Mission time limits making very little sense (Pointless missions?)

idiotekque · Post by **idiotekque** » Mon, 4. Jul 16, 13:21

I'm pretty new to these games (I'm playing AP right now), and I have looked around for explanations, but regardless of the comments about "realism" and not needing to take a mission unless you KNOW you can accomplish it, some things are just... silly.

Earlier I saw an assassination mission with a very low time limit. I said alright, the pay is high enough to match the difficulty (very hard), so I'll try it. I got to the target within the last minute of the mission timer and was able to finish the mission. Awesome, that's exactly how it should be. If they give you a time limit, and it's a hard difficulty mission, it makes sense to be splitting hairs there (i.e. The target in question is on the move and they know he won't be there for long).

Now... I just came across an "easy" mission where you have to go claim a ship and bring it to x shipyard. Okay, it gives me a fair amount of time to do so, so it seems doable. It's about 4 sectors away, so that also seems doable. I make my way to the ship, claim it, and immediately command it to navigate to the proper sector.

At this point I realize, as is the usual, it's a completely non-upgraded ship, and therefore only has 90 speed or so. There's absolutely no way it's ever going to travel fast enough to reach the destination in time. So what happens? The timer expires while it's on it's way there, the mission is failed, my rep with x faction goes town a TON, and the police are notified that the ship is stolen. Extremely silly from a "realism" perspective, for one. You literally do exactly what you're told to do, going full speed the whole way, have the ship on auto-pilot headed straight for the owner, but because the "timer" expires, the owner is like "Well you're 1 minute late so you're a thief and I'm sending the cops after you... even you clearly have my ship en route to my location."

It's kind of laughable that they did it like that. Some missions' timers only exist until you GET to the target and engage in whatever you're supposed to do. It was an extremely poor idea that they didn't institute that function with these missions. Once you plot the target ship towards its destination, the mission timer should not cause you to fail the mission and label you a thief. Sure, if you lollygag and never return the ship after a much longer period of time (which could easily be determined via the game checking the target ship's speed and distance from the mission goal), THEN it could label you a thief. It just feels like a design flaw that both ruins immersion as well as playability.

I knew it could happen when I took the mission, and I made sure to save prior to starting it, so it's not really a big deal, but I can't help but feel like it's just... dumb. It's an "easy" mission, it's not across the universe, it gives you a solid chunk of time, so just about every single new player who sees a mission like this is going to say "Oh, okay, I'll do this one.", and all of those players are going to fail said mission, because it is literally impossible to do with limited technology.

I know it IS possible to do, but I'm guessing I would 1. Have to have and use a jump drive to GET to the ship, and then 2. Either install a jump drive in the target ship, or upgrade its speed to maximum (which would be more costly than the mission reward) and hope it makes it back just in time.

Honestly, what is the point of this? It's an "easy" mission, therefore the reward was fairly meager. I took the mission because it SEEMED doable and I wanted rep with that faction, but it ended up being entirely pointless. I just really don't get it. I'll come across missions that literally accomplish themselves (say, x pirates spawn nearby lawful forces and die before you can even fight them) and pay more than this long, drawn out mission that requires you to have the perfect setup and equipment to magically get the ship to the target point in small window of time.

I guess in the end there are just some missions that are... well, pointless. Possible, I suppose, but just entirely useless to do. It was a cheapo target ship anyhow, so even if I wanted to steal it, it wouldn't really be worth it (especially with the monumental rep hit).

Just a little disappointing to see missions smattered about that just serve zero purpose besides being like... I don't know, filler. That's generally how I feel about the covert operation missions as well (basically following extremely slow moving ships through multiple sectors for a tiny handful of credits), but I guess that's a complaint for another time.

As I go, I'm gradually figuring out what missions aren't even worth accepting and which are, and unfortunately the "good" missions are so incredibly few and far between. Hoping things change a bit as I gear up more.

pjknibbs · Post by **pjknibbs** » Mon, 4. Jul 16, 13:29

There are faster ways to do these things. For instance, in the ship retrieval mission you mentioned, you could have spent some time repairing the ship with your suit repair laser to make it faster, or you could have transferred a jump drive and some e-cells from your own ship so the target could jump to the destination sector and get there much faster. If the ship was an M3, M4 or M5 then you could have used a TM to pick it up and also jumped it to the destination faster. Yes, that does require you to have a jump drive, which is a fairly expensive piece of kit, but it's also an incredibly useful piece of kit for people trying to make money doing this sort of mission.

One other thing: if there was absolutely no way the ship could reach the target station in time, but there was a shipyard closer, you could have sent it to the shipyard and sold it. That would still annoy the mission giver, but you'd at least get some money out of the job.

Overall, while it's certainly *possible* to find a mission with such a ridiculously short time limit that you couldn't possibly hope to do it no matter what ships or hardware you had available, these are quite rare--most are doable if you use all the options available to speed things up.

idiotekque · Post by **idiotekque** » Mon, 4. Jul 16, 13:38

pjknibbs wrote:There are faster ways to do these things. For instance, in the ship retrieval mission you mentioned, you could have spent some time repairing the ship with your suit repair laser to make it faster, or you could have transferred a jump drive and some e-cells from your own ship so the target could jump to the destination sector and get there much faster. If the ship was an M3, M4 or M5 then you could have used a TM to pick it up and also jumped it to the destination faster. Yes, that does require you to have a jump drive, which is a fairly expensive piece of kit, but it's also an incredibly useful piece of kit for people trying to make money doing this sort of mission.

One other thing: if there was absolutely no way the ship could reach the target station in time, but there was a shipyard closer, you could have sent it to the shipyard and sold it. That would still annoy the mission giver, but you'd at least get some money out of the job.

Overall, while it's certainly *possible* to find a mission with such a ridiculously short time limit that you couldn't possibly hope to do it no matter what ships or hardware you had available, these are quite rare--most are doable if you use all the options available to speed things up.

Right, that all makes sense, and once I'm geared up I will definitely plan out these sort of missions accordingly beforehand, especially if they're worthwhile.

What irks me is the fact that this sort of mission LOOKS like an early game mission. It gave... I don't know, 10,000 credits or so? If you have enough cash for a jump drive, a carrier ship, etc, this mission is "easy" and basically gives you pocket change. There's no point.

There WOULD be a point to the mission if it was doable with the limited means you're going to have when you're knocking out "easy" missions. There's really no good reason why the mission didn't simply have a higher time limit so that you could do exactly as you were hired to do... go grab the ship and send it back to its owner. Instead there's this arbitrary time limit turning this piddly little mission into some sort of intergalactic Gone In 60 Seconds movie.

I was considering selling it, because I'm sure that would have paid more anyways, but I'm trying to rep up with Argon to do plot missions, and the hit was obscenely huge. Multiple levels, from what it looked like.

Looks like I'll just be avoiding these missions until I can play with jump drives or have a carrier ship. Thanks for the tips for later on (for missions like this that don't pay pennies, at least).

Timsup2nothin · Post by **Timsup2nothin** » Mon, 4. Jul 16, 16:43

Thing is that by the time you get 'geared up' with all the right equipment to do this kind of mission you will likely have built up enough reputation that the mission reward will be much more substantial and seem appropriate.

From the standpoint of 'why would such missions be available at this point'...consider this:

You have a Discoverer, you maxed out the engines and spent your last credits doing that. If you happen upon one of these 'easy' ship returns right out the gate AND the big sluggard ship happens to be close enough to a shipyard...you can claim and sell the ship within the time limit. If it is a big enough sluggard ship that one failed mission can pay for the jump drive, and you are then 'in business' and can set about building yourself up as a ship return specialist.

So, yeah, you might need those 'easy but impossible peanut paying ship return missions,' if you really want to be a ship return specialist...or even just as a jump starter for whatever else you want to do.

ancienthighway · Post by **ancienthighway** » Mon, 4. Jul 16, 17:54

The more you play, the more you learn what missions to take and what to avoid with your given situation.

Return an abandon ship missions are great. You can return the ship for x amount of credits, or you can be tasked to return a ship that you can use and you just take it and send it into a save place to outlast the police, like pirate or Xenon highways, Yaki space, UFJD sectors (which force them to give up the pursuit right away). Many M6s and M7s have made it into my fleet this way. Impossible return? Find a shipyard and sell it.

As you explore, don't scan asteroids without a mission. Get paid for something you're going to do anyway. I recently had 3 simultaneous asteroid scanning missions covering 4 sectors (2 jump max from one to another). One visit to each sector and three missions completed.

Starting out new and have no guns? Take protect station missions and watch the hostiles crash into the station. Mission complete, here's your credits and rep.

You also learn there are missions to avoid pretty much all of the time. Deliver some ridiculous amount of wares in a time to short to even source them. Recover a stolen small ship (thief doesn't bail and ship goes boom). Escort a convoy (time consuming). Follow a person (time consuming).

As you play you find other missions to avoid or find that you can now do previously avoided missions.

Sirrobert · Post by **Sirrobert** » Mon, 4. Jul 16, 18:07

Assassinate missions are great when you have a Jumpdrive and lots of missiles. Build station missions are generally great IF you have a TL (but for the easier ones, remember to check the reward vs the price of the station. The easiest missions (lowest reward) sometimes pay out less than it costs to buy the station

AleksMain · Post by **AleksMain** » Mon, 4. Jul 16, 18:29

Sirrobert wrote:Assassinate missions are great when you have a Jumpdrive and lots of missiles. Build station missions are generally great IF you have a TL (but for the easier ones, remember to check the reward vs the price of the station. The easiest missions (lowest reward) sometimes pay out less than it costs to buy the station

Assassination missions are good for boarding purposes.

In last one using Cobra and 5* marines I got pirate M1 57 millions worth and dozens Concussion Impulse Generators as extra reward.

Also there were few 3* marines, which I had sent in Military Outpost for training.

While you have weak ship use "Defend station" missions for capping of small enemy ships.

In worse case, if you have not good ship for fight, try to complete mission (like "Defend station" or "Xenon Hold Position") using local military forces or Rapid Response fleet.

Drop from destroyed ships can be sold by you.

Snafu_X3 · Post by **Snafu_X3** » Mon, 4. Jul 16, 19:42

To the OP: You've been given several answers, but I'd just like to add a few things regarding Return Ship missions (check my sig for the Wiki link)

Any software or tunings installed on <target> will sell back to <mission giver> at cost price, so you don't lose anything there. Any wares that take up cargo space will be redeemed at lowest or average price (can't remember which), which can occasionally be useful if you can't find somewhere to sell certain wares & you want to free up some cargo space

Return ship missions are useful for marine training, once you start getting ships capable of being boarded

In general the reward amount for any mission depends upon your race rep with <mission giver>, with some caveats over fight/trade rep for those appropriate missions. The difficulty level generally reflects the time required to complete the mission without a jumpdrive; if you're accepting passenger missions try to accept in the slowest ship you have nearby then transfer to a faster one, as IIRC your current ship speed is also taken into account

Lots of other info in my sig link

Have fun!

idiotekque · Post by **idiotekque** » Mon, 4. Jul 16, 20:14

Just for reference, I'm not really having any trouble with missions, I've just come across one or two that basically have required jump drives in the early game, which seems a bit silly. Regardless of the reasoning behind it, I just believe it's poor design to throw missions at new players that look doable, but are literally impossible without jump drives (at the very least, the mission should have read as "very hard", not easy, considering the impossible time limit).

I generally stick to combat missions because they pay the best, but I'm still mixing things up (trying not to abuse the stock market too much, because it's just a little too easy to make money with that). I've got 5 or so ships now, a couple M5s that I have mapping out sectors, and I'm going to be playing around with a cheap Vulture Tanker for either building a base in Argon space (to access the stock market there) or for auto-trading.

I'm still loving the game, but the sandboxy randomly generated nature of some missions just seem very poorly designed to me at times.

ancienthighway wrote:The more you play, the more you learn what missions to take and what to avoid with your given situation.

Return an abandon ship missions are great. You can return the ship for x amount of credits, or you can be tasked to return a ship that you can use and you just take it and send it into a save place to outlast the police, like pirate or Xenon highways, Yaki space, UFJD sectors (which force them to give up the pursuit right away). Many M6s and M7s have made it into my fleet this way. Impossible return? Find a shipyard and sell it.

As you explore, don't scan asteroids without a mission. Get paid for something you're going to do anyway. I recently had 3 simultaneous asteroid scanning missions covering 4 sectors (2 jump max from one to another). One visit to each sector and three missions completed.

Starting out new and have no guns? Take protect station missions and watch the hostiles crash into the station. Mission complete, here's your credits and rep.

You also learn there are missions to avoid pretty much all of the time. Deliver some ridiculous amount of wares in a time to short to even source them. Recover a stolen small ship (thief doesn't bail and ship goes boom). Escort a convoy (time consuming). Follow a person (time consuming).

As you play you find other missions to avoid or find that you can now do previously avoided missions.

Yeah, this all makes sense. I guess it's worthwhile enough to just sell the ship in most cases, but the rep hit was so massive and I have no idea how the police work in those situations that I didn't bother.

I've come across a couple worthwhile escort missions (one was the very next sector over and paid almost 200k), but yeah, sadly those are the missions you just don't even bother with. I did one covert mission (because it paid 80k or so) and that was enough for me. They're all the same from what I can see, and they're just horribly long and boring. And the stolen ship missions... ha ha. Nope.

Snafu_X3 wrote:To the OP: You've been given several answers, but I'd just like to add a few things regarding Return Ship missions (check my sig for the Wiki link)

Any software or tunings installed on <target> will sell back to <mission giver> at cost price, so you don't lose anything there. Any wares that take up cargo space will be redeemed at lowest or average price (can't remember which), which can occasionally be useful if you can't find somewhere to sell certain wares & you want to free up some cargo space

Return ship missions are useful for marine training, once you start getting ships capable of being boarded

In general the reward amount for any mission depends upon your race rep with <mission giver>, with some caveats over fight/trade rep for those appropriate missions. The difficulty level generally reflects the time required to complete the mission without a jumpdrive; if you're accepting passenger missions try to accept in the slowest ship you have nearby then transfer to a faster one, as IIRC your current ship speed is also taken into account

Lots of other info in my sig link Smile Have fun!

Ah, well that's good I suppose. I was under the impression you were just returning the ship, so you wouldn't be getting extra for improvements on it like you would in a ship procurement mission.

My rep with the Argons was actually pretty darn high, along with a high fight rep and a non-existent trade rep at the time. It's very odd how the mission came up as "easy" and was literally impossible to do without a jump drive or two (by at least 15 minutes). Maybe I just came across an oddity.

Since that mission I've come across a trade mission that gave you like 10 minutes to go pick up goods from somewhere and bring them back, and in a 210 speed ship, it took about 8 minutes to just get to the pickup spot, ha ha. It's looking like these missions just force you to have a jump drive a lot of the time. I do have one now, I just need to stock up on energy cells.

Jimmy C · Post by **Jimmy C** » Tue, 5. Jul 16, 04:53

My personal preference for missions:

Asassination and Defense missions:- My favorite. I always look forward to the opportunity to capture the ships to sell and new marines to recruit. These activities are self-sustaining, in that the prizes of every capture more than pay for the expediture in materials used in the process.
I can also tell you I'll abandon such missions if the RRF show up to crash the party. I have no desire to waste effort dealing with them before capturing my targets.

Stolen ship missions:- Only if they're M6 and M7, which means they can be boarded, ensuring their capture. Such stolen ships also have marines onboard to be recruited, which is why I like these missions too!
There's also apparently some glitches involving stolen boardable ships. Even after you turn them over, get your reward and end the mission, the ship remains yours! You'll have to evade the anti-theft task force to keep it though. Hope you have the UFJD, it's the most convinient way to lose them.
Another glitch involving such ships is that repairing them at your HQ will cause them to disappear! I put a note on the ship's name to make sure I remember such ships.

Retrieve ship missions:- M6 and M7 offer training opportunities for non-maxed marines. M7s offer double opportunities if the destination does not have capital docks. You can sell them after the second boarding and eluding the ATTF.
For the initial boarding, at least, the ship is inert, which let's you use spacewalk boarding and save the boarding pods for another target.

Station building missions:- Every additional station imposes additional processing burden on the computer. So I only take such missions if I trying to build up my reputation, or populating an empty/nearly empty sector. If it's for rep, I only take the mission if it's Hard or Very Hard difficulty.

Courier and people transport missions:- I only take these if I'm trying to build up reputation. I prefer not to take TP transport missions because I don't like to change to slower ships.

Cargo delivery missions:- I used to ignore them, but now I take them if my trading hubs have adequate stocks and I can carry the whole order in one TL. They always pay better than max price, especially on the hard difficulties. I think of it as helping out my traders.
I use an Ozias for this, with a docked TS to shuttle the goods to the station.

Attack convoy missions:- I only ever take these to build pirate rep.

Scanning, shadowing, tour, escort and patrol missions:- I don't take them. I prefer to tackle missions at my own pace but these impose their own pace, which I don't like. For escort and patrol in particular, enemy ships appear at random locations and intervals, making it nearly impossible to preposition your capture assets for best effect and least risk.

pjknibbs · Post by **pjknibbs** » Tue, 5. Jul 16, 09:21

Jimmy C wrote: Scanning, shadowing, tour, escort and patrol missions:- I don't take them.

I actually like scanning missions, but only when I get them from a pirate station. Reasoning is simple: if you get a regular scanning mission, you only get paid for contraband discoveries, and contraband is pretty darned rare. Pirate scanning, on the other hand, will pay you a percentage of the total value of all the cargo you scan regardless of its legality, which can add up to a pretty nice total so long as you have a fast ship to do the scanning in!

RainerPrem · Post by **RainerPrem** » Tue, 5. Jul 16, 09:39

Hi,

and another opinion:

People transport missions in the beginning give up to ten times the reward of other missions. So I look for a TP (one of the abandoned ones in TC or used ship in AP) as soon as possible.

Flying a fast M5, I have my TP (with jumpdrive of course) sitting in the next power station. I call it, mostly before I take the mission, switch ships, and dock it at the source station. Then I switch the passenger(s) over to my fast ship and off we go.

As for the jump drive: You can easily get enough reputation with the Terrans (Terran start) or Borons (all other starts) to buy one ASAP. It's the single most important piece of equipment in the game. (Transporter and docking computer close second)

cu
Rainer

Jimmy C · Post by **Jimmy C** » Tue, 5. Jul 16, 10:50

RainerPrem wrote:I call it, mostly before I take the mission, switch ships, and dock it at the source station. Then I switch the passenger(s) over to my fast ship and off we go.

I always wondered if they would actually let you do that, but didn't consider it worthwhile to try. Mainly because you need to call a TP over and dock it to the source anyway.
If I have a beacon, my trick is to send the fast ship to the destination to deploy the beacon then jump over and dock.

pref · Post by **pref** » Tue, 5. Jul 16, 12:36

The cash reward is not the aim initially.
You have to look at the low-pay missions as an investment: they raise your rep and allow you to earn real cash later on (via trading and missions).

Though there are missions that clearly not worth the time in your or even any situation. You always have to do a sanity check for any mission before accepting. Some are outright impossible regardless of payment.

Some missions will not give you reputation: all the ones where you buy stuff belongs to this category (sector map, asteroid yield, used ships for ex).

Honved · Post by **Honved** » Tue, 5. Jul 16, 15:43

The one major key is not to accept the mission until you have all of your pieces in place. The timer doesn't start until you say "Yes".

That means, if I see a "build a Paranid Snail Farm (M) mission, I jump my TL into the Paranid shipyard sector, while sending a TS or other small ship with E-Cells to meet it at the shipyard. Once it reaches the shipyard, I accept the mission. Buy the station and load it on the TL, top off the E-cells from the TS, exit the station, and then jump the TL into the target sector where I've just jumped or flown in with my personal ship. Place it on the beacon (you need to hit the skewed "+" sign at the top of the sector display to tilt the view for vertical placement), and it's "Mission Complete". Time Remaining: about 1 hour 45 minutes; total Completion time: about 2-10 minutes.

At really low fight rank, the Escort missions are tedious but not particularly difficult, because the M5s which spawn to attack the freighters have no more firepower than the TS freighters in the convoy, and a lot less shielding. Once your fight rank improves more than a rank or two, you start running into enemy spawns that can toast a freighter before you can even get there to intervene.

"Defend Station" missions are all but free money at low to medium fight rank, since the local police and military will generally solve the problem even without your assistance. Bonus income when the attackers blow up and drop missiles for you to pick up, or when you get a pirate to bail (spacewalk and claim the ship yourself- remember to claim it BEFORE you start repairs). Once multiple M3 fighters and M8 bombers start showing up in your missions, you've got to earn your pay.

Jimmy C · Post by **Jimmy C** » Tue, 5. Jul 16, 18:11

With jumpdrives, station building missions take so little time compared to the alloted time, that I accept them, go do other things for a while, then send my TL to get the station and place it.
When I'm building rep, I may even decide to cancel the build mission because I reached the top rank without it already.

ancienthighway · Post by **ancienthighway** » Tue, 5. Jul 16, 18:20

Honved wrote:Place it on the beacon (you need to hit the skewed "+" sign at the top of the sector display to tilt the view for vertical placement),

It's easier to press '5' on the keypad, then move the cursor to the beacon/satellite. It drops the station right on top of it. Don't forget to follow your TL with a TS or two loaded with the resources the new station needs to start working, but more importantly lining your pockets.

TheDeliveryMan · Post by **TheDeliveryMan** » Tue, 5. Jul 16, 19:26

Jimmy C wrote:
RainerPrem wrote:I call it, mostly before I take the mission, switch ships, and dock it at the source station. Then I switch the passenger(s) over to my fast ship and off we go.
I always wondered if they would actually let you do that, but didn't consider it worthwhile to try. Mainly because you need to call a TP over and dock it to the source anyway.

Switching passengers is totally worth it!

I usually have several properly equipped Fujin minibuses near me to deal with Personell/Military Transport missions. Pick up passengers, meet minibus in space, beam passengers over, send minibus to destination and a few minutes later I'll get a mission complete message and am 10 million credits richer. It's not uncommon for me to have three or more of these missions to sectors in different directions in the process of completion.

Sirrobert · Post by **Sirrobert** » Tue, 5. Jul 16, 19:49

Honved wrote:(you need to hit the skewed "+" sign at the top of the sector display to tilt the view for vertical placement)

The INS key also switches the map between horizontal and vertical

idiotekque · Post by **idiotekque** » Wed, 6. Jul 16, 03:30

Speaking of escort missions, I probably had the most hilarious first one ever. We got swarmed quite a bit, and at one point the freighter is making its agonizingly slow docking procedure with the jump gate, and it's taken a bit of hull damage, so I figure "Hey, it's moving slow, I'm not sure how much further we have to go, and I should be helpful." so I hop out of my ship and decide to repair it.

Naturally, the split second my repair gun hits the freighter, it and all it's other escort ships go hostile and blow my spacesuit to dust.

Pretty hilarious. I suppose it was too much work for Egosoft to make the repair "gun" not make the target go hostile?

egosoft.com

egosoft.com

Mission time limits making very little sense (Pointless missions?)

Mission time limits making very little sense (Pointless missions?)