I will open with a disclaimer and acknowledge that I have been critical of the missions system, criticism which I stand by, and I have been critical of the mining for elysium mission, criticism which I stand by. That said, some good has come out of it: Builders have found a new use for construction. Lately I have seen builders setting up PMBs at the drill drops, helping their team mates easily spawn in and collect the pack of certs from the afk mission. It defends them with auto turrets while they go get snacks, refill their drinks, hit the can, you know, things people do while scoring the mining for elysium mission. I tried my hand at this. After I scored the mission, I then grabbed an ant, and set up a small PMB at the drill drop I had just scored. I did so at the start of an alert, and the drill never dropped at my location again. I was careful not to build on the exact location of the drill, just in case that mattered. Therefore, I propose a new building called the Elysium Refinery. All it would do is increase the probability of the drill dropping at the affected location. If there are...say...12? potential locations of the drill on each continent (I actually don't know), and we imagine the game is rolling a 12 sided die to decide which one to land at, the existence of the Elysium refinery could add 2 sides to the die, making it a 14 sided die with 3 of the sides being for my drop location instead of 1. If other builders do the same on other locations then even more sides get added to the die. Now, getting rid of the mission system, or at least the afk mission, and coming up with a more effective way to deliver certs to new players would be even better, but if we're going to keep these things at least add some player agency to it.
I've never understood why there isn't more rewards and celebration attached to the battle rank system. In rpgs, when you hit a new level, a big graphic plays with a sound effect to let everyone know that you leveled. If you want to feed more certs to low level players, give them cert/implant packages when they level up as opposed to these random **** missions that don't reflect anything in the game play
