I’ve gone on 2 combat missions so far and have noticed a problem with the scarcity of mission targets.
Mission 1: Kill 5 Pirate Couriers @ Harry’s Station in Servitude :: After 10 kills at Harry’s, only 1 Pirate Courier had shown up.
Mission 2: Kill 6 Chagir-Class Pirates @ Harry’s Station in Servitude :: It was after 20 minutes and 5 kills before a CC Pirate showed up. Then it was another 15 minutes before the 2nd appeared, and I was killing what was there the entire time.
Why such a low number of mission targets?
Unfortunately, this is the exact problem that the combat missions have in Core Exiles. That’s a great game, but suffers from missing targets on combat missions. I would kill 5-6 ships in the mission area and still not see a mission target. Then I would travel to neighboring areas and find 1-2 mission targets in each area, but those kills, of course, did not count toward the mission goal. I was hopeful that this issue would not be the case in this game, but alas it seems so.
I certainly don’t mind killing off bad guys which do not count toward the mission goal, but shouldn’t the mission target ships show up more often than 2 in 30+ minutes!?
At that rate, completing a mission of 6 kills will take an hour and a half, 90 minutes.
Was this your intention, for the combat missions to take that long? If so, then the rewards should be greatly increased, in my opinion.
Not an easy one to resolve and TBH it was intended this way. The more diverse the enemy in a given location the longer it ‘might’ take to spawn the enemy you want.
You have to remember that the mission generator looks for ships that CAN spawn in those locations and then the ‘spawn code’ randomly choose ships each time to replace those removed.
It’s not looking at you or your mission at that point only what CAN and should spawn there.
I have done enough missions now to feel your pain,. but on the flip side doing combat missions is more or less free extra credits. You would be killing ships anyway and this gives you a secondary reason to be killing them.
We have been increasing the rewards slightly with a few iterations since release, but it may be time to raise them another notch. (I played from day 1 as a pure combat toon) to test this and yes the payouts were low and the time to complete long.
One thing to bare in mind though, as my ability to fit bigger guns and more shields meant killing was faster and running away from packs of mobs less frequent (within the chosen LL I was working from).
Lastly, don’t forget your also getting faction reward, which in itself is important as you level up your toon and once we add Combat NPC’s will become even more important.
Well, if the intention was to make the combat missions last for many hours then so be it, it just seems an odd choice, but that’s just me. I expect I’m just used to games where you get a job/quest/mission, run out and complete it, then run back and turn it in.
My current mission is to kill 9 H.T.A Mining Derick near: Helena (Arcadius)
After 90 minutes I’ve found only 2, so this will be an all day mission. Again, if that’s the intention then this topic can be closed since my goal wasn’t to debate any of the developer’s choices.
Thanks,
Opus
PS I just noticed that “Derick” is misspelled in the game. Fun Fact: The term derrick derives its name from a type of gallows named after Thomas Derrick, an Elizabethan era English executioner.
Well, there was a very similar discussion after Hydra missions were introduced. Combat missions are exactly the same: an additional minor reward + faction standing increase (which is probably more important) that requires you (in addition to what you would be doing anyway) to do nothing more than stay in the same location.