I confess!

[Fen Harel]

I confess: I was wrong about passenger missions.

I suppose I never gave it too much thought, my inclination would be passengers would end up being another commodity. Luckily someone had more imagination than me, and, at the moment, I am very much enjoying taking one of the VIP Famous Explorers on a trip to CD 39-6137.

I had more or less given up on exploration after I hit elite with a trip to the outer edge of the Outer Arm. I got back to the bubble right before Distant Worlds launched, and while I considered joining I had had enough of honking and scooping for the moment. (Also, I'm not sure I'm the expedition type.) So, through out 2016 when I would drop into ED I would hang about inside the bubble, doing inside the bubble type things.

The new passenger missions have given me the first real incentive to go back out into the black. (Or at least into the grey, since the CD 39-6137 region has been well traveled.) After some short test runs I shoved a first class cabin in my clipper and headed out. The jump range on my severely under-optimized ship is about half that of my AspX from a year ago, but I get to travel in style!

TL;DR: I am very enjoying the exploration oriented passenger missions!

 

[Mengy]

Yeah, I have to admit, I find them surprisingly awesome too.

Last night I did a few passenger runs for the first time just to try them out. I refit my Clipper into a fancy passenger barge, seemed fitting! On my first loop I transported some economy people to a close by surface station, where I picked up a group who wanted to check out three visitor beacons spread around the bubble. Two of them were fairly scenic orbital satellites around ringed planets, and the third was a surface beacon next to a huge crater on an icy moon. It was actually a pretty cool flight. Then, after returning the group home I took another group on board who wanted to fly out to the Veil Nebula for a gander at it, 1400 lys out and back. My Clipper has a modified FSD so that’s not a terribly far voyage for her, and the group was willing to pay me over 8 million credits for the trip! But I also saw a lot of other missions which sounded pretty fun too, it was late though or I would have kept ferrying passengers all over.

I kind of hate to admit it, but passenger missions (a lot of them anyway) are very much like exploration missions, and I really don’t know why I never put the two together. For a patch which I originally had next to zero interest in, update 2.2 has become my favorite update to Elite so far!

 

[Cmdr Frawd Digger]

dang!! Back to the bubble I go. I am out at Colonia with my Orca and wanted to do passenger missions...except nowhere around here sells passenger cabins.

<gazes into crystal ball> I see a 22KLY journey in my near future...

Frawd

 

[Howe]

I have been doing this the last couple of days. I'm quite enjoying reading all the little snippets of game lore; I was out by Panem in KP and there's a beacon that relates the Onionhead banning. I got all misty-eyed

 

[DeRane]

Gets better.... I just saw a passenger lounge with three different passengers wanting to go to Skade AA-A (not sure about the system name, checked map and it was a black hole, but now can´t find it in eddb) 11k ly out. Since named passengers take a cabin each, put three cabins (only as big as needed of course since they have weight) on your ship and off you go.

Sag A* was another location where there were multiple missions to and I am sure that with little shopping around one could fill a Anaconda with 5-6 expeditions with one destination... 50 mil ea.!

 

[fitzsteve]

Really enjoying these too and some nice credits too, 5.5m to take some dude 50ly, I'll take that all day!

I made a couple of the exploration tours, around the bubble like above one of the visitor beacons was in a massive canyon, that was pretty cool

I've stuck a few passenger cabins in my Conda and a fighter bay in case we get into trouble, still have 64T of Cargo and a massive size 7 fuel scoop!

Jump range is down to about 20ly so need to visit Farseer, in the mean time I tried with my Clipper like above and it's a great little passenger cruiser, definitely a nice role for this ship and you can just boost away from any trouble

 

[DeRane]

Really enjoying these too and some nice credits too, 5.5m to take some dude 50ly, I'll take that all day!

I made a couple of the exploration tours, around the bubble like above one of the visitor beacons was in a massive canyon, that was pretty cool

I've stuck a few passenger cabins in my Conda and a fighter bay in case we get into trouble, still have 64T of Cargo and a massive size 7 fuel scoop!

Jump range is down to about 20ly so need to visit Farseer, in the mean time I tried with my Clipper like above and it's a great little passenger cruiser, definitely a nice role for this ship and you can just boost away from any trouble

If you first see what kind of mission is offered, like 'Exploration - 4 persons - Economy' and only then buy the 4 person economy cabin that fills those requirements and no more, you can save up huge amount of weight and increase the jump range.

 

[fitzsteve]

Yeah having 3 passenger cabins and a fighter bay really is a bit overkill. I did however fill all 3 cabins yesterday. I had 23 tourists and 21 tourists in my Eco/Bus cabins and a CEO in the First Class. I made the CEO wait while I dropped off the Tourists lol. The Tourist missions were both to the same station but half the idiots changed their mind so we had a little detour!