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[Amoebka]

The tactical bombardment mission has two major flaws, that make 90% of the offers unreasonable.

1) It can target planets defended by an orbital station. You need to blow up the station to bombard. A bar mission to destroy an orbital station with a guarding fleet is usually worth 600k, not 50k.

2) Bombardment can't be concealed and always results in instant hostility. For pirates and pathers it might not matter much, but offering 50k for a mission that drops your rep with a major faction to -50 is not cool.

(On a side note, the defending fleet itself is usually worth a lot more than the payout, but it can be avoided, so let's assume that's fair)

Suggested changes:

1) Can't target planets with stations.

2) Bombardment as a mission results in only a minor rep hit. Let's say military contacts can conceal fleet identities better than the player by themself.

[Alex]

Hmm, made a note about the raid-target colonies, that makes sense. Will think about the bombardment stuff; I think the way it is now is reasonable but maybe just... not for a mission that's as common as this is.

[Histidine]

One other thing is that it should perhaps also increase the payout based on fuel needed, like with marines in raid missions.


As an aside, the fact that bombardment pollutes habitable worlds probably ought to be a factor in which planets are targeted by whom (e.g. maybe only unethical factions should issue a bombardment mission against a habitable)

[ForestFighters]

Honestly, having tactical nuclear warfare be a bar mission for chump change is pretty dumb. It's an act of war, no raid or skirmish. It would be like if a mercenary dropped a nuke in the 80s, it wouldn't be done for some random warlord for a couple million and a handshake.

And anyway, from a gameplay perspective, I only end up doing this mission against Pathers and Pirates, because breaking their stuff has little consequences and their planets are mostly poor mining colonies that don't really matter. I never bother picking it up otherwise, as making factions hostile is a long-term thing that takes a long time to go back on.

[Megas]

As an aside, the fact that bombardment pollutes habitable worlds probably ought to be a factor in which planets are targeted by whom (e.g. maybe only unethical factions should issue a bombardment mission against a habitable)

If I want to pollute a planet like this, I would go all the way to sat bomb the planet off the map.  I dislike polluting habitables that I have no intention of conquering (and seizing control of).

[TaLaR]

Maybe pollution from bombardment should be temporary for just a one to few cycles? Given that bombardment missions are given out by everyone as candy, I'd expect every world to experience it several times by game's start...

[Goumindong]

2) Bombardment can't be concealed and always results in instant hostility. For pirates and pathers it might not matter much, but offering 50k for a mission that drops your rep with a major faction to -50 is not cool.

I might add an addendum that raid missions are similarly mispriced as a result of this. 50k for something that requires 150 marines and also gives you a rep hit unless you stealth in requires a lot for your fleet composition for the rewards (you gotta be stealthy and also pay 3k/month extra upkeep for marines)

Either special raid objectives should not produce rep hits (after all you're not taking the colony's stuff you're taking from a private individual that they may not care about) or the rep hit should be akin to black market activity. Maybe you're raiding a black market warehouse that has a different set of defenders and because of this the rep hit isn't quite as high in the same vein when you kill smugglers because they're doing something illegal the rep hit is lowered.


I suppose one thing you could do is gate some of the missions behind commissions (and/or prevent them, after all we don't want someone with a commission doing our stealthy raid!)

[Plantissue]

I once sat bombed Garnir (can't remember whether it was a mission or not) and after a few years had passed it died. I felt like i had contributed to its demise and have always felt a little guilty over that.