Military Missions

Following is an overview of standard military mission types issued by all factions:

Mining is the basis of the off-planet economy, and a significant prop for the recovering dirtside economies, too. All the factions obtain valuable commodities from space mining operations that are either used directly by station industries or are shipped planetside. It's by far cheaper to get your resources for space-based industries in space, than to have them orbited from a planetary surface.

Raid missions strike a double blow: resources the enemy needs for their military and commercial efforts are taken away, and your own faction in turn gains.

When a Raid mission is accepted, you will be directed to visit an ore depot facility belonging to an opposing faction. At that location, you will transfer ore to your hold as if to convey it to one of their faction stations for processing, but you will simply deliver it to your own faction instead.

Courier missions are extraordinarily simple. Upon acceptance, a secure data disc is placed in your cargo hold. Deliver it to the destination station. Upon arrival, the docking crew will offload the disc and direct it to the receiving agency.

Should anything untoward occur to the disc during transit, such as explosive decompression of your ship's hull, your mission will be considered a failure. Such incidents, of course, garner negative attention from your superiors in your faction's military organization, which is generally not good for your career.

Military Patrol missions perform the crucial task of factional beacon maintenance. Whether in home faction space, or projecting power into unregulated or foreign sectors, seeing to it that beacons are tuned to your faction's frequency has become an increasingly useful objective. A BCU is mandatory equipment for this mission type.

A military Patrol will provide a list of sectors in which you must interact with each beacon by flying your ship through the rings. Wherever the beacon is not properly tuned, you must ensure the beacon is tuned to your faction's frequency. Should the beacon already be tuned, interact with the beacon as normal to confirm and clear the target sector from your itinerary. If the beacon was due to lose its lock, your interaction will re-tune it and you will receive credit. The in-flight map is always useful in tracking the progress of a Patrol.

Espionage missions involve delivery of secure data from a covert operative in foreign space to one of our faction stations. Your mission description will direct you to a specific facility where the agent is either present or has been able to arrange for an automated transmission keyed to your transponder. Your ship's computer will mark the objective building in your HUD.

Docking with the building will transfer the required data to your cargo hold, generally on a data storage disc similar to that used for secure Courier missions.

Failure, always to be avoided, can occur once the data has been placed aboard your ship. Should you lose the disc in transit, or your ship be destroyed, you will have failed. Unfortunate incidents occurring before you obtain the data will generally permit you another opportunity to reach your objective, but be cautious that you do not alert the enemy to your intended destination or you increase the risk of interception by hostile forces.

During periods of open hostilities, factions will issue Combat Missions against enemy military pilots. Pilots accepting these missions will receive orders to search for and destroy one or more vessels of a target faction meeting the mission criteria. These are by far the riskiest of all missions.

Three subtypes of Combat missions are generally available: Type 1 missions permit any military-registry ship of the opposing faction to be downed. Type 2 missions require Medium Fighter ships or higher (Med. Fighter, Fighter, Hvy. Fighter, or Bomber) to be destroyed. Type 3 missions require elimination of Heavy Fighters or Bombers.

Pilots will be rewarded for up to five (5) qualifying kills per mission, though only one is necessary to complete the mission. Rewards are commensurate with the ease of locating a qualifying target.

Reconnaissance missions are among the most important missions from the perspective of a faction's ranking military officers. Should you choose to accept one of these missions, you will make it possible to gather real-time information about enemy movements in the sector you monitor.

At the time you accept a Recon Mission, necessary mission equipment will be placed in your ship's hold. Should this equipment be lost prior to your visit to the target sector, or before you have been physically in the sector and transmitting for the requisite length of time, your mission will be deemed a failure.

Intel information from all active Recon Mission relays, as well as the tuned portions of the beacon network, is available to factional Optimus military pilots using the military intelligence map overlay.