Increased Combat Mission Pay

[Deus Siddis]

When you run cargo missions you only have to worry about surviving maybe a couple weak pirate attacks or the rare encounter with some aera fighters. Cargo missions are also so plentiful that you can quickly put together three of them going to the same nearby system, which will easily pull in 60,000 credits, especially if you picked one of them up at the bar. And you won't need anything beyond your starting llama to pull this off, in fact there will be plenty of space to spare for your own cargo if you know how to trade on the side.

Patrols are not quite as good a deal, but a quick ship can make quick work of those too, for good money.

Combat missions however, while being the most entertaining to engage in, offer less than the other missions while demanding everything. For starters, combat missions are usually very sparse, so you don't get many to choose from and you can only really handle one at a time anyway. And one mission is not going to do much for you, going up against a Vark Aeran Capital vessel will only pull in about 18,000 and take at least 6,000 worth of torpedoes to kill, plus the cost of patching up your armor which can be anywhere from 1,000 to 60,000 depending on how many hits you took. And whichever faction you just beat on is going to hate you, their military and (new) kill happy civilian populations running you down in every system you encounter them in.

Now all of this is well and good, fighting should be dangerous and challenging, except that the measly pay offers you nothing for your efforts, sacrifices and expenses.

I think the pay for combat missions needs to at least be doubled or tripled for v5.1.

[bgaskey]

I know I've suggested it untold many times . Combat is the most dangerous, so it should be more rewarding than flying back and forth from Atlantis to Serenity...

[ace123]

This is really important, and it should have some fix for 0.5.1.

However, one reason is hasn't been a big priority is because the economy is already pretty poor -- It feels like there are so many loopholes right now, especially with trading cargo, that some things just aren't worthwhile.

[bgaskey]

If we make loopholes in everything else, it will all be worthwhile

[Deus Siddis]

This is really important, and it should have some fix for 0.5.1.

Awesome. This combat pay adjustment alone would be worth a new version to those of us with an itchy trigger finger.

However, one reason is hasn't been a big priority is because the economy is already pretty poor -- It feels like there are so many loopholes right now, especially with trading cargo, that some things just aren't worthwhile.

True, but the game's not called Vega Trade, so I'm sure the merchant type players will understand.

[pyramid]

Independent of the progress of economy, I think it is worth a change if it raises the satisfaction of players for this particular mission types.

To be more precise. There are different types of missions requiring combat:
* bounty
* cleansweep
* defend
* rescue

It would be nice to know which particular mission type could be used as a pilot for the change and what would be th expected pay. I would suggest something around triple.

Please also note that payout will change with difficulty (currently: amount of credits you possess).

[Deus Siddis]

It would be nice to know which particular mission type could be used as a pilot for the change and what would be th expected pay. I would suggest something around triple.

That would be an excellent start.

But a fair across the board combat pay system needs to be worked out, so that you are adequately compensated based on how dangerous your enemy opposition is. For this I suggest that a combat mission pay 10% the cost of every individual ship the mission requires you to destroy and 5% the cost of each of its escort vessels that you don't have to kill for mission success.

If we quadruple the pay, a measly 80,000 credits still is no where near worth enough to go up against and destroy an Aeran Destroyer. That means if you kill 100 of those Varks you still won't even have enough to buy yourself a Goddard!

[Turbo]

I'd like to suggest a "courier" or "blockade runner" type mission which falls between cargo and combat:

Cargo must get through! Avoid enemy patrols and deliver ____ cargo to the ______ system. Be warned, ____ ships of the ____ faction may try to stop you. Make the delivery by any means necessary.

The mission cargo would always less than 10 units, so that a fighter could carry it. Accepting the mission spawns a flight group on your flight path, an enemy of the faction who contracted the mission. This flight group will try to destroy the cargo, and your ship if necessary.

The challenge with such a mission would be to plan your route around probable ambush points and, if you were unable to avoid the enemy, decide whether to run or fight. If you got pressed too hard, you could dump the cargo, causing the attacking faction to resume their prior relationship with you, whatever it was, and attack the cargo instead. Dumping the cargo would incur a small penalty to your relationship with the contracting faction.

I realize that anyone with a cloak could easily complete such a mission, but patrols already have that problem.

Turbo

[bgaskey]

Good idea. A challenge to code well. I agree that mission pay, especially bounties, should be based on the cost of whatever you need to kill, like privateering back in the old days. However, many ships are not buyable and therefore don't have a cost set for them, nor do the AI versions of ships have a price, so this would take a lot of grunt work to implement. Not to say I'm against the idea, just pointing out difficulties.

[pyramid]

But a fair across the board combat pay system needs to be worked out, so that you are adequately compensated based on how dangerous your enemy opposition is. For this I suggest that a combat mission pay 10% the cost of every individual ship the mission requires you to destroy and 5% the cost of each of its escort vessels that you don't have to kill for mission success.

The pay based on TYPES of encountered ships is already in place. The pay based on individual ship MODELS would be far more difficult, since the code that generates the payment and the code that creates the ships is separated. A far greater adaptation would be required here than I am willing to undertake at this point.

I have however committed to svn missions of the previously described types (bounty, clean sweep, defend, rescue) with higher pay. The values were adjusted empirically, so a thorough testing in different scenarios is required. I saw bounty missions with pays ranging from 55 000 to 105 000.

When reporting back improvements, please provide type of mission (as written in the mission computer) and the numbers of ships, ships for protection, cap ships, and pay.

The "blockade runner" mission suggestion sounds really inetersting. Please feel free to take the dynamic_mission.py as example and working your way through cargo_mission.py and ambush_scan.py as references to create this new mission type.