This Needs some fixing..

@ DEV's Instance hopping in this context is when a player or group of players hop from 1 instance to another to avoid the 5-6 min reset timer between rounds.

1st this doesnt mean take away the ability to change instances!!

It means saying why are people doing this so MUCH?
Not ,lets stop those people from hopping.

Why do people hop?
Top reason to avoid the long interlude that clearly no one likes.
As a side effect this leads hoppers to a slight exploit, a round ends you hop into another instance thats half over, once that one ends, same...

So youve completed the defend mission, now wait until 30min minimum time per 3 missions is up (might wait 15 min if you hopped into half done missions, more if you hop into some 7/9 or 8/9's

Instead of trying to block people from exploiting instance hopping with the 30 min timer, lets go back to the source of this problem...

The rest period between rounds
It's too long by far - Remove it entirely or if its needed in the code to reset then cut it down to 10 sec.
People dont need such a long break and it causes lack of team work, teams breaking up at the end of every round and exploitive instance hopping.

When people need to take an afk, they can autofollow another player, if they die they click the respawn when they get back, no need to impose this long rest period on everyone.

By taking out the rest period it will lead to these positive changes.
Instance hopping will almost disappear < why bother hopping if a new round is starting right away?
Teams will play together for much longer periods of time, actually giving you the time to get to know fellow players. < This is very lacking atm all due to most players avoiding teams, because they know they will soon hop...

I really would have no motivation to hop, if the instance would reset and restart immediately, and with the none stop hopping atm im sure im not alone who thinks this.

Lastly all this hopping from instance to instance just serves to remind everyone about the instances themselves, the longer you stay in a zone, the less you feel like your in an instance....

my 2 cents

i personally feel it doesn't matter. the sector defend missions are on a timer. if you complete them too fast then you will still have to wait for the timer to cool down to take another one. to me, that feature included alone in itself makes instance hopping a non-issue.

This was actually the solution they implemented. You were able to redo the mission instantly in beta, a very fast way to level with hopping.

I also think it is OK as it is now.

I don't see the problem here either. I instance hop all the time, because neither me nor anybody I'm playing with wants to hang around for six minutes dodging enemy ships we don't get credit for. If people want to power level on the DSE's, that's fine with me (as long as they then don't come to the forums and complain about how boring the game is or it only took a week of playing 18 hours a day to hit RA5 :p)