Horizons Breaking down the failure of Passenger missions

[fsdraconis]

This is just the basic math of the problem.

The following is a mission I am looking at.

A vip group of 5 wish to go 20,938 light years. (I rounded a lot in the math.)

They are willing to pay just under 25 mil.

With an average of 18 light years a jump taking about 80 seconds per normal sun with honking for exploration data. Not counting neutron stars and white dwarfs. It would take 52 hours of constant game play. No pauses, no breaks. To go there and come back.

20938 / 18 = 1167 jumps to get there and another 1167 jumps to get back. So roughly 2334 jumps round trip at 80 seconds each (again just an estimation) equals around 186,720 seconds. 186720 / 60 = 3112 minutes. 3112 / 60 = about 52 hours of constant gameplay.

If you play 4 hours a day for 20 days you will get this done in time with time to spare. That is about 80 hours of time leaving a little less than 30 hours of overage.

This is all based on playing the game non stop for 4 hours a day. No work, no food, no bathroom breaks accounted for during those 4 hours. Which also does not take into account for navigating any said obstacles either such as groups of suns you need to fly around.

Remember now, this is paying less than 25 million credits. You will still need to invest a massive amount of time just to get this done. This is not just casual game play. This comes down to just traveling. Taking no time for sights, or anything else.

This particular trip will pay out around 481,000 credits at 52 hours of effort if you keep a hard schedule of game play. If you take longer for any reason your will be paid less per hour.

This trip is not even to the furthest places passenger missions are offering. Sure, you could potentially stack more missions going to the same location if you are lucky finding them. All of these long trips start off with the same maximum of time 20 days, 23 hours, 59 minutes.


So in summary if you want to go exploring. These missions might be incentive to go. But if you do it for the money these are a very large waste of time. The same time spent trading will yield better credits. Will it be boring playing all that time trading? Sure, but so will sticking to someone else's exploration schedule.

How much is your time worth to you? A lot of this is really just my opinion and the simple math I have thrown at this model here. If you have spent the time souping up a better ship to do the above you may spend less time traveling. But you will still see hundreds and hundreds of jumps 1 after another and so on. Even with neutron stars and an engineered ship you may scratch out a few hundred light years here and there. But consider your time spent just to earn 25 million credits.

For me I do not see this being a valuable use of my time. Frontier widely does not take the player's game time into consideration. If you only play on the weekend for 4 hours a day for instance. The above mission is impossible.

 

[Wood67]

Yes, but I wouldn't scrap those missions entirely because I think they do have their niche. Timeframe should be increased to probably 60d, and then maybe it's attractive enough for someone who wants a little extra cashflow if they want to go exploring on someone else's itinerary. On top of that 25M there's also the exploration data you'd have to sell.

I haven't done a deep space explore yet. Thinking of taking a casual part in the CG to see if it's interesting. Not sure I'm quite ready for the excitement (or loneliness) of a Macedonia/Chiggy scenario though

 

[Shadowdancer]

Remember now, this is paying less than 25 million credits.

You are forgetting about the ~20–30 Million credits you will easily make by selling exploration data.

If this is not "a valuable use of your time", then maybe—just maybe—consider that those long-range missions may be made for other players. Not everything in a game must be obtainable to you. There are short-range missions that will fit your schedule.

 

[fsdraconis]

I totally agree that a longer time frame would be much better. But I think that the valuation should be better. Trying to earn reputation for short hauls with the passenger missions have their benefits too.

But.... This was more about the area they are failing in.

I took 2 missions early on from an ally paying 33.4 million each to go 12,000 light years away with a jump range averaging the above. About 18 light years across the whole trip. Some were more, some were less. I made just under 78 million in total. If it was not for getting my name on a couple Neutron stars I would of felt like I did not get much out of it. But if I had done the same work just trading I would of made I believe about 4 times that in profits as long as the route remained profitable. But it was really really really boring. It was work. Nothing but work. I could not even take the time to 'enjoy' seeing my first black hole. I just wanted to do something else and I was on a schedule.

 

[fsdraconis]

You are forgetting about the ~20–30 Million credits you will easily make by selling exploration data. If this is not "a valuable use of your time", then maybe—just maybe—consider that those long-range missions may be made for other players. Not everything in a game must be obtainable to you. There are short-range missions that will fit your schedule.

I do not expect everyone to fit in my group. Far from it. That is why I summarized it as my opinion based on my math. I also did not "forget" about the exploration data sell. I took a trip and made it back. I turned in my missions, and then spent a long time turning in exploration data. I got to see pages not clear out while trying to sell data. I had to log out and back in multiple times in the process.

I left the argument open ended. I left the room for varying opinions. No one has to agree with me. Everyone is welcome to their opinion. But this thread was about my opinion on where they are failing. Large groups of players in the forums have been stating they already got rid of their passenger cabins and went back to trading after the recent reduction in payment. If you enjoy being hard pressed to go out and come back with that time frame then by all means go for it. But that does not mean a group of people that feel like I do are not also here in the game. Including a group of players that will not be able to spend that much time because real life is as much a part of our lives and time.

If the game does not value our time we spend in the game. It is being designed that way.

 

[CMDR MERANGO]

You are forgetting about the ~20–30 Million credits you will easily make by selling exploration data.

If this is not "a valuable use of your time", then maybe—just maybe—consider that those long-range missions may be made for other players. Not everything in a game must be obtainable to you. There are short-range missions that will fit your schedule.

It was an example of how the recent updates have impacted negatively to the game. See you when you get back! CMIV

 

[Siarl]

I did the same math in my head and realised straight away it wasn't for me (someone with a life outside of ED (no offence)). Really I thought the passenger missions were good with how they had them before, they actually helped me to finally afford an Annaconda. For the casual player, its nice to be able to earn rewards without committing your family time to a game...

 

[Old Guard]

Yes the bottom seems to have dropped out of the passenger business. Pity I have a large shiny Beluga with lovely luxury and first class cabins all ready to go.
I have a plan. Cabins are going out - limpets and cargo space are going in. The Beluga mining corporation is now in business. Not sure how it will work out, a bit like taking a limousine to a quarry but hey ho!

 

[rrobes]

I am at Sag A* as I write and undertook the trip without passenger(s) on purpose. To me, they are a hindrance rather than an incentive as the CR they provide and the mission time given are not conducive to an enjoyable trip. It took several days of some multiple hour sessions to get here, and I totally agree with the premise that if your are a casual gamer you do not want to spend your time jumping.

While on a long distance jaunt, you are limited in what side activities you can participate, looking for terrestrial worlds, dropping down on a planet in an SRV for a jumponium hunt, or if you bring a fighter, some stunt flying. If you want to see a "nearby" nebula, that is a trip onto itself. And the most important aspect of long exploration, don't damage your ship beyond repair, because "in space, no one can hear you scream". This may not be the fun someone may be looking to experience.

The old, worn out, trite responses of "you don't have to do this or that", "quit complaining, whine, whinge" etc. ignore the fact that this is a legitimate gripe. I have 1900hrs+ in the game and have sampled a fair share of the activities offered.

The tools to knock travel times are easy enough to implement, FD has already started, with engineering, neutrons and ship transfers, to nibble at the problem, but what takes days to accomplish needs to be reduced further (wormholes, dimensional gates, SF literature/movies are full of devices). Besides there is scientific progress, it currently happens in-game.

The purists are going to scream, they always do and have a right to do so, but if this game was only for them, then the game wouldn't exist.

 

[John Hand]

so very true.

These missions do not give nearly enough money to do them, and "exploration" data should NEVER be taken into consideration for payouts. 25mil? Hell I can make that in one sweep of missions from a civil war system without swapping instances to get more missions. I can even make that just randomly bounty hunting at a nav beacon in less time. There are a lot of other ways to make that money, even with the exploration data taken into consideration, that take less time and are less suicide inducing/game quitting.

Passenger missions are cool and all, but the distances traveled need to be within reason here. 1,000LY is about the limit a normal player will go with any type of ship, for reference, that is going from Sol to Sothis and back in terms of # of jumps and LY.

I have yet to find any mass transit ones, where outfitting a conda or T9 with a ton of economy slots would work. Short hop missions going To and From a Warzone would be a good type of mission to see.