Astro Galaxy - a realistic space exploration game

How about some more adventurous souls that want to be sent further out to make their fortunes?

Something like:
x00m3 to a <pick planet type> in Sector <1+, 1+>  for <a lot more money than local pays>

For example:
Transport 600m 3 to a Terran planet in <4,4> for 800,000 solars or something similar

Xenephon

I like that idea a lot. It requires actual colony recognition and such, but it is a solid idea.

Problem with "bring resources here for huge amount of cash" type of quests is they are open to, well, not abuse, but cheating. In a way. I have engines that take me across 12 LY in 25 or so minutes, if there was some planet that would buy a resource for much more than earth does, I could just buy the resource on earth for cheap, sell it there for profits, repeat, repeat... If the profit margins would be to small and I would just waste solars on  fuel doing it that way, then what is the point? Who would haul brass to -1 -3 to sell it for, lets say 65 solars a cubic meter, when he could just as well sell it on earth for 54? I mean, maybe he could make a tiny profit (assuming engines don't eat to much fuel) but it's to small of a thing to bother with. Even if I haul 6000 brass with the prices I specified, that would net me some 66000 extra solars.

Sorry Lazurus, but what does that have to do with my suggestion?

I thought that it would be good to see some longer range commissions from Earth to the outlying sectors.

I get it, you mean transporting something like a colonists and their equipment. Yea, I could see that being a useful money making tool. I thought you were talking about transporting resources, sorry.

I could see this as being useful... I would also suggest that transport missions are offered past +/-1 quads... part of the pay off would actually knowing where to take them...  A mission that doesnt say what quad it is in...just the system.. there are 700+ systems in the game now (WE NEED MORE!!!) would make things more interesting because even though I travel alot I still havent mapped more then 1/4 of the systems into my Nav Comp

Beep Beep! Move over, pedestrian. Stay out of the fast lane lol
Another concept for another thread though. I dont get how that sort of trading can be used for cheating though <shrug> You have earned your fast engines by research and building times (well most of us have) If you want to burn the required amounts of fuel required to travel fast to another system to make a buck quicker than the other player i dont see this as cheating. Perhaps i miss your point Lazarus.
If i knew of a planet buying brass in -1 -3 at a better price than at Sol, I WOULD. It would save me time and money having to come back into Sol to dump those cheap mats (Who mines anything but pirate nests lately anyway? Fewer risks than leaving modules on planets for raiders to find, bigger rewards vs time on materials earned, without having to use some huge and expensive to build module infrastructure builds, such as adv mining XXX or so)

But, getting back to the topic:

Good idea about the bulletin board commissions for sure.
They are handy the way they are at the moment for tiny starting missions with limited funds, fuel and navigational waypoints but I hardly (hmmmm read NEVER) look at them anymore because the time it takes for me to read them costs me more time/money than any of those missions are worth to me. Bulletin boards would work better for me if all the comms/sos/cargo missions were centralised rather than randomly scattered around the place (or actually, co-located in space AND on a board). That way you could select missions you wanted to attend and not waste valuable time running counters only to find someone beat you to the punch because you have a slower engine mount. Once you select a mission from off the board, the marker immediately vanishes in space as if you had picked it up there. Then its just a matter of get there at your own leisure rather than compete against the speed demons. (Yes, I am one of those demons. I suggest this for the slower, newer players)

An issue I can see as Aysle starts to suggest at is once you get out past mapped space, there is a whole load of unknown locations out there. To take on a mission without knowing where the heck it is would be pointless also. The mission board would have to have some ability to match your local database up with available missions for it to really be useful for adventurous wayfarers. Or, it would have to be able to add a waypoint into your nav computer. (dont like this idea though, as it could be used to be an armchair explorer by just taking on missions to increase your nav computer points of reference).
Hands up who already is travelling around with a bunch of comms missions that we have no idea where they belong? (I know i have, and i have a huge personal database of explored planets at my disposal, plus all my corp colleagues info as well) On that note, with a similar vein, it would be nice to see a comms mission tag with its quadrant in the description (or even a hyper-link plot button) to give us an idea which way to go next (stick a link next to the talk button). My poor navigation officer is more direction-challenged than ever lately, with multiple ships in multiple quadrants trying to coordinate multiple link ups and comms mission execution and pickup requests. It would be nice to plonk all missions belonging to quad 2,2 into one vessel to deploy, then another combat vessel deployed out to another quadrant etc.

Dadds