A nice addition to support the passenger missions would be a commodity market style way of picking up passengers. I think this would help making the bigger passenger ships feel more worthwhile to own and fly.
For example, you dock at a station and can access a passenger board which has a list, split by system, with a supply of passengers for each location within that system. The pilot could pick up as many as they want for each destination until their passenger cabins are full, in exactly the same way they would fill their cargo racks with commodities from the commodity market. These passengers would represent your average citizen paying a standard/average fee and taking their chances with whatever flight they end up with: credits would only exchange hands upon reaching the destination system and would be lower per passenger than the existing missions (similar to how trading commodities via the commodity market is less lucrative per tonne than the trade missions).
This could support the existing passenger missions in the same way the commodity market works alongside the various trade missions available.
Currently, to get the most out of my Beluga, I have to go to the outskirts of the bubble and try to find many missions heading to the same location, or locations within close proximity to each other. If I'm flying a larger passenger ship in the centre of the bubble the spread of the passenger missions available doesn't really warrant the use of such a large ship, and often most of the cabins are empty when I set off - I may as well use a smaller, faster ship with less cabins.
This doesn't feel realistic: if I'm deep within the bubble I would expect it to be a lot easier to fill a larger ship, containing multiple passenger cabins, with passengers heading from one highly populated system to another.
For example, you dock at a station and can access a passenger board which has a list, split by system, with a supply of passengers for each location within that system. The pilot could pick up as many as they want for each destination until their passenger cabins are full, in exactly the same way they would fill their cargo racks with commodities from the commodity market. These passengers would represent your average citizen paying a standard/average fee and taking their chances with whatever flight they end up with: credits would only exchange hands upon reaching the destination system and would be lower per passenger than the existing missions (similar to how trading commodities via the commodity market is less lucrative per tonne than the trade missions).
This could support the existing passenger missions in the same way the commodity market works alongside the various trade missions available.
Currently, to get the most out of my Beluga, I have to go to the outskirts of the bubble and try to find many missions heading to the same location, or locations within close proximity to each other. If I'm flying a larger passenger ship in the centre of the bubble the spread of the passenger missions available doesn't really warrant the use of such a large ship, and often most of the cabins are empty when I set off - I may as well use a smaller, faster ship with less cabins.
This doesn't feel realistic: if I'm deep within the bubble I would expect it to be a lot easier to fill a larger ship, containing multiple passenger cabins, with passengers heading from one highly populated system to another.
