First of all, thanks a ton guys for all your comments. They're very valuable and we appreciate all the time you all have taken for providing feedback.

At the moment, we won't be changing how many missions a player can take. So far, I don't have a clear image of how to convey that clearly (you can take 5 missions, at most 3 combat missions, and cargo missions also eat up those combat slots *head explode*) without a goodly amount of client work.

However, we understand that players are having trouble utilizing their cargo bays as best they can, and thus turn to resets and the like to get the best possible results.

Let me say right now, that we are not entirely opposed to the idea of resetting missions. However, if players need to reset some 3x times just to feel competitive, that's too much.

So here's what we're currently thinking of doing.

More higher cargo missions to provide the Kingfishers (and to a lesser extent the Spectre) with more options to fill their hold.

Also, each mission giver will offer more missions. Right now we're thinking of around 8. This way, we want to increase the chance of players getting an assortment of missions that they can work with to fill up their hold and move on.

Also, in the interest of speeding development on this, we're going to open up the numbers to you all. This page gives most of the information for each mission (with proposed changes being highlit in yellow).

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key= ... utput=html

Have five bars as 'empty' mission indicators. Two are marked as "Cargo Only", the remaining three are marked as "Cargo/Combat". Just a thought.



It's not a case of having to reset to feel competitive, at least in my experience, it's a case of having to reset to be competitive, period.



I like it. It should buff the cargo runners without harming combat runners. In fact it's win/win really, everyone has better chances of getting more favourable mission selections.



Hrm. There are two proposals I'd like to bounce around here;

2 more cargo at CS8 for the KF, for a total of 475. I could have taken a whale and 2 other missions, but I was blocked off by only having 473 cargo - 2 short of the requirement. Non-round cargo numbers are an impediment to playing Tetris with your missions, and it sucks to be cut off from a mission because you were 2 crates short.*

Ingers will know what I mean by that, back when they had only 149 at CS8. Maybe even round off the Spectre's and Inger's holds to the nearest 5 as well.

Also, drop the Whales down to 375 at the very least, though this isn't such an issue if the KF does that 2-crate boost.

*Alternately, make it so you can toss out ammo like the "Not enough cargo" dialog suggests. 1000 ammo tossed = 1 cargo space. Allow people to sell ammo back to the mole at the same rate as buying ammo.

The cargo missions look like they're a middle ground between the previous mission setup and the current one, which is probably good.

The one thing I noticed at first glance was that Stroganoff Blockade and Icecream Show are listed at 125 inf/kill. As others were saying in the other thread, I think having more inf/kill on some missions keeps around some sense of excitement when you find them (the Jackpot feeling).

Would it be possible to take a page from the cargo missions and offer a slightly decreasing inf/kill for the Lion missions as the kill requirements increase? For example:
10 kills give 175/kill
20 give 165
30 give 155
40 give 145
50 give 135

Obviously the numbers can be tweaked downwards if these are two much, but you get the idea. Just a thought.

Wow.. you finally did it the right way! omg!

/me keels over and has heart palpitations.


Three main issues with the combat missions:

First, there are missions that were in game that are not listed on the spreadsheet. There was a kill 10 for 2500, kill 20 for 5000, and a kill 40 for 5000. They are/were the best thing that the combat missions had going for them. Also, they were hosted by the Lion/Gov.

Second, why do all the "best" (at least highest tiered) combat missions require Trade Prestige to unlock?

Third, pretty much all of the good missions listed (not counting the ones above not listed) are all exactly the same mission. The ratios are the same. Kill 10 for 1000. Kill 20 for 2000. Kill 30 for 3000. Kill 50 for 5000 and kill 100 for 10000. The only reason to raise skills is so that you don't get the lower level crappy missions, but you don't really improve combat missions by continuing to raise Skyland Trust. Oddly you do continue to unlock better and better Delivery Missions.


I'll leave comments for the Delivery missions for those who know them best!



Thorne
+1 Rep for the Devs for doing this

Okay so maybe I'm just being silly.... but what does the i/k/c column mean, and how does it effect the missions...... and also explain the graph....

There are ways around it, but it's just a little bit client intensive at the moment. I'd rather we focus on smaller changes for now to see what we can wring out of it.



A slight boost in cargo to get to round numbers may be possible. KF to 475, Spectre to 220



Uh...that's a little much.



All possible, although right now I'm focused on getting the cargo missions as good as can be before tackling combat.



Do you recall the name?



This is mostly as per above, that combat missions will likely get their due once a balance with the cargo missions is reached.



Influence / km / cargo

The graph shows the amount of i/k/c (x-axis) for cargo (y-axis)

Sounds good.



I think he's referring to the ones I mentioned, Stroganoff Blockade and Icecream Show, which, at the moment, give 250 inf/kill as opposed to 125 (but are listed as 125 inf/kill on the spreadsheet). The 40 kills for 5000 inf is listed (Astonishing Record).

Yeah I just went to look them up on the Skybrary. Turns out the kill 40 for 5000 inf *is* listed, "Astonishing Record." The other two are also listed, Icecream Show and Stroganoff Blockade, but do not match the correct influence that was being paid out in game. Was that purposefully changed?

Skybrary says:

Stroganoff Blockade - 2000g, 2500 inf, 10 kills ST1/TP1 Lion

Icecream Show - 4320g, 5000 inf, 20 kills ST2/TP2 Lion


The above accurately reflects what I was encountering in game.




Gotcha...

/me slowly backs away without making any sudden moves.



Thorne

As has been already pointed out. It's really a case that you have to reset missions to compete. I don't do it because I don't have the time and I just cant compete with those who can flit between skylands to pick up the best missions and effectively grind away.

One of the reasons that I liked this game was that even when I don't have much time to play I could just leave a queue set up. Unfortunately, I don't see an easy way to get this set up so that being able to reset missions gives you an advantage over those who don't have the time

Upping the number of missions from each giver will cut the advantage of resetting massively. It's like getting more free rolls at the RNG each turn. That sounds like the most fantastic thing to me, it really does.

That wasn't a serious suggestion at all, I should note. It'd be neat if you could like the dialog suggests, but I can't see it making enough difference to trade or influence for it to be worth it.



Sounds fair to me. I'm just a stickler for round numbers, really... non-round numbers and such drive me up the wall. Must... have... matching... gun... mods!



QFT. It's a win/win situation, really.

I've kept some logs over ~the last week (seven landings) of the missions I've received. For the Moose and Lion, I'm counting non-combat non-low level (i.e., Ficus Shipment, Pillow Shipment, Mysterious Artifact, Priceless Relic) non-whale missions.

For combat missions, "high inf" I'm counting as 10k inf or above, and "high rate" I'm counting as 100 inf/kill or above. I'm not a combat infer, so these may not be the right metrics to look at.

Tell me if there's any specific other metric you'd like to see.

Lion: 1.3 good missions
Moose: 1.6 good missions
Badger: 1.9 high inf missions and 2.9 high rate missions.
Combat Missions (Lion + Badger): still 1.9 high inf missions, and 3.4 high rate missions.

The sample size is kinda low, but so far it does seem to bear out that the subjective drop in reliability the Lion has had.



DO WANT

Want!

From my experience, you don't always need the same set of combat missions. Ones that have low kill requirements are great for the core, or if you want to try to get the mission finished on patrols. Alternatively, if I'm going for a longer jump, or if I'm trying to target inf at a single skyland (Volstoy, for example), I'll try to get missions with higher kill counts. Since almost all the combat missions are either 100 inf/kill or 125 inf/kill (except for Stroganoff and Icecream Show, as I mentioned), and what you need at the time is highly based upon your current goals, it's kind of tough to look at it in an objective manner. I'd say the only thing you could really test against is how likely the 250 inf/kill missions are to show up, and how likely the really crappy Badger missions are.

Also, just so I'm clear, you basically kept a count of every cargo mission you got that was above 10k inf from both the lion and the Moose, correct? I'll probably be spending my first 6 hours or so in flight dropping off missions tonight, but I tend to reset a lot more often, so I can probably get you a larger sample size once I'm done, if you'd like. Is there any specific format that you're using to keep track of this or is it as simple as just the fraction of high inf missions per mission giver (e.g. Moose gave 1/3, Lion gave 2/3)?

I kept account of (close to) everything. Spreadsheet.

Columns: Landing (Datetime+Skyland), Moose mission names, Moose mission destination, Moose mission cash, Moose mission inf, Lion mission names, Lion mission destination OR kills, Lion mission cash, Lion mission reward, Badger mission name, Badger mission kills, Badger mission cash, Badger mission inf.

So every landing adds three rows to this, and it's relatively simple to determine averages and such.

Thanks for offering to collect data!



Hmm. I'll see if there's any set of useful metrics I can think up there, then.

Okay, I've got about 14 resets so far today, just thought I'd share what I've found:

Moose:
76% of missions gave at least 10k inf (i.e. 2.29 10k+ missions every reset)
Average mission influence payout = 29,538

Lion (Note: I included Artifacts, as they give 15k inf):
43% of missoins gave at least 10k inf (i.e. 1.29 10+ missions every reset)
Average mission influence payout = 13,706

Badger:
98% of missions gave at least 100 inf/kill (i.e. 2.93 100 inf/kill missions every reset)
Average mission influence payout = 3,000

As I look through these, the numbers don't really tell the whole story. For example, I tend to not take any missions above 100 cargo, since it would leave very little room for anything else, and my overall inf for overnight missions would likely drop. Thus, any of those are relatively worthless to me. For a KF, however, those would be much more acceptable than missions with cargo requirements below 100. Just food for thought.

If anyone wants a copy of the data, send me a PM. I have a funny feeling it wouldn't really format nicely in the forum. I formatted it a little differently (though it can probably be switched to the same format as Sluor's fairly quickly).

Thanks for the insight all. Taft will be busy this weekend, so no mission changes will occur then, but we'll see if we can squeeze some changes in during the next week.

Google doc it and link. Bam, done.

I'd like to add in some last-minute support for keeping one or two "jackpot" combat missions, like the Stroganoff Blockade and Ice Cream Show. 2500 or 5000 inf is far from game-breaking, but it can be fun. It's enough to make you say "Oho!" and spend ten minutes hunting to finish them off, but if you don't have time for that hunt, you don't feel like you're giving up something super-valuable. I think it's a good compromise.

Changes will be occurring tomorrow evening.