Forum - Space Odyssey MMORPG - a massive free online space game

Mission grinding is a fairly boring part of the game, but its fairly crucial to keep up seg's.  Personally I hate it - Id rather PvP but its hard to find targets.

My suggestion is to reduce the number of missions available, increase the turns cost to do a mission, and also increase the number of segs reward.

At the moment, you can grind out missions for hours a day - those people with a lot of time have quite an advantage over people who cant commit the time, and the people with the time - would probably rather be doing something else.

Id suggest something like this;

Turns required - 100
Segments reward - 5,000
Other rewards - increase by 5 to 10 times.

Thats basically cuts down a huge amount of time in grinding missions - while keeping the balance between turns and segments the same. 

A spin off bonus is that this also makes it cheaper (turns wise)to navigate to a higher level mission - rather than grinding the one star down to level 1 missions just to get the segs.

100 turns is a little harsh, but I agree, it's way too repetitive. Around 50 turns should do.

I like it the way it is  :P

10 turns with 500 segs reward would be a blessing trust me doing 100 missions is burnign fast then, only it wouldnt be fair for those who have a low encrypt lvl now as they will never get it up enough.

i think it should be 15 turns/500seg mission to compensate for not having to jump so many times to reach mission

I didnt post it earlier - but yeah, I meant the change to improve the rate your encryption level increased as well.

For me any increase is good, suggestions are;

10 Turns, 500 Segs
50 Turns, 2,500 segs
100 Turns, 5,000 segs

It would actually open the game up for a lot more people as well - Im sure theres a lot of people who started and then realised how time demanding the mission grind was and just quit - without grinding missions, you cant be competitive.

If you could effectively PvP for segs it wouldnt be so bad - but its hard to find a target, then all I get is "warps away" ... and even when you hit someone, you dont really get a huge amount of segs, I think the best Ive got was about 12,000.

They could remove the "destroy's xxx segments" and just have the attacker pick those up as well - its expensive to PvP, but not much reward for doing it apart from bragging rights ><

I got 89.0000 segs as max for 1 attack.

Less grinding is good idea, a very good idea.

50 Turns for 2,500 Segs is my preference.

This is probably the most top priority idea ive seen and i would like to see this implemented soon

personally my vote is for a sliding scale maybe related to encryption level? this way lower level players can get theirs up faster but will still be hard pressed to catch up (thus keeping things fair) and it would allow larger players to grow faster and the more growth their is, the more potential targets for pvp there are.

*note* this also makes it harder to get better items because the higher encrypts would take more turns (so it balances player item gains)

Yeah - I was thinking about this overnight and Silence' suggestion on the sliding scale - though i think maybe my sliding scale is the reverse of his suggestion - I didnt quite get what he meant.

Anyhow, here's the idea.

Players can only see missions between their encryption level, and 50 levels below it.  For example, if your encryption is 200, you can see missions from 150 to 200 - this is an example, you could make it 100 levels below etc.

A sliding scale for turns cost is introduced to missions, segment rewards is the same regardless of the mission level.

Example;

Missions 1 to 100      - turns cost = 5, Segs reward = 500
Missions 101 to 200   - turns cost =10, Segs reward = 500
Missions 201+           - turns cost = 25, Segs reward = 500

 - again this is an example, you could space it out more if desired

This means starting players can actually earn more segs, but they have to do more work grinding to get them.  Higher end players have less grinding to do.  The starting players move up more quickly in segs - and the top end players who are probably getting bored of grinding, now have the grinding cut back.

This will tend to make the game more competitive, less repetitive and I for one would say that I would welcome the increase in turns at higher levels, I know its a slow down - but it would feel like a reward :P - means less grinding.

It is also intuitive - higher missions take longer to complete.

This would effect each player differently depending on their current situation - so there would sure to be a fair amount of communication and feedback required to put a change like this through on the live server - however, I think it could be done.

Maybe some top end players might see it as a threat or a loss of their work - but they should consider that if they have already ground up the segs - then they will have an ongoing edge, as others will be restricted in making the gains they have - newer players should welcome the change as it gives them a better chance to catch up - mid range players are largely un-effected (except for the reduction in grinding required - which has to be considered a plus).

right, i agree. thats kinda what i ment to say but i only had about a min to type it up, and looking back now my previous post makes little sense.

i agree too, this would open up several other doors in the game. especially since this is a war sever and so far its just an arms race with an ocassionaly attack from lower players with creds

I think that just a button that allowed you to do 20 more so missions at a time would be suffienient. Any sort of power curving to slow growth at higher levels isnt really neccary. When you grow linearly, the differences arent going to matter mcu

i dont like it at all... just gives people with a high encrypt a big advantage.. and you couldnt put a limit on how many missions you could do a  day... just grind it out more... or maybe go 5 turns for 150 segs.. dont need a huge increse... i have over 300k segs almost all from pvp

*sigh* i am almost tempted to say get rid of missions all together and put randomly generated commanders/fleets out there so that players can gain segs the same as pvp. the stronger u are, the fewer enemies that u can fight but the more reward and challenge per fight. the enemies could be generated by a function using the average size to fleet power ratios of commanders and then making em a lil stronger (to encourage actual pvp). this solution would also solve the problems of growth rates, noob starts and finding a reasonable number of appropriate targets.

*note* if it is felt that this would cause TOO much growth TOO quickly the turns required for an attack could also be scaled based on the ai commander's power for example 1 turn/ every 75mil power (would cost 1k turns to attack some one with 75bil pwr)

I don't have a big problem with the plans up here alrdy but at the very least I would like to see segs go up 5 or so every 50 encrypt lvls so you at least can see yourself gaining. I would also like to see resourse missions available to people below lvl 50 encryp so that the small newer players can get resourses maybe set it up like the events but tied to your encrypt lvl after 50 you can't see them anymore. The resourse missions would raise encrpt lvl just the same as a seg mission would so that it can't be abused. (to the best of my knowledge it would NOT help anyone in the alliance I belong to)

Not sure I understand mate?  How do higher encrypt players get a bigger advantage out of this than anyone else? 

From my first suggestion - its a flat increase to segs and turns for all missions - that will effect everyone the same.

The second proposal of a sliding scale actually costs the higher end players more turns to gain segs - so the incentive to PvP for segs is higher. 

So niether of my suggestions helps people with high encrypts.

If you were referring to Basils suggestion - then I agree with you - there is absolutely no justification for increasing the gains at the high end, they should be slowed down to close the gaps between players imo - players are already widely spread out - that would just add to it - and you can just about forget any PvP - youd have like 2 valid targets - the person above and below you, and youd probably never find them.

the whole point of sowars is a slow growth rate so people wont ever max... it sucked to go missions for 50 segs each but thats part of the war server.. i say keep it like it is

slow growth is understandable and a must, but 8hrs or more on a game doing the same thing every day gets really really boring. increase segs per mission and turns... 500segs per mission and 30turns per mission. if you want more slow growth make turns easy to burn.

By raiseing the turn cost, you get the same rowth rate, It just only takes half an hour a day rather than 4 hours

I do kind of like the suggestion of larger fleets and mother ships taking more time to move thus more turns per jump. it makes sence that a 90 seg mother ship will be able to move faster and better than a megaton class mother ship. I say leave the missions the way they are but as motherships grow so do the turns to move them.  Thus a real motivation to put a few CPs into the warp tech in your commander section lets say for every 00 or 100k segs you add to your mother ship the cost of moving in the galaxy goes up a % or some such. thus you solve the problem of your mission grind and at the same time balance the game.

it would be nice but this would kill any kind of pvp on the server since you can only attack when your on the star were the player is at. unless ofc every 1 makes 10 alts and swoops true the galaxy looking for targets to hit.
also this would make you empty you bases around 1 time each month.

frank... no it doesnt make sense. there is no gravity or friction effecting the ship. a larger ship can have a great % of its area devoted to a power-core/ engines thus allowing it to both accelerate faster and move faster.

regardless of the sense argument though, i think that it should be curved in favor of tiny players so that they will be encouraged to pvp

perhaps growth would be to fast with my sugestion but franks sugestion isnt about gravity or wind resistance its about inertial force (I myself don't want his sugestion but it is sound spacial mechanics)

franks suggestion, seems to encourage the use of alts to attack stronger players.

Suggested format, tie the sliding scale to the level of the missions.  So if you want you can chose to do the lower missions for more segs.

Scale suggested

1 to 250      - 5 turns, 250 segs
250 to 500  - 10 turns, 400 segs
500 plus - 20 turns, 750 segs

Emi please - for the love of SANITY - can you have a look at this idea?  Theres some guys who are grinding endlessly, then getting smashed for lots of segs PvP, we dont want any TEARS!  Also - Im a mission hater - please - I think most people really want this!

if you believe most folks want this please make a poll to see the outcome.

The polls already been done Frank - not a huge turn out of voters - not sure how many people log into here - but overwhelmingly they wanted a change - you can find the poll on this forum.

o how its been done... Nicholas D. wolfwood got his ships returned to him with 20 votes and 9 in favor of getting his ships back... 3 or so rounds ago. im pretty sure the out come of the missin scale was more succesful then that. i hope it get implemented soon, cause missions are really boring.