@Josh,

One of the things games like these can suffer from is a lack of end game fun. My suggestion is to make sure missions scale, perhaps with ship type or money or reputation (similar to X3:TC) and maybe even consider having missions related to destroying entire factions/races.

Player should be able to put out missions the AI can pick up too, so you can create a job with a huge credit reward for destroying an entire faction, and factions at war with them can take up the bounty. That would be epic.

Missions won't scale up with the player. The player will just be better equipped to tackle the high stakes missions.

NPCs will also accept jobs and execute them.

RIght, as Katorone says, missions in the game won't scale (neither will anything, really). But as you get more powerful, you will be able to take on bigger and bigger missions - and you'll earn a reputation that will allow you to access missions that people only give to well-known pilots.

At some point, I do imagine that you will become so big that it will be hard to find missions worth your while - but that's part of the game, and part of real life as well. I'm sure Zuckerberg has trouble finding financial endeavors that would make any splash at all in his bank account But it just means that you'll have to explore more to find profitable opportunities! Having everything scale I think would be a bad choice. Makes me think of Morrowind and Oblivion, and how "common" those super-expensive armors and weapons become in the end when you're level 20

JoshParnell wrote:RIght, as Katorone says, missions in the game won't scale (neither will anything, really). But as you get more powerful, you will be able to take on bigger and bigger missions - and you'll earn a reputation that will allow you to access missions that people only give to well-known pilots.

At some point, I do imagine that you will become so big that it will be hard to find missions worth your while - but that's part of the game, and part of real life as well. I'm sure Zuckerberg has trouble finding financial endeavors that would make any splash at all in his bank account But it just means that you'll have to explore more to find profitable opportunities! Having everything scale I think would be a bad choice. Makes me think of Morrowind and Oblivion, and how "common" those super-expensive armors and weapons become in the end when you're level 20

I'll have to agree with you Josh. To me it makes more sense; and also, how could missions be perfectly scalable when all of the missions are dynamic? Personally I like the idea of things being dynamic in the game, instead of spawned from nowhere like the X series.

The entire concept of "doing missions for someone" runs into a serious problem when you have your very own galactic empire.

You should be the one giving missions to upstart freelancers chasing a fast credit.

The game mechanics in X games (or pretty much any other game) are just not that flexible. The game has a distinct scope and when you break out of it, it no longer works.
Like a game that is balanced for the player flying a single fighter. If you bring 3 battlecruisers to the same missions - even if the opposition increases accordingly - the missions don't make sense any more. Protect a single merchant hauling a load of ore... with a battle fleet? Seriously?

In most games the scope is limited. In XCOM you have 6 soldiers tops in a ground mission, in JA2 you won't be bringing tanks or air strikes to a gunfight. There is some gear progression but the gameplay doesn't change in any major way.

Sandbox games (including LT) are especially vulnerable there. There is no good way to restrict the player when he can build stations and fleets as long as he wants to.
In X-Rebirth you are supposedly limited to one and the same ship throughout the entire game. I'm not sure if I will like that very much but I can't say that it's a bad design decision. It would allow the developers to create situations that are still challenging to the player personally. Because he won't suddenly be flying a ship that is 250x as powerful.

I don't have any patented solution for LT and if I come up with one, I'm sure players will hate it. Me included. =P
Because it would have to be a limit to the force you can own or command at the same time. It's the only way to not break the balancing and avoid having to spawn fleets of 250 enemy fighters and battleships which only turns into a slideshow.

The player should just stop doing those missions than.

I mean, at that point the player will most likely have a large income and have the ability to wage war and such, why would they go down and do manual labor for merchants?

The Hedge Knight wrote:The player should just stop doing those missions than.

I mean, at that point the player will most likely have a large income and have the ability to wage war and such, why would they go down and do manual labor for merchants?

This is also another point that I'd have to agree with. That's like Zuckerberg going to work at Twitter or Google.

The Hedge Knight wrote:The player should just stop doing those missions than.

I mean, at that point the player will most likely have a large income and have the ability to wage war and such, why would they go down and do manual labor for merchants?

Exactly! If someone has some sort of burning desire to do a boring old escort mission with a giant fleet, then they can. People might think that you are rather eccentric, but you can really do whatever you want (fun or otherwise).

SeymourTheLlama wrote:

The Hedge Knight wrote:The player should just stop doing those missions than.

I mean, at that point the player will most likely have a large income and have the ability to wage war and such, why would they go down and do manual labor for merchants?

Exactly! If someone has some sort of burning desire to do a boring old escort mission with a giant fleet, then they can. People might think that you are rather eccentric, but you can really do whatever you want (fun or otherwise).

Or just send out a few of your crew to do those missions. Of course, your crew demands pay.