The Colonia Prison Taxi Guide
What is it?
Colonia is around 22000 Ly from Sol - using the Colonia Prison Taxi allows you to complete the journey by only travelling <13000 Ly, saving you over a third of the trip
How does it work?
When you commit a crime you get sent to the nearest prison. If you are inside the bubble this won't be far, but out of the bubble it can be quite a way - and if you commit the crime in the right place the prison can be 'ahead' of you on your journey. This allows you to skip forward to the prison and continue your journey from there.
What are the downsides?
- You need to die a few times[see Note 2]
- You can't carry cargo
- You need to sell your cartographic finds during the trip.
- You need to have enough money to afford several rebuys, so it's more useful in cheaper ships.
- It's one way (or at least I haven't bothered to work out if there is a reverse route), though you have the option of suicidewindering back [see Note 1].
- Don't use this route unless you are comfortable with the rebuy process - if you mess up you can lose your ship and all your modules.
- The route doesn't go through the best Neutron areas, so if you want to go direct then it may be faster to just use NS plotting.
- It is slower than the Neutron Highway (but less challenging to follow) (this probably isn't true!)
Method
- Fly to Smojue PZ-R c4-5 : CB-8 Tamandua (3003 Ly from Sol)
- Sell your exploration data, and bonds or bounties and any exploration data you have as it will all vanish otherwise - you are about to die. Materials and data are fine, you will keep them. You will also lose all cargo.
- Take off, hover over a different landing pad, let the station kill you after the 30 second loitering warning [see Note 4].
- You are now in Prison in Omega Sector OD-S b4-0
- Fly to Plaa Aescs QD-T c3-28 : CB-21 Ragnar's Rest (1838 Ly)
- Again sell everything, then allow the station to kill you
- You are now in prison in Nyeajaae VU-Y a27-9
- Fly to Skaudai CH-B d14-34 (4139 Ly)
- Again sell everything, then allow the station to kill you
- You are now in prison in Stuelou KT-F d12-2023
- Fly to Eoch Flyuae ZU-Y b17-16 to CB-50 The Green Star (3510 Ly)
- Again sell everything, then allow the station to kill you
- You are now in prison in Eol Prou LW-L c8-127 - Colonia is around 3 Ly away
As you can see from the flying distances (above) you have flown 12.5k Ly, but travelled 22k Ly.
Extras
You'll be claiming your exploration finds often at Colonia Council stations, and this helps unlock two of the Colonia Engineers (Mel Brandon and Baltanos (Odyssey only)).
Credits
Thanks to bigmaec for suggesting the idea to me, and Ian Doncaster who suggested it to bigmaec And YinYin Falcon who suggested it to Ian.
Notes:
[1] Suicidewindering. Go to a shipyard somewhere in Colonia, buy a Sidewinder. Crash it and die. Choose to resume at your home station (NOT in Colonia). Now you are home, though you'll have a large shipping fee (and long wait) to get your ship back from Colonia See also this comment which may have a return prison taxi route.
[2] Strictly speaking you don't need to die - if you can get a bounty at the station you can hand yourself in -which will send you to jail without dying. I have yet to find a reliable way to do this that has no chance of death, so it seems better to plan to die.
[3] <removed>
[4] The important part is that you get a bounty and then die. Loitering will do that for you. Unless the spaceport has been taken over by an Anarchy faction, in which case this won't work.
[5] Don't try and use Fleet Carriers to get Bounties - it won't work as they don't give bounties, so you will just wake up back on the carrier. FC can be useful if Cartographics are not available at the spaceports as a backup hand-in location.
Last edited: