Frigate Expedition Times

[Jallad]

Only been playing the game for about a week now and only done frigate expeditions last few days, so not sure if this is normal. But I've noticed all the expedition times have quadrupled. Short missions used to take an hour while longer ones were 4-5 hours. Now I'm seeing the shortest mission taking 4 hours and the longest 21 hours. Was there a sneaky update, is there some hidden mechanic where first few expeditions are lightning fast, or did I just get bad rng?

[Ǥɾᴧᴤʆᴧᵯᴧ]

thats normal and you didn't see the 28hours yet :)
buuut
you can speed this up with fleet upgrades (max 30%)

[Jallad]

Alright then, I just thought it was weird how all the times just seemed to be multiplied by four. At least the rewards seem to scale with time

[Faceplant]

The rewards scale with time, and the experience for your frigates also scales.

FWIW, I recommend always buying cheap C-class frigates, since they will very quickly become S-class. I pretty much ignore everything except price and fuel efficiency.

I also try to load up my longest missions with as many lower-class ships as possible without making the expedition too weak. I fill the longest missions first and start picking from the bottom of the list.

[Mr. Bufferlow]

You can make upgrades to speed up mission time. Probably the "hidden" secret is that many of the frigates provide a duration bonus. I shop for those when setting my fleet. Up to 3% per frigate off the elapsed time. Not as good as the crafted ones, but can get you under 24 hours in a pinch.

I rename mine with the percentage time reduction for easy fleet building on a long mission.

[Galadhlinn]

Something happened to frigate missions (imo) somewhere around Frontiers or Cartographers. There used to be a decent variety of missions each day with only the occasional "lumping" of mission lengths and types. Since then, on multiple saves, I've found that getting 3 combat and 3 balanced (or whatever lump) happens all the time. Same with mission lengths. Used to be we'd get one 28 and or 21, a couple of 5 hour and the rest in the middle somewhere. Now I see three 21+ hours on the same day all the time or three 5 hours. With regards to time, I mainly wish they would do away with the 28 hour ones, as even with the freighter upgrades (from derelict freighters) that reduce mission time, the 28s are still longer than 24. this means if I send my missions before I log off for the night, those 28s will not be done the next night and pushes them really into a two day mission, so I can't send out all 6 missions every day. The bummer with lumping mission types is if I want to send out all 6, I need to have like 4+ of every class. Prior to the change, frigate missions worked much better. Now I still dump a ton of time into getting my freighter and frigates dialed out and find that many days I don't even send them out due to what's offered which is sad.

[Faceplant]

Maybe it's the timezone that I'm in, but I never have any issue with the 28 hour missions. The new missions open up around 5pm, and there's always enough ships available to fill the very long missions. If there was a very long mission the previous day, they come in in a few hours, and I send them back out.

Once the frigates are all s-class I find that the type of mission doesn't really matter much either.

[Galadhlinn]

For sure my play style has something to do with it. I tend to always deal with my frigate missions right before I log off for the night. If a mission I sent out from the previous night isn't back, then I'm sol for sending out those frigates that night.

Also I have always had three of each type of frigate except combat which I have four. I only send support frigates on 3 star missions over 14 hours to save fuel. More of each type would solve that problem.

So here's what I'm finding regarding once my frigates are S-class. Yes, they are always successful even when I don't send the proper type (combat for combat, explorer for explorer, etc.). But the rewards are much better when the frigate type matches the mission type. If the match is way off, it's not uncommon for a mission to have a lot of stages (see log mission time stamps) that pay nothing at all, and that makes the total mission payout much lower.

For sure I could make changes, like dealing with frigate missions earlier in the day and then checking again for the long missions, or getting five of each type of frigate. So far, I'm content with being disappointed with the changes. : P