Passenger missions are something I have been really looking forward to since the first release of ED and I am very happy that this mechanic will finally be introduced in release 2.2.
I am also very glad that FD sticked to their initial plan to have different classes of cabins (economy, first class, luxury, anything else?), which I find is a very nice mechanic to distinguish dedicated passenger vessels like the Orca and Beluga from other ships and give them more importance compared to all non-passenger ships than the traditional attributes like speed, jump range etc. would have implied. IMHO, different classes of cabins will also help to distinguish passenger missions more from just relabelled cargo runs.
One thing to give the whole thing even more personality would be if we could actually see those individual cabins in the outfitting screen! It would be awesome if FDs talented 3D artists could create some static views of those cabins so that we see stuff like this when we add the cabins to our ships in outfitting:
I think this would give us a great feeling of how our ships are equipped, it would give the whole mechanic some additional flavour!
Now, I also think those cabins being 3D modeled will be pretty much guaranteed eventually, once we get space legs to get out of our pilot chairs and walk around our ships. Therefore I hope this idea might be more realistic than it initially might sound!
One other thing that could follow would be that with installing a passenger cabin, a ship also gets access to a "cabin camera", that would give us the same view of the cabins we get in outfitting. When passengers are on board, we could see them lounging in their cabins and could even more support the feeling of a passenger cruiser, put the character creator to use and further support the feeling of a living an breathing galaxy with actual humans beings in it!
What do you guys say? Is this a good idea or should I stop dreaming?
I am also very glad that FD sticked to their initial plan to have different classes of cabins (economy, first class, luxury, anything else?), which I find is a very nice mechanic to distinguish dedicated passenger vessels like the Orca and Beluga from other ships and give them more importance compared to all non-passenger ships than the traditional attributes like speed, jump range etc. would have implied. IMHO, different classes of cabins will also help to distinguish passenger missions more from just relabelled cargo runs.
One thing to give the whole thing even more personality would be if we could actually see those individual cabins in the outfitting screen! It would be awesome if FDs talented 3D artists could create some static views of those cabins so that we see stuff like this when we add the cabins to our ships in outfitting:
Economy Class | First Class | Luxury Class |
![]() | ![]() | ![]() |
I think this would give us a great feeling of how our ships are equipped, it would give the whole mechanic some additional flavour!
Now, I also think those cabins being 3D modeled will be pretty much guaranteed eventually, once we get space legs to get out of our pilot chairs and walk around our ships. Therefore I hope this idea might be more realistic than it initially might sound!
One other thing that could follow would be that with installing a passenger cabin, a ship also gets access to a "cabin camera", that would give us the same view of the cabins we get in outfitting. When passengers are on board, we could see them lounging in their cabins and could even more support the feeling of a passenger cruiser, put the character creator to use and further support the feeling of a living an breathing galaxy with actual humans beings in it!
What do you guys say? Is this a good idea or should I stop dreaming?