Passenger ships need to be more special.

[Asssteroid]

Hello everyone. I was thinking about how little usefulness the 3 passenger ships have for carrying passengers apart from personal narrative. I mean, it is ridiculous that a combat ship like the Corvette can carry more passengers than the largest passenger ship Beluga. So what I was thinking is that all ships apart from the 3 Saud Kruger ship should only be limited to economy class. No business and no first class( Luxury is a joke, those missions are rare and the payoff is not special). Its like carrying passengers in a large military plane vs a Boeing 777. The military would carry more but they would be packed like sheep and the passenger ship would be much more comfortable. It would give a reason to prefer a Saud Kruger ship than any other ship for passenger missions because business and first class pay better. Your thoughts? Thank you for reading!

 

[metatheurgist]

Sure, but we should also restrict HRPs, weapons and such to "military" ships.

 

[Asssteroid]

Sure, but we should also restrict HRPs, weapons and such to "military" ships.

Why? HRPs are like putting bulletproof glass to a car, you can do this to any vehicle. Weapons, I agree with you. Not removing them completely, all ships should have a form of defence. Maybe downgrade the power distributor in all passenger ships. I think that would balance it. Also military ships are and should be more agile than passenger ships

 

[Cmdr. Numa]

The ships are fine, the content for luxury cabins isn't.

 

[Darrack]

Hello everyone. I was thinking about how little usefulness the 3 passenger ships have for carrying passengers apart from personal narrative. I mean, it is ridiculous that a combat ship like the Corvette can carry more passengers than the largest passenger ship Beluga. So what I was thinking is that all ships apart from the 3 Saud Kruger ship should only be limited to economy class. No business and no first class( Luxury is a joke, those missions are rare and the payoff is not special). Its like carrying passengers in a large military plane vs a Boeing 777. The military would carry more but they would be packed like sheep and the passenger ship would be much more comfortable. It would give a reason to prefer a Saud Kruger ship than any other ship for passenger missions because business and first class pay better. Your thoughts? Thank you for reading!

The issue is that SK don't make a medium ship, so if your doing passenger runs from outposts it has to be a Python or similar, the flipper is neither use nor ornament for making money.
Besides the best thing in ED is that any ship can be outfitted to do anything, choice is a good thing.

O7

 

[Jmanis]

The ships are fine, the content for luxury cabins isn't.

This. The drawcard of passenger ships is the luxury cabin.

Where luxury cabins fall over is lost opportunity cost by not fitting lower quality, higher capacity cabins because:

- luxury class missions are comparatively rare compared to other classes, and

- the payout bonus is barely noticeable, and doesn't even compensate for the business lost by not being able to fit those free extra business/ economy class passengers you could otherwise take.

A basic fix would be having luxury class missions available on- demand, and maybe pay out an order of magnitude more.

You could couple this with a mild increase in seats for the other class cabins... then those missions become a better source of influence/ rep/ materials by doing them in bulk, while luxury is the big bucks.

 

[Cmdr. Numa]

The issue is that SK don't make a medium ship, so if your doing passenger runs from outposts it has to be a Python or similar, the flipper is neither use nor ornament for making money.
Besides the best thing in ED is that any ship can be outfitted to do anything, choice is a good thing.

O7

Actually they do. Medium pad length is 150m, Orca is 130m long, that is a go. Orca is also 22.7m tall, Fed Gunship is 22.5m and is a medium, so that is a go too. Conclusion: Orca is actually a medium ship that just isn't allowed to dock at a medium pad for arbitrary reasons.

 

[Darrack]

Actually they do. Medium pad length is 150m, Orca is 130m long, that is a go. Orca is also 22.7m tall, Fed Gunship is 22.5m and is a medium, so that is a go too. Conclusion: Orca is actually a medium ship that just isn't allowed to dock at a medium pad for arbitrary reasons.

All true but it cant land at an outpost.

O7

 

[Kissamies]

Old suggestion: Make SK ships bump their effective cabin quality one level up. Economy becomes business and so on. Luxury cabins wouldn't even exist except as First Class upgraded to Luxury by SK bonus.

BTW, I do use luxury cabin: a single size 6, but that's because I do passenger missions for BGS and don't want to miss that one 5 inf+ VIP mission that might require that. If it doesn't, the VIPs still fit and won't complain about the upgrade.

 

[Old Duck]

Sure, but we should also restrict HRPs, weapons and such to "military" ships.

I've totally supported the HRPs and MRPs being restricted to military slots for years now. I'd also like to see shield boosters have some sort of penalty that prevents covering your ship in them to quadruple shield strength, like perhaps a real consequence to power demand / distributor draw.

 

[Nadreck]

Old suggestion: Make SK ships bump their effective cabin quality one level up. Economy becomes business and so on. Luxury cabins wouldn't even exist except as First Class upgraded to Luxury by SK bonus.

Yes, that would be my preferred solution. And easily implemented in a hotfix too: all owned Luxury cabins (in ships and in storage) are replaced by First Class cabins, with the owners getting a refund of the price difference. Passengers already in Luxury cabins on SK ships wouldn't be adversely affected, they'd just suddenly gain slightly more room.

 

[Jmanis]

Another aproach could be to simply boost (double? Triple?) any rewards for a mission done using a luxury cabin, regardless of whether or not it was the required cabin type.

 

[GJ51]

Duh - how about a Medium Saud Kruger and some missions to outposts? And yeah - some decent Luxury Class Missions that made it worth outfitting the Lux Cabins.

Everything in ED feels like a placeholder...

 

[Darrack]

Duh - how about a Medium Saud Kruger and some missions to outposts? And yeah - some decent Luxury Class Missions that made it worth outfitting the Lux Cabins.

Everything in ED feels like a placeholder...

Doom??

O7

 

[GJ51]

Doom??

O7

Nah - just so many things feel like they never got finished.

 

[Darrack]

Nah - just so many things feel like they never got finished.

Not sure what you mean by unfinished, hence the Doom?

how about a Medium Saud Kruger

Aston Martin don't make vans

decent Luxury Class Missions that made it worth outfitting the Lux Cabins

There's lots off missions for long distance tourism with Luxury cabins, try Robigo

Everything in ED feels like a placeholder..

Again not sure what you mean? More Doom?

O7

 

[Danieros]

IMO the issue lies in the luxury cabins. By equipping them you're more likely to end up with empty cabins.

Perhaps luxury passengers deserve a mission board of their own. So right now you have "group transport", "personal transport" and this would be a new "luxury transport" one. Not sure how they'd make missions interesting, but by having a mission board category of their own you'd at least be sure you'd be able to fill them up. That in itself is quite an advantage.

 

[Screemonster]

I've totally supported the HRPs and MRPs being restricted to military slots for years now. I'd also like to see shield boosters have some sort of penalty that prevents covering your ship in them to quadruple shield strength, like perhaps a real consequence to power demand / distributor draw.

iirc the big debate over whether boosters should stack was before engineering, where a 20%-max boost to your base shield per booster was all you got - after engineering, where the shield boost can be pushed into the 70s and you can get massive stacked resistance boosts as well, maybe that decision should have been revisited.

Personally, I'd cap both shield boosts and resistance boosts at the sum of your base boost without engineering or your single largest booster, whichever is greater. That way the benefit of engineering up a big chonky booster would be a matter of freeing up utility slots rather than having more shields than the entire third crusade.

 

[Darrack]

I've totally supported the HRPs and MRPs being restricted to military slots for years now. I'd also like to see shield boosters have some sort of penalty that prevents covering your ship in them to quadruple shield strength, like perhaps a real consequence to power demand / distributor draw.

Have to disagree mate, as long as there are muppet gankers you need as much shields as you can get on a trader or literally nobody would touch Open with a barge pole.
SBs add heat and weight that's enough of a trade off.

O7

 

[Rubbernuke]

All I can say is its all a total clusterfudge- an Orca is better than a FAS in nearly all combat, with unrestricted slots its just made the whole affair a total mess.

Off topic, the problem is that in ED passengers are really cargo- other than taking them out or into (sometimes) dangerous places what else can you do with them? I can think of ideas for things like special spies / security for states in the BGS and in Powerplay but.....for someone who wants a holiday? It just going to be point to point (and sometimes back).

Personally, I'd make it even more granular in that super posh passengers are also locked to superpower ships- so an Imperial diplomat would only go on a Cutter or Clipper etc, and that these super high ranking passengers would have a chain of POIs to go to (inspecting the troops, ships, stations etc, and do it in style / alive).