Long distance passengers shouldn't be allowed to screw you

[CMDR Maxwell Goldman]

So a bit of the surrounding narrative:

I worked for countless hours delivering cargo to make the credits to pay for the almighty Beluga Liner, which with a few tweaks i managed to get 45 ly range, fully loaded with type A modules. It only cost 240 mil. I then began my journey into the black with 4 famous explorers and their staff, all heading out Colonia way. Upon finally arriving at the destination, to which I've never visited, I decide to do some sightseeing of my own before turning back. Much to my chagrin, a single scan of my vessel results in all of the explorers moods to immediately drop to miserable, and one to subsequently cancel the contract with ZERO payment, save the snotty message "I won't recommend you to my associates." Since their is seemingly no way to improve the moods of the remaining passengers, I predict I'll be completely robbed of the full 130mil or so before I get them back.

? I get that all explorers are apparently paranoid in 3304, but this is just downright insulting. I understand I screwed up and got scanned, but an immediate contract cancellation over a single scan is ridiculous. I should at least get some partial payout for getting them literally halfway through the entire journey w/o being scanned. Hell, I'd even be okay if I had the option to jettison their tinfoil hat wearing ***** into the nearest sun (I'd take the bounty quite happily). Instead, I feel completely punished for dutifully playing the game each night for over a week to keep on schedule.

Seriously guys, I'm a dedicated player and fan of Frontier's accomplishments, but this is an incredibly punishing feature and should be reconsidered. I'll spare a lengthy lecture on operant conditioning, but it should be obvious to anyone who slept through a Psych 101 course that features like this drive players away from the game. I'm a patient person and will not be so easily banished, but I have a significant number of real life friends who own this game but will not play it because of things like this. Generally, there is inadequate reinforcement and far too great of punishment for time invested.

I'm staring this thread out of complete love for this game, and I genuinely want to see more CMDRs out there doing their thing. Post your own stories if you like, or just call me a whiner if that's your thing [smile].

 

[Eriseley]

I agree with you. Many elements of the game a tone-deaf to actual play. This one could use like...way toning down the penalty, and more avenues to improve morale of the passengers. Sadly for my own sanity I have only been able to recognize the limitations of the game and build around that...

 

[Iskariot]

I agree completely with op.

There should be a way to mitigate the mood of passengers, perhaps they should be able to give you an extra mission to make up for your mistake.

Or...
Each unwanted scan should result in perhaps a 10% discount on the final payout.

 

[space voyager]

I agree. I find it relativelly easy to avoid scans in a medium ship but one mistake WILL rob you of everything.

 

[Iron Body]

I went through this twice, losing all 7 missions in one go. The second time I self destructed myself, and 34 passengers, next to a window at one of colonia stations. At least I restarted back in Sol.

But I learnt my lesson. Do not interact with anything, do not dock anywhere, leave the tourist beacon immediately.

If you get back unscanned you will get a 100% bonus, my last 2 trips to colonia / Sag A got me 1.3 billion credits.

 

[CMDR Oxnix]

At some point in the not to distant past, the developers changed things so that instead of two scans to fail the missions like yours, they went to one... which is a complete FAIL. Before they (stupidly, and yes this is a serious criticism ED) changed things, you took a chance taking on a mission where the client mentioned they didn't want to be scanned, but it took a bad turn only if you were scanned twice. While that was still a risk, it was a risk I took sometimes and like other things, sometimes S**t happens (one of my favorite fact of life sayings, LOL). But two scans? Yeah, depending on the reward I sometimes took them. One scan??? Yeah, that's a TOTAL NO most of the time unless it is a short run and I'm familiar with it. Am I seriously going to take a mission where a client wants to go to Sag A* for 50 million and back and never get scanned even once? Not no, but H**L no. I'd like to take missions that paid out 25-35 million upon return from Colonia, but being successful when only one scan can fudge the whole trip? No way, and no how am I going to waste that much time when all it takes is a single scan. ED developers really messed up when they changed from two scans to one. How many missions never get run now because of that? It should be easy to figure out... I only take the short ones and that's ONLY if I know the route and destination and I'm sure not going to do it in OPEN play. I'm sure that a very, very large number of missions never get done or even tried now because of this STUPID change. I will take a lot of chances in order to accomplish a mission with success, but I'm sure that I'm not alone in ignoring these things when I risk a total fail with one scan. I hope you are listening ED developers as this really, really needs to change. It SUCKS because it isn't worth the trouble spending many HOURS to do something that will almost certainly be a FAIL when it is over.

 

[Winterwalker]

I went through this twice, losing all 7 missions in one go. The second time I self destructed myself, and 34 passengers, next to a window at one of colonia stations. At least I restarted back in Sol.

But I learnt my lesson. Do not interact with anything, do not dock anywhere, leave the tourist beacon immediately.

If you get back unscanned you will get a 100% bonus, my last 2 trips to colonia / Sag A got me 1.3 billion credits.

Agree. While it's harsh - and maybe even a blunt instrument what's happened to OP (though at one stage passenger missions were OP) - it does say in the mission notes that the passenger doesn't want to be scanned. OK, YOU wanted to do some extra sightseeing but they, the paying customer, didn't .. so if you're going to go off piste, obviously you need to bear that risk in mind or take missions where the passenger doesn't care.

Harsh yes, been there myself but does add flavour to the passengers, means you should always read - and remember - the mission notes and mission with needs (wanted passengers) etc. require you to stay focussed, making a game of it. Sympathetic to the OP - it sucks - but not to the extent where the game should be nerfed. I hope not anyway.

 

[Maymo]

Just want to add my support for this. One should be able to enjoy these missions without worrying about being scanned.

I’d like to add that there’s also far to many criminals hanging about in the passenger lounge.

 

[PocketPsycho]

Agree. While it's harsh - and maybe even a blunt instrument what's happened to OP (though at one stage passenger missions were OP) - it does say in the mission notes that the passenger doesn't want to be scanned. OK, YOU wanted to do some extra sightseeing but they, the paying customer, didn't .. so if you're going to go off piste, obviously you need to bear that risk in mind or take missions where the passenger doesn't care.

Harsh yes, been there myself but does add flavour to the passengers, means you should always read - and remember - the mission notes and mission with needs (wanted passengers) etc. require you to stay focussed, making a game of it. Sympathetic to the OP - it sucks - but not to the extent where the game should be nerfed. I hope not anyway.

Actually it says that "Being scanned will greatly reduce passenger satisfaction." That's a far cry from "Being scanned will 100% void the mission."

 

[Old Duck]

I had same thing happen to me, OP. In contrast, I hardly ever go grocery shopping for these "demanding" tourists who want tea and krimpets to "make their journey more comfortable", and while that means no extra tip, they still pay me my in full for the original agreed on price.

I don't like turbulence or screaming children, yet neither has allowed me to get a full reimbursement on any airline. I know on occasion that cruise ships offer reimbursement for extreme circumstances (like steering the ship into a hurricane), but it's pretty rare.

As I've said before, if ED is going to throw logic out the window, it should be to improve gameplay and reward the player, not to punish the player.

 

[NULUSIOS]

+1
(although as is common knowledge devs ignore such threads - or 99.9% of threads on anything)

 

[heathenlamb]

Plus one from me to the OP ... this exact thing happened to me after a long haul slog ... my passenger bailed on the mission literally one jump before the last destination. It was beyond frustrating and a complete waste of game play time.

 

[Aaron T]

I could not imagine going on the long range missions.

And what is up with the mission board?

Last night/this morning I saw 5 missions going 22,000 Lys out on one page, and one was for, brace yourself - 700k credits, not even a million credits for 22k Ly's.

 

[space voyager]

I could not imagine going on the long range missions.

And what is up with the mission board?

Last night/this morning I saw 5 missions going 22,000 Lys out on one page, and one was for, brace yourself - 700k credits, not even a million credits for 22k Ly's.

Those guys were prepared to stay in the cargo storage, no need for cabins.

 

[[VR] Goooost]

Agreed not being able to eject passengers gives them too much leverage.

 

[Nadreck]

What grade of cabin did you have them in? Especially the one that quit?

Passenger satisfaction seems to be affected if you give them an upgrade to a better cabin.

 

[Burke]

Whenever it says scan detected turn silent running on. You dissapear off their scanner, sometimes they ask if you are still there. Its not perfect but i have avoided scans in the past this way

But yeah tbh, passengers should pay upfront like every public transport everywhere

 

[GJ51]

Valid issue, but if everyone just doesn't do them it may force FD to re-think.

Many aspects of long range passenger missions have been discussed, but largely ignored by FD.

I just read the description and wondered why anyone would chose to do them when you can just do short range transport missions and earn more credits and/or accrue more materials. Currently, advanced players view materials as, if not more, equally valid currency as credits. Doing long range as opposed to short range missions diminishes opportunities to add to your materials inventory.

As much as I would enjoy doing a long range mission occasionally, I just don't see the current offerings as worth doing.

YMMV

 

[Hydrino]

One way to mitigate this is what FD are doing for exploration and mining, and that is to make smuggling and stealth game-play more of a thing by adding features dedicated to that.

So if you need to avoid your passengers being scanned, you can buy a special module or "armor" for the ship, there should be a scan count-down timer so you know how long you have to run before the scan is complete, and maybe even some type of scan strength indicator on the hud or sensor disc to give the Pilot a "safe zone" to run for.

I think based on the Beyond updates and "DDF-like" FFF (focused feedback forums), that FD got the message from the community about core-gameplay before massive new features too early in the game's lifecycle. I think they were ham-strung by sales pitches committing them to develop headline features after v1.0 release, but had to deliver on those before they could shift gears. Of course, this is outside speculation and could be completely incorrect, but it seems to somewhat match events.

I hope that after the Beyond updates or 2018 anyway, that FD continue to expand/deepen the core game-play mechanics for all the "careers" outside of combat.

When FD announce the next premium content, I hope to see that part of the lengthy time since Horizons was spent on improving core game-play mechanics around the new feature. For example, with gas giants comes the chance to update and expand fuel mechanics by making fuel more expensive to push players to scoop and experience updated mini-game/UI around PvE hazards like magnetic fields, fuel density and quality layers with more refined heat mechanics and fuel quality as a consideration (as discussed in the old DDF); military fuel with hazardous waste concerns could also become a thing.

 

[Aaron T]

Load up on heat sinks and engineer your power plant to run cool.

In my engineered Conda I never have to pop a heatsink.

Just drop in by the station and immediately turn on silent running, if you need to pop a heat sink.

Disable the DC before you leave the station, and as soon as you enter the destination station turn off silent running and enable the DC.