final fury complete because of the PHQ and dimension jumping. Or even the Terrans, they could be a special case.

[mr.WHO]

[*]Enemies should vary: Xenon, Pirates, Enemies of the mission offering race

There is no point in discussing any further ideas if at the moment X4 missions are like:
"Destroy Xenon ship",
type: "P"
amount: "2"


where type and amount never change - you absolutely always have to hunt for 2 P.


It seems that ever since X-Rebirth, Egosoft sux on eneric missions (XR missions also sucked with variety - like always the same ships spawning).
Let them clear the basics first, before you can dream of something more ambitions (like hte mission variety and progression we had in X3) :/

[tomchk]

My dreams for missions would be solved by a system that generates missions based on things that are actually happening. Ships under attack could generate a mission when they call for help (they already call for help by voice), stations under attack could generate lucrative missions. Enemies building stations could generate missions to destroy those stations (not sure if this already happens with war missions).
I really dont like spawning and dont think its necessary, theres loads of things going on in the game and plenty of opportunities to generate these missions without spawning, the player just needs to travel to border or dangerous systems (this is surely a good thing).

Yes! +1! This is so badly needed.

[MHDriver]

Now I know nobody likes when X4 compared with XR but I am going to anyway. I don't know whey ES wanted such a departure from XR with X4 but in my opinion they made a mistake. While X4 certainly has many improvements over XR, X4 lacks any of the depth. Missions as are discussed in this tread are a prime example. Nothing elaborate but the simple exploration, scanning, bad guy kill mission against an Arawn or Olmekron for a bit of excitement and good payout would be nice. Also get the content off of the damn highways in X4, I mean WTH is with everything being right along the highways anyway?? I still enjoy flying across sectors in XR looking for the odd zone or whatever..

Anyway, I suspect the Split will just be another faction in X4 with different ships but all the same boring mechanics.. trade trade trade, get standings, get ships build stations rinse and repeat from previous content. Kinda like ED, an inch deep content.

[adeine]

A robust bounty system would be a great way to inject some life and organic 'missions' into the game based on the actual game state. X4 could really benefit from having more systems that allow you to tell an emergent story through your iteration of the universe. Sort of in the vein of Shadow of Mordor's nemesis system.

• Implement an XRM style bounty system that applies both for the player and AI ships. If a player is able to rack up a bounty on their head, acts of aggression or piracy would have more realistic, tangible effects beyond generalised reputation. Similar rules as XRM should apply - police licence or equivalent gives you access to a faction's bounty listings (and rewards) with vague 'last seen' locations of said vessels in their space; ideally with a list of their crimes/victims and number of kills. Add to this something like the fabulous LIFE mod's NPC-ships-levelling-through-kills system and the universe suddenly becomes a lot more immersive as high tier bounty targets will be more viable and write their own little stories.

They need to implement somekind of a Bounty Hunting/Contract Killing Mechanic into the game.

I'd love to see (But probably consumes CPU memory) a Bounty System in place where a ship (Even the Player) Can mount up a bounty on their Head through the use of 'Unauthorized Kills', 'Attacking Stations' or even if you force a Freighter to eject it's cargo triggers a 'Piracy' warning, increasing your bounty. Every crime you commit the bounty pot fills up, the higher the price on your Head, the greater the consequences?

You can see a Faction Representative and pay off your bounty or the fun of being a 'Notorious Pirate' you can mount up that Bounty into it's millions, till it becomes so high that Factions start sending out Mercenaries to hunt you down, the higher the bounty? the greater the frequency of attacks on you and fleet sizes that you are Hans Solo being chased by Star Destroyer sized ships.
There can be allot of fun and realism behind such a system, giving the Bounty Hunter playthrough a much welcome boost?
You could even have a 'Wanted List' you can pull up when you enter a certain Factions space, with a list of ships who have committed crimes in that section of Space.

Possibilities are endless!!

+1

XRM could do it more or less convincingly, so I don't see why it wouldn't be possible.

[Rei Ayanami]

I think the best way would be to add a mission generator to each factions "economy/war ai", aka the object that determines which sectors to invade next, which sectors need defense, where new stations should be built, etc, because there you already have a mechanism that can detect if something needs to happen.

In the case of an invasion decision, a mission could be generated "hey, want to help us take over that sector? Destroy enemy ships and defense platforms." or "escort that supply/auxilliary ship"
In the case that it decides to defend a sector against an imminent attack, missions like "put laser towers at that gate", "fly to that gate and destroy any of our enemies ships that come through" or "Fly through that gate, deploy a satellite so we can spy on what ships the enemy is grouping up" could be genrated.
In the case of building a new station, a "build station" mission could be generated, or an escort mission to escort the construction ship to its destination and/or incoming ware freighters.

Heck, these missions could even branch for decision making : In the case of a "help us to take over that sector"/"deploy spy satellite"/"shoot any enemy ship that comes through the gate" missions the player could have the choice to, instead of doing what the mission says, fly to the enemy faction representative and tell them about it, who could then reward you for betraying your mission givers (with appropiate repuation gain/loss).

Now obviously there already are some missions, like "put satellite/laser towers there" and "build station there", but i don't know if they're just random or actually tied to the factions economy/war efforts.

And yea, XRM had a really nice bounty system.

[tomchk]

Exactly what Rei said. Please confirm that we can have war missions that are actually connected with what the faction AI is doing!