I noticed that the generic auroran/family duels were not showing up, so i checked into it. Everything checked out fine for having them available (ship type, legal status, combat rating, availability bits). I was able to get them by setting the avail random to 100% and they generally appeared all the time (there might have been an exception i can't remember). I returned them to their normal 15% and virtually never showed up (once i got two in a row in a tekel syst but no more). I would go to a bar, leave the planet, land, go to the bar again anywhere from 10-30 times in a row for each family + auroran systems and not receive any duel misns.

I changed the avail random to 16, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60% for different families and tested. I would get the duel twice or three times in a row, and after that i could not get another no matter how many times i tried. I had a little success with traveling to other spobs, and reloading the pilot, but nothing reliable. These misns don't set any bits that i'm aware of that would prevent them from being offered again. And getting the misn a couple times in a row and never again is very strange.

At least one other misn was acting up similarly. The test rage gunboat 597 set at a default of 40% would never show up. I set it to 100% and got it.

I tried to get them with all plugs removed and got a duel once and never again. I also tried flying around for a couple months in case there's some unmentioned, unlisted time delay that nova implements. No luck. Anyone have a solution or experienced something like this?

Thanks for any help

15% chance means that only 1 out of 7 times you try should you get it. Even then, EVN's random functionality has a nasty habit of giving you a mission a lot in a row, or not at all. And as far as I know, missions only get re-evaluated when you either 1) Abort a mission, 2) Land on a different planet, 3) reload the pilot, 4) complete a mission.

@skylark, on 06 October 2011 - 01:50 AM, said in misn acting very weird in way its offered:

I would go to a bar, leave the planet, land, go to the bar again anywhere from 10-30 times in a row for each family + auroran systems and not receive any duel misns.

The problem is you didn’t read the Nova Bible.

Nova Bible 1.0.A, on Jan 24, 2006 - 01:49 PM, said:

AvailRandom     A randomization factor, to ensure that some missions aren't
                  available all the time. Mission randomizing values are
                  recalculated each time you warp into a system.
                100          always available
                1-99         available this % of the time

In case you missed it, “Mission randomizing values are recalculated each time you warp into a system.” Also when you load a pilot file.

I strongly recommend that you read the Nova Bible.

Ah. Thanks a lot, that seems to have sorted it out. I was so caught up in checking the requirements and parameters for the misns being offered that I didn't check on how nova handles random calculations.