Fractal Softworks Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  

News:

Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); New blog post: Simulator Enhancements (03/13/24)

Author Topic: Milk Run Failures  (Read 1646 times)

Agile

  • Commander
  • ***
  • Posts: 190
    • View Profile
Milk Run Failures
« on: September 16, 2019, 05:11:57 AM »

I have a suggestion to make the "milk run" bar missions, where you ferry goods for people, less punishing. What I mean by that is sometimes there is literally NO WAY you can do a mission; by that I mean you get to the drop off point, and its a pirate base. You get attacked by a pirate fleet, and are forced to fight because you are unable to disengage as you have a huge fleet.

You win but now the station refuses to trade with you, so you cannot make your delivery, and now your ***.

Why do I say this? Because now a max strength death fleet bounty hunter will prepare to come after you and dunk on your day because you can't do the now impossible delivery mission and inevitably fail.

What I think would be good is if, like when you can't hand in your payment for the Tri Tachyon loans and ask for more time, you  can do two things:

"I can't do this delivery"
"I need more time to do this delivery"

The first one makes you lose 10 rep with independents, the other one makes you lose 5 but gives you an extra 60 days. It makes the delivery missions make sense (because sometimes you literally cannot do their mission due to this or that reason and have to abort). And would make sense in a lore sense; why would you send a max strength death fleet against the guy who is 100/100 Cooperative reputation with Independents and is known to have a good track record with deliveries but just can't make your delivery?
Logged

SafariJohn

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 3010
    • View Profile
Re: Milk Run Failures
« Reply #1 on: September 16, 2019, 06:25:14 AM »

I think you can cancel missions. Isn't there a cancel button on the intel for the mission, somewhere around where the accept button was?
Logged

Yunru

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 1560
    • View Profile
Re: Milk Run Failures
« Reply #2 on: September 16, 2019, 06:29:29 AM »

That has the same effect as failing, iirc.

Edit: Dammit, the amount of times I've accidentally toggled caps locks playing this game.

SafariJohn

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 3010
    • View Profile
Re: Milk Run Failures
« Reply #3 on: September 16, 2019, 06:42:48 AM »

Looked at the code: yep, failure and cancelling are the same.
Logged

Plantissue

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 1231
    • View Profile
Re: Milk Run Failures
« Reply #4 on: September 16, 2019, 01:56:19 PM »

You get a ridiculously long time like 2+ months to deliver, and you get the goods upfront. What were you doing for the first 2 months that you weren't delivering the items?
Logged

Yunru

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 1560
    • View Profile
Re: Milk Run Failures
« Reply #5 on: September 16, 2019, 02:47:30 PM »

You get a ridiculously long time like 2+ months to deliver
???
I've not seen longer than 40 days.
In fact, I've never seen one outside of the 20-40 day range, and that's to collect and deliver.

Edit: Oh wait, bar missions. Not just generic faction supply.

Agile

  • Commander
  • ***
  • Posts: 190
    • View Profile
Re: Milk Run Failures
« Reply #6 on: September 16, 2019, 03:31:43 PM »

You get a ridiculously long time like 2+ months to deliver, and you get the goods upfront. What were you doing for the first 2 months that you weren't delivering the items?

Getting other bar missions and buying supplies / fuel, while doing bounties.

You don't make much money off the bar missions unless your RNG is good and you get a recreational goods or organ milk run, especially when your fleet is much bigger (which costs a lot more to run), so I was making cash on the side.

Other times, ive gotten the mission, and it was in hostile territory. Id do the mission right away, but as stated above, id kill off an entire Armada trying to e-burst into me and that made it so that the station I had to drop my goods off at shut down on me for 2 + months, making me fail the mission.

If you kill a big enough fleet near a station / planet they don't want to trade with you for months on end, hence my predicament.
Logged

Goumindong

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 1886
    • View Profile
Re: Milk Run Failures
« Reply #7 on: September 16, 2019, 05:51:00 PM »

Leave the system and come back without your transponder on. You might not even have to leave the system
Logged

Agile

  • Commander
  • ***
  • Posts: 190
    • View Profile
Re: Milk Run Failures
« Reply #8 on: September 17, 2019, 04:23:55 AM »

Leave the system and come back without your transponder on. You might not even have to leave the system

Killing a huge fleet near a station makes them not accept anyone, even those without a transponder on, into their dock "due to the large commotion you created" (or a similar message to that effect).

So that doesn't work.
Logged

Histidine

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 4661
    • View Profile
    • GitHub profile
Re: Milk Run Failures
« Reply #9 on: September 17, 2019, 05:31:42 AM »

The bar delivery quests could be made to say clearly "delivery destination is hostile to you, completing the mission may be difficult". Or perhaps just not offer deliveries to such destinations at all.

What I'd like is to be able to just compensate the client with credits and be done with it, when I didn't intentionally fail the mission (I'm thinking of the time I straight up forgot I'd taken the quest until it expired).
Logged

Yunru

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 1560
    • View Profile
Re: Milk Run Failures
« Reply #10 on: September 17, 2019, 07:30:42 AM »

The bar delivery quests could be made to say clearly "delivery destination is hostile to you, completing the mission may be difficult".
Expand this to "You have to make the delivery with your transponder off" too and you've won me :P

Agile

  • Commander
  • ***
  • Posts: 190
    • View Profile
Re: Milk Run Failures
« Reply #11 on: September 17, 2019, 05:43:47 PM »

The bar delivery quests could be made to say clearly "delivery destination is hostile to you, completing the mission may be difficult". Or perhaps just not offer deliveries to such destinations at all.

What I'd like is to be able to just compensate the client with credits and be done with it, when I didn't intentionally fail the mission (I'm thinking of the time I straight up forgot I'd taken the quest until it expired).

This is exactly what I thought.

You either return the goods to the original quest giver, with a -10 in reputation for *** up.

Ask for more time, taking a -5 percent hit and maybe having to pay a fee with it being explained away as a "I have to explain to the guy on the other side with some ""elbow grease"" that you *** up and need more time" type deal.

Or, if you *** up completely (like having your fleet blown up if you entered a hostile location and couldn't run) and couldn't rebuy the products in time, you can pay in credits the amount of money the goods cost at base cost to the spacer (or maybe a little more cause, well, you *** up) while taking a rep hit.

Any option like the above is better than "well you *** up and now have no way to make amends except save scumming, otherwise you face a death fleet with capitals in it as retribution".
Logged

Buff Skeleton

  • Ensign
  • *
  • Posts: 12
  • UFO Detected on Corpse Radar
    • View Profile
Re: Milk Run Failures
« Reply #12 on: September 18, 2019, 01:26:48 PM »

If you consider taking on a delivery contract, you had better look closely at where it is, how long you have, and the current situation in the destination system. If you need to deliver to a pirate base, then sneak in and turn your transponder off before you encounter any fleets. Go dark in an asteroid field if necessary. Avoid combat, get to your destination, drop, and THEN you can fight stuff if you want.

I take on pirate-base milk runs all the time even with -100/100 relations, and it's not difficult to complete them in my experience if you use your head a bit.

I do like the idea of being able to plead for more time at the cost of some payment, though!
« Last Edit: September 18, 2019, 01:33:50 PM by Buff Skeleton »
Logged

Recklessimpulse

  • Commander
  • ***
  • Posts: 116
    • View Profile
Re: Milk Run Failures
« Reply #13 on: September 18, 2019, 06:19:18 PM »

Or even destroying the planetary defenses and just setting down I mean I just bombed the military bases and ground defenses to atomic dust who is stopping me or even tracking me?
Logged

Plantissue

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 1231
    • View Profile
Re: Milk Run Failures
« Reply #14 on: September 19, 2019, 04:09:41 AM »

The bar delivery quests could be made to say clearly "delivery destination is hostile to you, completing the mission may be difficult". Or perhaps just not offer deliveries to such destinations at all.

What I'd like is to be able to just compensate the client with credits and be done with it, when I didn't intentionally fail the mission (I'm thinking of the time I straight up forgot I'd taken the quest until it expired).
That's already in the game.

"However the pirates is hostile to you, and you'll need to sneak into port without attracting notice in order to complete the delivery."

Perhaps those words can be highlighted in the mission description.
Logged