The much-loved interplanetary box delivery missions don't seem to have returned in 3.11. What are the plans for these going forward?asked by SteveCC

Well, I'll let Luke talk on this one as well, but it comes down to my direction on this. So it's really the way that we're rebuilding them and adjusting them. The way that I talked to the guys is we wanted to make sure that we have local ones working first, and then from there we go to interplanetary, and then obviously once we open Pyro, then we go interstellar. So that was basically my direction to the guys, and then Luke can talk through any of the other adjustments as well.

We knew we had to make it modular. We had to rewrite the delivery missions to work with the upcoming dynamic mission system. It's not using it right now, but in future...

It's built to use it, though.

Yeah, the missions are built to use it. They're made so that the game can pick an item and then figure out where that item wants to go, because the places produce and consume things. You'll also be able to say how far away, how difficult is this mission? Do you go to one planet and then just deliver to its moons, or do you have to deliver three packages to three different planets? How dangerous are those places? How dangerous is the package? Is it a timed package? That kind of thing. But we had to start simply. And first, Todd got us to look at real-world logistics and try and emulate those, because you said the word hauling in the question, right? And no one hauls one small box, unless it's a really, really valuable or necessary piece that must be delivered, this one box, in time from one planet to another. That doesn't work out. It's not efficient. So having so many of these missions where you just carry some grain from one planet to another, one box at a time, it doesn't make sense. And I do appreciate that what it represents is kind of a hauling mission, even though it's just one box. I do understand that. But we started on this kind of local: you're a guy who collects three boxes at a time. Even now, it's still not entirely correct. We would want you to pick up three boxes or drop off three boxes somewhere that makes sense, like a rest stop. But the rest stops, they're not fun right now. They need a new location. They're not fun for collecting three boxes and putting them on your ship one at a time. We need a location nearer to your ship to do that. So imagine you have that. You pick up those boxes from a depot, somewhere like a rest stop, and then you scatter those boxes. You drop them off at outposts. Then it starts to make sense.

It's more like a post office delivery person or a bike messenger kind of thing. So that was the idea behind it. And then obviously for the interplanetary and interstellar ones, then you're starting to get into the larger logistics.

Yeah, true hauling. Or we are going to have missions where you take one box to a different planet, but this is going to be timed. You have to get this there. This is important.

Think of a heart transplant or something like that.