Horizons Gargantuan passenger mission highlights potentially broken tourist beacon mechanic

elrogarddublanc

E
The trip out to VY Canis Majoris seems in vain. The need to be within 1000ls for your scanner to pick up the beacon is defeated by the several thousand ls diameter of the star.... Either it is inside the star, or it is somewhere above the surface. However if the stars radius 1420 ls, and I would need to be at least a further 1000ls above that not be incinerated, that gives a surface / search area of (4 * pi * 2420(squared)) of 73,556,384 sq light seconds.... erm, not gonna happen. Implies the tourist beacon "find" mechanic is not going to work, ever...

Should have seen that coming I guess, but the mission system can't cope with the specifics of weird systems. I would stay away from these (high paying!) exploration type missions.

My multi-role Python with 22ly range took pretty much all day to get out here (70+ jumps), but it was it was not to be. My 8mil payout mission for a Sunday's play in 2.2 now fairly irritating. This alongside two rebuys for the Beluga I spent yesterday pimping out because it turned out my passengers were ne'er-do-wells and failed to inform me leading to a sudden and unexpected execution and well, feeling burned right now.

Twiddling my thumbs on whether to trek back and at least gain the Exploration data and ranking that goes with it, or screw it and destruct straight back to the bubble for 8mil rebuy. Maybe suffocate the passengers....? :)

Anyone have any advice or workarounds I've not thought of?

Maybe I'll spend some more time making some minor components lighter via the new engineers and get some more FSD range...
 

rrobes

R
If you're taking these long distance passenger missions now, I would stop until a later time until they work the bugs out. Lots of posts w/ problems. Seems you're spending a lot of capital for nothing. The Beluga seem like a waste to me, an Anaconda could do the job better and faster. If you want to do 70 jumps (!) go ahead but I won't do that anymore, I have an Anaconda in the process for that once they stabilize the missions.

As far as passengers, I've only taken refugees, tourists and businessmen and the payouts are good enough. They don't demand, aren't wanted and just sit down for the ride, plus there are usually interdictions on the mission to spice things up and earn some extra CR.
 

GG7

G
The Sightseeing missions are a lot better than they were in the Beta! When we first started testing them, pretty much ALL of them were missing the beacon at the second or third stop, and there was really nothing that could be done to find them. They were not in the game.

Frontier slowly improved this over time to the point that most of them now provide all the beacons along a 3-4 destination route, but there are still some outliers, and those taking on the super long 5+ stop versions are taking a pretty big risk of getting to the last few stops and encountering a system with a missing beacon.

There are a few things to try before giving up though...

1) Make sure to cover the ENTIRE system out to the furthest bodies, since the beacon could be far away from the drop point and beyond your scanner's range to detect.

2) Check WATER WORLDS! The game likes to put beacons at Water Worlds. If you are missing a beacon in a system, check to see if it has any planets classed as Water Worlds and fly within surface scan range of the planet for any visitor beacon that may be in orbit around the planet.

In the end, these are still not 100% viable as a mission type, so best to play it safe by sticking to the shorter versions with no more than 3 actual destination systems. This will reduce the chances of getting out to the last stop only to discover that the beacon is simply not in the game, forcing the mission to be abandoned.

These missions provide a substantial amount of REP, so abandoning one will give you a pretty noticeable HIT to your rep with the issuing faction. Another reason for caution. ;)

Regarding the time element.... I wouldn't recommend taking these on with anything less than a fully FSD upgraded Asp X or Anaconda. I fly these with my Anaconda Liner that currently provides me with a 42 Ly jump range with 1 medium and 1 small 1st class cabin as well as a full weapons load out, descent power plant and distributor, shield generator etc.

The Asp X can get an even higher jump range with the same Grade 5 FSD and other light weight upgrades applied. Since you can take on most of these with no more than one or two 1st class cabins, the Asp X is a great choice for running all the various passenger missions. :)
 
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karl napf der abwaschbare

K
GG7 said:
1) Make sure to cover the ENTIRE system out to the furthest bodies, since the beacon could be far away from the drop point and beyond your scanner's range to detect.
Click to expand...

You might not actually even have to fly to every body. This happened to me to other day, but not sure how reproducible / reliable: After much frustration trying to find the Assinda Visitor beacon I was about to give up. In frustration and hope to find at least something entertaining to do I moused over random orange circles out of my windscreen. And, to my surprise, one of the circles was the Assinda visitor beacon from 200,000ls away. I could even lock onto it and fly there from 200,000ls away.
 
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csdavis1979

C
In case anyone is still stuck with this, I'd recommend the steps in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CB8ivIgTAts

Jump in from COL 132 SECTOR WD-N B9-1
Come to a stop
Target COL 132 SECTOR DQ-X D1-46
Fly steadily away from VY CANIS MAJORIS, until you get to around 6300ls away, and GARGANTUAN should pop up

Still agree the mechanism is a bit flawed, but at least it should be possible to complete missions with this
 

PhytoGenic

P
Thanks this worked for me, i barely got within 4000ls of sun and used 8 heat sinks, used your tip found it like right away, unfoutunately i got scanned when trying to log into forums lol. thanks for that tip!

Jump in from COL 132 SECTOR WD-N B9-1
Come to a stop
Target COL 132 SECTOR DQ-X D1-46
Fly steadily away from VY CANIS MAJORIS, until you get to around 6300ls away, and GARGANTUAN should pop up
 
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