(Question asked for U18: The Second Dream.)
Rarely, after completing an alert, I get no end-of-mission reward (ie. credits and resource/mod/egg/blueprint). This has been happening since U16: Sanctuary, but it seems to have intensified around U17: Echoes of the Sentient.
The problem is, there doesn't seem to be a pattern for this behavior:
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I thought this was an anti-idling measure: the first time this happened, several updates ago, on a Nightmare Mod alert the other player did all the work; but later it also started happening on the ones where I was visibly active (hosting Exterminate alert and killing 25% of enemies before anyone else joined in) and not happening on ones where I did almost nothing,
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after a streak of 3 archwing alerts with no rewards, I thought that this was bug specific to archwing, but then I got a couple Working-as-Intended ones with a couple of no-reward ones mixed in,
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there's this one answer from U9 that says you lose credit reward if you don't reach Extraction in time, but I have observed on many occasions that this was patched out – and in most alerts where I got no rewards, I did reach the extraction,
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and, for the sake of completion, this occurred when I was doing these alerts for the first time – I know that you can't get a reward twice if somebody doing it for the first time taxis you to the mission.
Is there a feature that's causing this, or is this a genuine bug?
Best Answer
As far as "end-of-mission" rewards go, from experience and experimentation, you should get all the end mission rewards if you don't quit them mission, but you won't get the credit bonus if you don't reach extraction.
In the case of alerts, staying dead or not reaching extraction might mean you won't get your rewards! (I didn't test this recently because of how the last update let you have 4 lives per mission and I try very hard to stick to that number)
If you ended up an alert alive, reaching extraction and you still haven't got your reward (doing the mission for the first time ever) there's a tiny chance your reward box is lagging to show the rewards (see if you REALLY didn't receive the thing in your inventory) and, in last case, record those special missions until you get that unintended effect and post it either on the bug reports forums or open a support ticket.
As a last note, you are probably aware, but don't confuse alerts with invasions and faction fights where you need to do the missions three times and wait until the node battle ends to get your reward.
Hope I gave you additional information to sum up with your experiments!