Frigate Missions

[Barmy Nimrod]

Has anyone seen missions at 4 or 5 stars? I have done so many missions I couldn't even estimate how many I've done. My main save has more than 1000 hours on it, all the frigates are S class and I did fairly well to find ones with great stats. I will usually have one or two 3 star on the list. but I still get mostly 1 star missions.

I'm not really fussed about it, they provide all the space bucks I'll ever need, it just seems odd that it looks like it should be possible, but they never show up.

[Atoz]

The best I've seen is 3. I recall reading somewhere 4 or 5 star missions don't exist yet.

[Lindy Bomber]

There are no mission above three stars. There have been many requests to add then.

[Bubba Fett]

On a somewhat related note, are you limited to a maximum of 5 frigate expeditions per day?
I put a few more fleet command rooms in my freighter hoping for more missions, but I'm still only shown 5.
(if it's capped at 5, I've got WAY too many frigates)

[Orion Invictus]

Originally posted by Bubba Fett:

On a somewhat related note, are you limited to a maximum of 5 frigate expeditions per day?
I put a few more fleet command rooms in my freighter hoping for more missions, but I'm still only shown 5.
(if it's capped at 5, I've got WAY too many frigates)

Yes.

[Lindy Bomber]

The mission board will update once a day at a particular time. If you send out five mission the board might update before they have all return, in which case you can send out more mission and gave more than five out at a time. However the mission board will always have five missions.

[Flash Hendricks]

You can have 6 or even 7 going at once, but (as @Lindy Bomber said) you have to send some on really long missions late in the day, and despatch new ones before they return. I've managed 6 a few times, but 7 only once.

[Cesar]

If you watch, the star rating changes as you add ships to it. This morning I had a one-star balanced mission that I put a combat and two trade C-Class ships in. The star rating changed to exploration and two stars. My fleet was one star

I haven't been paying much attention to this so I suspect that I had three star missions that morphed into four or five star missions based on the ships I selected.

I took this as meaning that I didn't have the right ship mix so I went out and bought two more expiration ships. It changed to two stars but I had a three-star fleet so I sent them off.

[Barmy Nimrod]

Originally posted by Cesar:

If you watch, the star rating changes as you add ships to it. This morning I had a one-star balanced mission that I put a combat and two trade C-Class ships in. The star rating changed to exploration and two stars. My fleet was one star

I haven't been paying much attention to this so I suspect that I had three star missions that morphed into four or five star missions based on the ships I selected.

I took this as meaning that I didn't have the right ship mix so I went out and bought two more expiration ships. It changed to two stars but I had a three-star fleet so I sent them off.

That star rating is the the fleet rating for the frigates you are sending. The mission difficulty ratting in at the top left of the window.

[Icewolf]

The missions are limited to 3 stars for a good reason.
To make 100% sure the frigates take no damage, your fleet rating has to be two stars above the mission rating.
If there were 5 stars missions, you would never know if your fleet barely achieves that rating or is totally overpowered.
Sure, HG could solve that by adding two more stars, but then people would start requesting 7 stars missions.

[Asmosis]

Since this is a new topic on it, does anyone know what triggers frigate missions to go from their original "short" mission times of 55mins - 4 hours up to the "normal" mission times of 1 hr - 28 hrs?

If you dont hire any new frigates and just keep the one that came with the freighter, the missions seem to stay at the original short length.

Alternatively, is this a toggle somewhere you can change with the save editor?

@Topic the mission interface displays star ratings up to 5 stars, so you know your in the 'safe' zone for not needing repairs. There's a bit more to it that Lindy pointed out to me at one point (and i've since forgotten) but as a rule of thumb 2+ star rating = no repairs.

[Barmy Nimrod]

Originally posted by Icewolf:

The missions are limited to 3 stars for a good reason.
To make 100% sure the frigates take no damage, your fleet rating has to be two stars above the mission rating.
If there were 5 stars missions, you would never know if your fleet barely achieves that rating or is totally overpowered.
Sure, HG could solve that by adding two more stars, but then people would start requesting 7 stars missions.

I never considered the fleet rating needing to be two stars higher than the mission rating. Now I have something new to play with on one of my newer saves. I don't recall having issues early on with sending fleets that were three star on three star missions. Sure I had a few damaged frigates but no failed missions or lost ships, if that's even possible.

My original question was just curiosity. I don't care if it ever changes. I spent a lot of time looking for specific colors, stats and class. Now that they are all S class, there's nothing more to do with them, other than send them on missions to collect space bucks.

Actually it could be fun to send fleets out that could be challenged and needing to do some work to repair, recover and maybe replace damaged frigates. Just sending out a battleship on row boat missions isn't a challenge, it's just another way to grind for space bucks.

[Asmosis]

Originally posted by Uranium235:

I never considered the fleet rating needing to be two stars higher than the mission rating. Now I have something new to play with on one of my newer saves. I don't recall having issues early on with sending fleets that were three star on three star missions. Sure I had a few damaged frigates but no failed missions or lost ships, if that's even possible.
.

If a frigate gets damaged twice, it's lost forever. It's pretty rare for the same frigate to have two separate damaging encounters on one mission but it can happen.

[Faceplant]

Originally posted by Icewolf:

The missions are limited to 3 stars for a good reason.
To make 100% sure the frigates take no damage, your fleet rating has to be two stars above the mission rating.
If there were 5 stars missions, you would never know if your fleet barely achieves that rating or is totally overpowered.
Sure, HG could solve that by adding two more stars, but then people would start requesting 7 stars missions.

Why do you want a game that 100% guarantees the outcome of an action? Once you've gotten your frigates up to s-class, (and it doesn't take long) it's just a matter of: make fuel, send any combination of ships out, wait a day, profit! No risk, all reward. Is that really what people want in a game?

[Icewolf]

Originally posted by Faceplant8:

Originally posted by Icewolf:

The missions are limited to 3 stars for a good reason.
To make 100% sure the frigates take no damage, your fleet rating has to be two stars above the mission rating.
If there were 5 stars missions, you would never know if your fleet barely achieves that rating or is totally overpowered.
Sure, HG could solve that by adding two more stars, but then people would start requesting 7 stars missions.

Why do you want a game that 100% guarantees the outcome of an action? Once you've gotten your frigates up to s-class, (and it doesn't take long) it's just a matter of: make fuel, send any combination of ships out, wait a day, profit! No risk, all reward. Is that really what people want in a game?

I think the repairs are meant to be annoying. So, overcoming the the need of repairs is a satisfying reward for itsself.
Sure, you have a point (no risk, no fun). But in the later game you don't need the resources from frigates missions anyway. Frigates missions are like many other tasks in NMS, they are fun for a while.

[Barmy Nimrod]

Originally posted by Asmosis:

Originally posted by Uranium235:

I never considered the fleet rating needing to be two stars higher than the mission rating. Now I have something new to play with on one of my newer saves. I don't recall having issues early on with sending fleets that were three star on three star missions. Sure I had a few damaged frigates but no failed missions or lost ships, if that's even possible.
.

If a frigate gets damaged twice, it's lost forever. It's pretty rare for the same frigate to have two separate damaging encounters on one mission but it can happen.

Question: This must be after you collect it?

If I look at the frigates page in the SE, on one save some of the frigates have lots of damage. Two have been damaged more than 25 times. They also have many failed missions, yet are S class. Some of that was before I collected them and maybe after. I have done repairs on this fleet, but I don't recall which ones.

Again, this is something I'm going to play with. It will be fun to see how this works, when the fleet is not overpowered for the mission.