It is hard for the player to tell their current progress on the core storyline. For example:

• How many core missions have I completed?
• How many do I need to complete to progress?
• I'm I done with the core missions in this system?
• Where do I find the next core mission?

Mission Screen

We could solve a lot of these problems by adding more info to the missions screen. Here's a proposal:

• We treat mission arcs specially. We show a mission arc as a large tile in the list.
• The tile appears as soon as the player accepts any mission in the mission arc and stays even after the arc has completed (though it sorts to the end).
• The tile shows:
• An image representing the mission arc.
• The name of the mission arc.
• The current mission title (as a sub-title).
• The current state of the arc, including how many missions completed, failed, skipped, and remaining.
• The description summarizes the entire arc and ends with instructions on what to do next.
• After a mission arc is completed, we leave it in the list, but gray it out and show it as completed.

Previous Ideas

• Each mission arc should have a major entry in the mission screen. For each mission arc we show the number of missions completed (x out of y) and the current status (what the player has discovered and what they need to do). We also add an icon and a title for the arc.
• Include all completed missions in the mission screen.
• Some show placeholders for core missions, which unlock as the player receives them. At minimum this lets the player know how many missions there are. We could also have some text on locked missions to hint about how to progress. We could do this in the Missions screen.
• We could show placeholders on the galactic map, pointing to systems that have a core mission. For example, maybe the Point Juno system is highlighted in some way, and clicking on it shows some text (rumors) about the mission there. Once completed, the text shows the result of the mission. This would help the player know where to go for the next mission. [Of course, we wouldn't necessary show every mission, just the core missions.]
• We could title each core mission. For example, when the player gets the mission to escort Fiona's transport, we could show the title, "Episode 1: Fiona" or something. This would mark the core missions and give the player a sense of progress.
• We need more rumors to point the player to core missions. For example, if there is a core mission in a given system, there should be rumors to point the player to the right place to get the mission. In some cases we might point players to a deeper system for the next mission.