Guide / Tutorial Colonia Prison Taxi : 12.5k LY to Colonia

Factabulous

Factabulous

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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

Once the Distanct Worlds 2 station near Sagittarius A* is built it should be possible to use an alternate Prison Tax to get back from Sag A* to Colonia by using that station. Nope, they thought of that ;)

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.
 
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Bigmaec

Bigmaec
Factabulous said:
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 14000 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[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[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.

Method

  • Fly to Lagoon Sector NI-S b4-10[3] (Amundsen Terminal) - 4481 Ly
  • 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[4].
  • You are now in Prison in Omega Sector OD-S b4-0
  • Fly to Eagle Sector IR-W d1-105 (1524 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 Kashyapa (3882 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 14k Ly, but travelled 22k Ly.

Extras

Once the Distanct Worlds 2 station near Sagittarius A* is built it should be possible to use an alternate Prison Tax to get back from Sag A* to Colonia by using that station.

You'll be claiming your exploration finds often at Colonia Council stations, and this helps unlock one of the Colonia Engineers (Mel Brandon).

Credits

Thanks to bigmaec for suggesting the idea to me :)

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 :)
[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] When I tested the route I went via Eagle Sector IR-W d1-105 - which is less optimum - the given one should work, though use Eagle if you happen to be closer.
[4] The important part is that you get a bounty and then die. Loitering will do that for you.
Click to expand...

I'm flattered, but credit should go to Ian Doncaster who wrote about that before :)

Thanks for the write-up though, way better to find now [up]
 

Kenneth McGrew

Kenneth McGrew
can you not just hand yourself in and get transported to the prison ship and avoid re-buys too, (depends if the station has the right contacts i assume)

i.e fire in the no fire zone, re-dock under anonymous and hand yourself in for a free ticket to the prison ship UC data and all.

( i dont really understand the C&P but seems plausible to do it, perhaps with cargo too)
 
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Shnyrik

Shnyrik
Factabulous said:
You'll be claiming your exploration finds often at Colonia Council stations, and this helps unlock one of the Colonia Engineers (Mel Brandon)
Click to expand...

Sorry for a slight off topic, but I've become an ally of Colonia Council long before the workshop of that Mel Brandon was introduced. Now he says I can get to him and give him 100000 cr bounty vouchers only after I get invitation from Colonia Council, but they just don't send it to me. Are there any additional not mentioned conditions?
 
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Kzak

Kzak
Shnyrik said:
Sorry for a slight off topic, but I've become an ally of Colonia Council long before the workshop of that Mel Brandon was introduced. Now he says I can get to him and give him 100000 cr bounty vouchers only after I get invitation from Colonia Council, but they just don't send it to me. Are there any additional not mentioned conditions?
Click to expand...

Check the mission boards for any Colonia Council faction at a station - you should have the invitation mission for the engineer there if you're allied with them.
 

Ian Doncaster

Ian Doncaster
Good writeup. It's been known as an option since 3.0 Beta - when I used it to get up to Colonia for testing in a single transfer from Skaudai, and Frontier responded by adding the prison ships near Rohini and Gandharvi. Good to see it kept up-to-date for the new prison ship in Omega.

YinYin Falcon should get credit for the first plotting out of the 3.0 routes shortly after release. I believe his reverse route still works if you want to get back cheaper but slower than Suicidewinder+Transfer:
- Colonia -> Polo Harbour, prison transfer to Gandharvi.
- There's no suitable intermediate going from Gandharvi to Rohini, so Gandharvi to Crescent Nebula then prison transfer back to the bubble is the best you can do.

It'll be interesting to see if they allow Sag A* -> Colonia prison transfers. I'm expecting that the Sag A* base will get its own new prison ship just as Omega did so that people who accidentally scrape the paintwork during the CG won't have a long trip back. They seem to have learned from the Gnosis events on this one.
 

Ian Doncaster

Ian Doncaster
Kzak said:
Check the mission boards for any Colonia Council faction at a station - you should have the invitation mission for the engineer there if you're allied with them.
Click to expand...
Specifically at a station in Colonia - they're present in a lot of systems but only give the invite out from their home system.

It may take some travelling between stations before it shows up.
 

Bigmaec

Bigmaec
Just tested it with my 75LY Anaconda.

Went to Colonia in just under 4 hours, just as fast as my last neutron highway run.
(only buckyballing without more then DS scanning anything though).
Cost me 36 million for four rebuys, and took me 58 + 18 + 43 + 43 jumps (10 of those neutrons by the inbuilt plotter).

I like it. Way less fiddle with waypoint copy&paste, and no need to AFMU stop.

On another plus side, I made 5.2 million by scanning stuff and first discovered 9 systems.
 

Maolagin

M
Kenneth Mcgrew said:
can you not just hand yourself in and get transported to the prison ship and avoid re-buys too, (depends if the station has the right contacts i assume)

i.e fire in the no fire zone, re-dock under anonymous and hand yourself in for a free ticket to the prison ship UC data and all.

( i dont really understand the C&P but seems plausible to do it, perhaps with cargo too)
Click to expand...

Not quite. If you just have a fine, the authority contact will allow you to pay it off without sending you anywhere. You need a bounty to get the option to hand yourself in and get sent to the prison ship. Weapons in the no-fly zone, if you don't kill anyone or hit the station, is only a fine, not a bounty. The problem is that most ways you can get a bounty near a station result in the station opening fire on you, which you aren't likely to survive. So to avoid the rebuy, you would have to leave the station, do something illegal enough to gain a bounty (basically, kill an NPC or trespass on an installation), and then sneak back in to the station without being scanned so you can hand yourself in. As Factabulous noted, possible but not reliable.
 

Ian Doncaster

Ian Doncaster
Maolagin said:
The problem is that most ways you can get a bounty near a station result in the station opening fire on you, which you aren't likely to survive.
Click to expand...
With forward planning it's possible to do this fairly reliably - if you equip a long range multicannon you have 8km range, so you can fire on it from well outside both its weapon range and masslock - or in some ships you can bring an SLF and open fire with that while your ship is safely 20km away.

For the Rohini-Gandharvi leg the only suitable intermediate station doesn't have Contacts, so you *probably* need a rebuy there. However, you might - untested - be able to get away without it as follows:
1) Land at the surface base
2) Deploy SRV while docked
3) Open fire on the base with the SRV, get destroyed
...and at that point it might try to respawn you in your ship, note that it's docked to a base where you have a bounty, and then send you to the detention centre.
 

SiriusStrider

SiriusStrider
You can use the RES sites to be naughty and get your bounty.
For the first leg, I prefer Attenborough's Watch, Lagoon Sector FW-W d1-122 It is safer to sneak in there.

If you skip Gandharvi, and avoid dying altogether, you might as well fill up with data deliveries to Colonia at a tourism station. They pay between 800k and 4M each depending on your standing. Nice money, but you could get an enforcer sent after you
 

SiriusStrider

SiriusStrider
I have now done the route a few times, some using the Prison Taxi and some via the Neutron Highway.

I found it much easier to navigate the Neutron Fields, where you can trust the route plotter for a couple of jumps before replotting. While using the Prison Taxi route I was replotting almost every jump, it got better after Nyeajaae VU-Y a27-9 for the last two legs, where the Neutron density is higher.

A bit of math:
It costs you about 4 minutes to book a Prison Taxi leg with dying, plus the time needed to earn back the rebuy.
It is about 12 minutes to get a bounty and then hand yourself in.
It is relatively straightforward to earn 50M/hr in Colonia, so dying is better until your ship is worth more than 140M.

Let’s check on the AspX. Equipped for fast travel it costs around 50M and jumps 64LY.
Route 1: full Prison Taxi. Saves 8500 LY at a cost of (4+3)*4=28 minutes, for a speed of 300 LY/min
Route 2: last two legs. Saves 6400 LY in 14 minutes, or 450 LY/min
Route 3: only last leg without dying, saves 2400 LY in 12 minutes, or 200LY/min
And if you do not die, you would be able to earn an extra 10M to 50M from data deliveries.

So if you are already swimming in credits, using the last two legs of the Prison Taxi is the fastest way to head to Colonia. But if you still care about credits, you would only use the last leg from Kashyapa.
 

SiriusStrider

SiriusStrider
A small aside regarding the Neutron highway:

The slowest part is getting into the Neutron fields, so that you can use the plotter. I use Swoiwns MY-I d9-6 as my reference, see also the route on spansh.co.uk.

I equip my ships with dual AFMs (to repair faster, and to avoid having to synthesize). I also found that adding some fuel tanks so that you can jump 8 to 10 times gives a good compromise between losing time to refuel stops and losing jump range for route plotting.
 
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