Passenger Mission Dummy's Guide

[CMDR Harada]

As mentioned, becoming Allied makes the missions MUCH more profitable, and numerous. PAX missions work almost exactly like normal missions. If you can stack a bunch going to the same place, you can double dip. I make the bulk my money doing PAX missions in my Annie or CGs in my Cutter.

Hers what I've found. Take it for what it's worth.

Read the mission description : Sounds simple enough, right ? This tells you a few things. Like is this passenger going to flake out if we get scanned ? Are they wanted ? ( Meaning I'm going to flake out if we get scanned ) Are they likely to make stupid requests ?

Where are you going : Seems simple again, right ? But some destinations are EXTREMELY hard to get to. I took a 7k LY mission for good money, only to realize that the system required a 60+ LY jump range on the last jump. Is the point of interest another Hutton Orbital 3 million light seconds out from the star ? That passenger fee looks a lot smaller when you're turning around mid journey or doing a 90 minute SC marathon.

Mission type, Sight Seeing and Exploration : I like to look at the missions as "Profit per LY". If I get a sight seeing mission to travel 400 LYs, and they're paying 4 million, that is 10 thousand per light year. Not bad. Stack a few of those, run them in an hour or so with my 49 LY jump range 'Conda ( The Buze Cruzer ), and I get a profit margin that rivals the old Ceos Poo runs..< HAHA ! Get it ? Poo runs ? >. Huge profit margin, little risk, minimal time investment. I am done in an hour or so.

Now, balance that against the 35 million credits to take some rich nerd to gawk at SagA.. 26k LYs. That is 1,350 credits per LY... Plus the hassle of tying me into a good week or two of travel. No thank you.. UNLESS I get two or three more people wanting to make the trip, and I stay off the beaten path so I get good scans and a bunch of 'first discovered'. Even then I'm not making what I could playing Capt Steuben in bubble. Take into account you don't have time to spend an hour scanning every planet in the system, you have to get the passengers to SagA and back in under 3 weeks. Also, take into account most long range missions have the "no scan" addition. They don't want to be scanned. Get hit a few times and they'll 'leave' with a good chunk of your profit for the run. Long range runs seem like a good way to bank cash at first. But then reality sets in at about the 17k LY mark when you think "I could have done 5 or 6 sight seeing missions by now and tripled this profit."

Mission Type, One Ways : I don't often take these. The pay is good, but it's one way. Then I have to fly back empty. Or try to pick up cargo. Or carry cargo there. Plus, if I carry cargo racks, I'm not carrying cabins. It's a mess. These work to supplement cargo delivery missions, or vice versa. Mixing with sight seeing or exploration missions is a hassle. You're losing time in SC, docking, and un-docking.

Next is your ship : I don't go for the 'liners. I used an AspX for quite a while, and then upgraded to an Anaconda. Both have excellent range ( Jump Range = Time = Money ), but the Annie carries more. Luxury missions seem nice but there aren't that many. Is it worth having a specialized ship for the rare luxury missions ? Not for me. I want a fist full of missions, that I can run fast, and dump the little pests.. er.. passengers back where I found them. I also tend to avoid combat when carrying passengers. A lot of them ( OK, ALL of them, regardless of what the mission descriptions say ) are whiney little sissies. Get a scratch on your hull and they panic. I tend to carry enough Shields/Thrusters/Capacitor that I can stand on the boost button until I can hi-wake. Any ship will do, but the longer the jump range the better with enough shields, PD/PP and G5 DD's to run for your passengers delicate sensibilities. Or you can think of it this way : You can stay and fight, collect 150k credits for the bounty and LOSE 4 million credits because you got the paint scratched... Do the math. So : Big ( more passengers ), Good Jump Range, Good Shields.. The Annie works for me. I've heard some CMDRs use a Cobra Mk III. Your call.

Passenger requests : What ? I don't do those. From my experience, you have a certain amount of time to fulfill the requests. I don't have factual evidence, but it seems that way. Often I can complete my run before the timer runs out. Even if it does, they don't eject. They may grumble, but they don't leave. And 15k credits to spend 20 minutes to get two tons of fish isn't worth my time when I get 12 million to dump the whole lot back at home port in another 30 minutes.

Wanted Passengers : Highly profitable. Dangerous. Station Scan = Death. Simple. I take them every once in a while. If you're allied with the controlling faction, scans are less likely to happen. Silent running helps. Never been tagged with a wanted on my ship, tho. You'll have to do your own risk/reward analysis. I've taken some 8-10 million site seeing missions for criminals.

 

[Commander William Diffin]

Don't give up. You wouldn't share a 1st class cabin with another group, would you? That wouldn't really be 1st class. I don't think it's like an airliner where each seat is a separate ticket. These cats lease the cabin.

Sometimes you'll get a bunch of folks in economy, but the price doesn't really reflect the number of people. I try to fill all my cabins and unless they have to have 1st class or luxury they are getting the other ones. Often though I end up with empty luxury or 1st class cabins because I cannot find the right number of passengers for those cabins.

So Cabins with sufficient berths can't be shared between groups, although IRL that would happen at least in Economy or Business Class. But that's not my main problem. My problem is that once a group is in a Cabin I can't move it into another suitable one. The whole mechanism for placing passengers is poorly worked, awkward and nonsensical, just like the mechanism for placing ship modules, and it's not what I expect from a well-engineered computer game. Why you have to navigate endless text menus and submenus to outfit a ship, when you should just be able to drag and drop modules into slots from a module pool at one side of the screen. Why you can't save loadouts. Similarly placing passengers in Cabins. What a shambles. Low quality.

As mentioned, becoming Allied makes the missions MUCH more profitable, and numerous. PAX missions work almost exactly like normal missions. If you can stack a bunch going to the same place, you can double dip. I make the bulk my money doing PAX missions in my Annie or CGs in my Cutter.

+1 for actually replying to the op. Good information, not that I'll be using it much. 'PAX' missions indeed. I assume that means 'PAssenger and eXploration' missions. Why English-speaking people can't just speak English, so that everybody actually understands what they're talking about.

But they're not really exploration missions are they. Exploration missions should not require that you fit Passenger Cabins to allow you to accommodate the demanding nutjobs you have to take along, and then send you to systems that have already been explored many times. They would send you to UNEXPLORED systems, or a number of unexplored systems e.g. 'Scan all the bodies in such-and-such unexplored system', or 'Scan 12 neutron stars in such-and-such sector', or 'Scan 50 gas giants in this nebula', etc. If someone else gets there first too bad. Nothing like a good race. Or even 'Collect alien item from such-and-such site.'

But then that would be actually including some actual exploration content in the game.

 

[metascrawl]

Passenger Mission Dummy's Guide:

1. You will be promised big money.
2. You will try the best You can.
3. You passenger will not be happy.
4. You will not be paid, but You will be insulted instead.

[praise]

This has happened with maybe three out of the hundreds of passengers I've had on board, and two of those were my own stupid fault.