Introduction

There are many types of missions available to the player. The following are repeatable (AKA "generic").

Several are duplicates with different titles but it is possible they have different requirements in terms of reputation and/or license ownership. The table below characterises ones that have been identified so far but it's incomplete so please feel free to help fill it in.

Many generic missions are found in the Mission Bulletin Board System (BBS) but some, from across the difficulty spectrum, are not found in the BBS and must instead be found by flying near stations to find their icons. Generally speaking, those hidden ones are more shady in nature (an exception being "My ship left me behind!"). Note: hidden missions are available in the BBS once its icon has been found and scanned.

Available missions (some tips are below the table)

*  Diplomatic Aid missions have a video listed here.

** These missions were unintuitive prior to 4.0 but seem better now (if needed, see below for 3.61-era info)

Station Defence missions

Hostile S+M ships tend to arrive via highways or super highways, whilst L and XL targets boost in. All hostiles are hell-bent on attacking the station so best arrive ASAP or you risk missing the action. As of v4.0, the payment is separated into a base reward and a bonus payment in order to minimise the effect of letting stations do all the killing.

With Xenon station defence missions the difficulty is an extremely rough approximation. On normal difficulty there is almost always at least 1 K L fighter and 3 P M fighters independent of mission difficulty. Higher difficulty missions can have anywhere from 2 K L capships to 16 P M fighters. It is worth noting that the fighter wing spawns are extremely biased towards P M fighters, which are the toughest M fighter and deal shield-penetrating damage. Unless the player brings along at least 2 to 3 XL fighter ships it is recommended that the K L capships be left to the station defences.

Be careful around "Badlands Colony" and "Core Dig" stations. They don't have weapons, so if you start a station defence mission for them, you will have to kill all enemies yourself unless a friendly NPC patrol happens by..

Patrol Missions

This is similar to a chain of station defence missions in that you'll visit multiple zones and the various hostiles that may appear need killing. As with station defence missions, the payment is now separated into a base reward and a bonus payment.

Assassination missions

Typically harder and better-paid than station defence or patrol missions. The targets tend to be located relatively far from stations (~20 km is common), which generally gives the player of time to reach the target before any local ships that may be present. At higher difficulties, capital ship targets will often escorted by multiple fighters and 1 or 2 other capitals. Makes for an exciting battle, and often provides good opportunities for boarding.

Ship for sale missions

Small and Medium ships will occasionally be offered for sale as part of a mission. You'll need a Pilot to claim the ship and you'll need to use Long Range Scan mode (Sidebar-1-5) to find it somewhere in a temporary zone in empty space. Tips:

• The abandoned ships have the same ping colour as asteroids  so it is easiest to find them in zones without rocks.
• The mission marker disappears at the 50km mark. If you order a ship to your location and select it, you can use it's distance to help you move forward 

Ware shortage missions (v3.61-era notes; 4.0 seems to have improved this: see http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?p=4592177#4592177)

You're asked to deliver a specific quantity of <ware> to a station, but this order won't appear in the Trade Window until the mission is accepted. The station in question will probably have a trade offer up for the same ware, but the mission will not complete unless you fulfil the mission's demand (this prevents you auto-completing the mission with a suitable trade that's already on it's way: you'll have to set up or cancel & re-set-up a new trade to fulfil the mission's requirements).

If you don't have a Trade Computer, you'll need to fly within 500m of the trade port to uncover the buy order.

If you have (or can get) access to that ware for the mission's required amount through your own stations or discounts from NPCs (or simply stockpiling), take the mission first, then immediately set your tradeships to gather & deliver <ware> to take advantage of the trade bonus. If you don't do this immediately, the trade offers will update (as the mission commits you to fulfilling <ware> requirements, at a bonus) & you'll lose that opportunity..

(You can currently use <pause> as a slightly cheaty method to gain the maximum amount of profitsss from the latter scenario: <pause> allows you to scroll through & apply actions to a trade or property screen but doesn't update game events (such as movement, combat.. or trade offers!). If you close the screen you'll need to reactivate <pause> to gain access to another (or the same) screen)

Sometimes when there's an existing order for the same ware, the mission order won't appear in the trade window and you'll only see the existing order (normally for a different quantity). If that happens, try making a sale to the existing order and the mission one may appear. If that works, quickly cancel the trade via you ship's info screen; hopefully the mission order will now be present alongside the original (cancelled) trade order. HINT: select <mission station's> details from the map & look at their ware requirements: it's often easier than scrolling through the whole trade screen, even using the filter..

If the existing and <mission> trade orders are for the same quantity of ware, it becomes trickier. In such cases, it's probably best to try to fill both orders to be sure. This is another good reason for having a network of Trade Agents so you can check for existing offers for the ware before accepting a mission (you may gain rep but lose cash by accepting & completing a bad deal). At least the trade offer missions don't currently expire (they're not time-limited), but you'll likely lose profits by not fulfilling their /complete/ requirements ASAP.