Passenger Missions Explained
- Thread starter Lngjohnsilver1
- Start date
Which has always been the problem trying to analyse the game and find out 'how it works' and 'how to play'. It appears that one player can do a>b>c and get the end result of D, while another players follows exactly the same mechanic and goes from a>b>c and gets F. I can only speak from my experience running around doing stuff and hopefully help others, like me who get genuinely depressed by being unable to actually chart a progress through the quagmire. Las night despite 2 -3 hours of trying the best run i managed to get from the same system i normally get 50 -60 million per hour missions was 15 million. NO MISSIONS SPAWNED - they just did not appear! NO variables had changed far as i could ascertain, i was allied with the main factions, in the right location, with the right ship doing the right things - NO MISSIONS. When your gameplay is limited to 10 hours per week,losing 3 or 4 hours or more of productive game time is very frustrating its like 2 steps forward and 3 backwards.
Now the missions have been nerfed - or at least the algorithm has - so i have no idea what that is going to do to this. I agree that 200 million per hour is excessive, but spending 45 minutes to an hour to get 15 million is just not even reasonably balanced versus the costs in the game for larger ships and max upgrades required to perform these tasks. A fully kitted Cutter will set you back 1.2 billion credits (or more) - an Anaconda more or less the same and that isn't even the END of the game because theres engineering on top of that - yes no credits but a heck a lot of time for sure. As YAMIKS pointed out, if a large section of the community is pursuing these types of earnings is it not indicative of a fault in the balancing in the system that needs to be addressed?
Is FDev substituting excessive gameplay time into the system because of the lack of depth and content driven story telling? I wouldn't be the first to ask that question.
Anyways, I digress. I will be continuing this exploration of passenger missions later, and will periodically return to updated this thread (if it remains on the first page) with any further findings. I can only say my experiences are NOT THE SAME as others here. I would appreciate if they could further explain what parameters lead them to getting 75 million or 166 million per hour trade runs though - further data is always warranted. While I don't want them to discolse the exact route, some specificity wouldbe helpful like:
are you allied with all factions?
Do you run from stations or bases?
Do you use large or medium sized ships?
How far from the main sequence star is the giving base and how far is the receiving base?
What is the distance from the giving system to the receiving system in Ly?
Are the system in a heavily populated area of space or a sparse area of space?
Basically anything you can add would be great - Being able to work with analysing how these missions arrive may provide guidance into how to find or develop your own unique trading run for passengers.
The missions have been hammered that much they won't even cover wear and tear on a conda now lol :/ do fdev actually play this game?
If they do, they play in god mode.
UPDATED.
I’d rep you again but it seems over the last couple weeks I have given to much your way for sound thinking. Too bad, you deserve more, especially for this thread.
As to the nerfing and subsequent questions about FDev and reasonable balancing, it has driven me from touching this game for a solid 3 weeks now. I had finally outfitted 2 ships for my desired role of playing a criminal element, having a cobra for smuggling and a Conda for pirating. Well, I was very careful not to upset the BGS with my pirating since I found a gold mine making 1-5m an hour which for pirating is pretty decent. I had a vacation and took a break, came back, nothing in system had changed except the rate at which the NPC spawn rate of miners traveling in SC was down to 1-2 ships an hour at best.
Found a different system with the correct elements and same thing. Couple that with the new punishment system coming and the another nerf on a way to make reasonable credits to fund my nefarious ways, I find myself wondering why? What is going to draw me back? It’s disapponting but to spend so much time trying to acccumukate the wealth needed to begin my criminal career and see it just disappear when I was only a month in? Hard to find the desire to get back in.
You're not the only person acting on the BGS. So are other players, and I think the BGS has certain rhythms of its own. Did you notice what state the system was in when you were making good money versus when this dropped off?
Pirating is notorious for being one of the most difficult aspects of the game, so kudos for trying =]
Conditions hadn’t changed. Still the same group in charge, in a boom. Just seemed that with the coming changes to mining there was a shift in NPC behavior. It happened over one of the Thursday updates. I think it was the first update of January. I’ll give it a go this weekend and see if it shifted back. The system was on the edge of the bubble with little traffic through it.
Next to the bulk missions, there is asnother quite good way to make money. I do constantly do 25-30M/h with VIPs and my Anaconda.
So I stripped all weapons, put in D-rated besides the FDS (engineered), a scoop and a 4 rated shield with 3 boosters. Gives me jump range in the 40‘s.
Then I fill my Conda with only 4E passenger cabins into all slots, even the 7/6/6/5/5/5/5..
Why?
VIPs are usually looking for distant targets and usually come in numbers of 3-7 Eco passengers. Rarely Business or First.
Then I did the same like the OP suggested. Become allied with all local factions and made sure there are several.
I found a spot, where VIP missions usually have two long distant destinations in common, only the first short distant changes. So I grab all thos missions for 5-8M and quickly work myself through 2-4 short range destinations and then bulk everybody to the two long distance destinations, back to my station and cash in.
Having said that, check out for a station where passengers have many destinations in common.
So I stripped all weapons, put in D-rated besides the FDS (engineered), a scoop and a 4 rated shield with 3 boosters. Gives me jump range in the 40‘s.
Then I fill my Conda with only 4E passenger cabins into all slots, even the 7/6/6/5/5/5/5..
Why?
VIPs are usually looking for distant targets and usually come in numbers of 3-7 Eco passengers. Rarely Business or First.
Then I did the same like the OP suggested. Become allied with all local factions and made sure there are several.
I found a spot, where VIP missions usually have two long distant destinations in common, only the first short distant changes. So I grab all thos missions for 5-8M and quickly work myself through 2-4 short range destinations and then bulk everybody to the two long distance destinations, back to my station and cash in.
Having said that, check out for a station where passengers have many destinations in common.
this type of earning rate would be consistent with all Fdev nerfs - stacked missions, boom stat stacking, planetary base attacks, guardians etc.
I am just too lazy but with relogs I could optimize vips for the very same trip and that would be around 8M times 8 cabins for a one hour run. Even today. No nerf.
96 Mill? Nice. Im waiting on the new update to see if it will change this thread or not. Obviously running VIP's is still bootiful, but will BULK missions be nerfed forever? I suspect they will tweak the distance algorithm by a factor of 10. That would likely take your Smeaton run from 200 mill per hour to 20 mill per hour for Bulk. They re obvisouyl still happy with how the VIP missions are 'working as intended'.
I've updated the thread with the revelations from the livestream. Unfortunately where I currently am I cannot get access to BULK missions so I still don't know what the outcome of the new changes are yet.
I'll go back to my fav hunting spot for passengers when I get time and see how the new payouts compare and update this thread accordingly, when I know more.
- If anyone has any concrete numbers, from say Smeaton, it would be appreciated?
- Do we know what the nerf has resulted in for bulk mission payouts?
- There seem to be quite a few VIP missions now - other than the comment above, does anyone know if these are now MORE profitable than Bulk missions?
I'll go back to my fav hunting spot for passengers when I get time and see how the new payouts compare and update this thread accordingly, when I know more.
Apparently yes - see the first page header and the last livestream.
stormyuk
Volunteer Moderator
I guess we will have to wait and see.
For passenger missions, I've only ever done the Smeaton Orbital run out of Allen Hub. Once Ive finished the Ram Tah mission (tonight or tomorrow) I'll head back to Allen Hub and tell you what it looks like now compared to before the nerf. If memory serves, VIPs headed for Smeaton paid anywhere from 5 to 11 million.
stormyuk
Volunteer Moderator
What about the bulk passenger missions? They were the money maker from Smeaton before the nerf, not the VIPs.