Passengers should not always be mission based

[Imgran]

I would really love to see FDev get away from forcing passenger liners to only grab passengers from the mission queue. It strikes me as very inefficient and not what a modern spacefaring society would do to handle real bulk passenger runs.

There should be a standard fare queue full of ordinary law abiding joes waiting to go from one place to the next. The special missions should be a way to earn a bit of extra credits doing what you were already doing, but standard fares should be the bulk of what a bulk passenger ship does. Similar to haulage missions where you buy commodities to fill up your hold around your haulage objectives.

The queues should be based on something similar to the Supply and Demand features of ED stations with a commodities market. Standard fares should be divided between the stations normally served by a given source station (in other words, the systems and stations you'd normally see in the mission board) and the multiplier should work similarly to mission based bulk passenger runs, but with a smaller, standardized base value.

These are standard butts-in-seats with less of a time sensitive objective. they will attract less favor, and they will pay less, but they will be fare-paying people that will help fill your hold so you can get back into the black and earn some money. Not everyone that needs to go to Vela Dock is a secret agent, aid worker or terrorist. Some guys just gotta go to where the lubricant is made and do their work and make a buck.

Supply should be based on the population of the source, population of the distination, etc and should share the supply among all ships that happen by like commodities do. If there's no passengers because everyone's making the same run, then there's no passengers. Consider moving to a different origin point.

It seems to me like doing that alone would cut down on at least half of the board flipping you see. A lot of people don't like to board flip, but it's the only way to fill a medium transport in the time alloted for passenger missions -- much less a large transport where there's rarely time to fill the seats even with board flipping. A standard fare queue would solve that problem immediately, and if the queue is empty -- then the market is saturated and it's time to go somewhere else.

 

[Dan Bender]

Isn’t that kind of what the “23 medical passengers require transport to Eaves Dock” missions are supposed to be for?

 

[Jimbodiah]

Yeah, I don't get the proposal either. Sounds overly complicated for something that is already in the game. That people stack missions is something completely different and missions are not geared to that type of gameplay, hence the need to boardflip.

 

[CMDR Endincite]

Indeed I hoped for the same thing when passengers were coming in.
Something more like an airline than a cruise line - the former will often just cancel flights if they can't (nearly) fill them, making the current implementation feel a little inauthentic.

I'm generally of the opinion that non-mission-based activities are the core of the game though, probably from the early days when missions were categorically pointless to do and thus basically a background feature. The thought of anyone basing gameplay around them continues to boggle my mind, but clearly lots do. In the same way haulage missions are a(n annoyingly more profitable) shortcut to figuring out how to trade yourself, it'd be nice to have passenger missions be a mere shortcut to a detailed passenger supply/demand system. Having to learn how a system works to use it most profitably/effectively is what's kept me playing Elite.

 

[Imgran]

Isn’t that kind of what the “23 medical passengers require transport to Eaves Dock” missions are supposed to be for?

No. Those are special requests. The faction has a particular need to get particular workers to a particular place and will pay extra. There should be standard, nonurgent fares. Basic uber transport from A to B.

Basically, special requests have their place but should NOT be the only way to fill a passenger cabin.What I want is an equivalent of standard commodities for haulage. Something to fill out your hold and get you back into space when the mission related stuff isn't coming in very quickly. It's something the game is pretty blatantly missing IMHO.

It should not always take tourists, special agents and POWs to require a ticket out to the next station down the line. Commuters, workers, people visiting family, people simply moving, wanderers, students leaving to go to their desired school, job seekers, people going to obvious places for obvious nonurgent reasons -- the sorts of folks that normally fill an airline IRL, they wouldn't need special commissions to find an urgent transport -- they'd just buy a ticket and take the next ship that's going out that way. That's something the game needs and does not have.

 

[Ydiss]

Isn’t that kind of what the “23 medical passengers require transport to Eaves Dock” missions are supposed to be for?

There is a huge difference between using the mission generator and doing the same activity naturally. The fact is, pax is the only career that's 100% tied to the mission generator. Before it was introduced, the bulletin board was there to provide missions based on activities we could do naturally, without the need of a mission (bounty collecting, trading, smuggling, piracy, mining, etc). In some cases, missions were enhanced events (assassination being a prime example). It seems FD felt pax was a mission type deal from the get go, an enhanced event if you will. Rather than introducing it as an activity we could do naturally, without needing to "reroll" and get the sort of numbers we want.

I completely agree with the op. This is something I suggested long ago. The pax lounge works OK in as much as the mission board works. It's essentially random, though. And extremely limited at that.

A star system with billions of people wouldn't have a passenger lounge with a handful of passengers just randomly asking for private transport. It should be possible to find a system where the travel routes have high demand between destinations, based on the BGS. You pick a list from the various destinations and you're given the passengers to carry, up to your limit (assuming the demand is high enough) where the price (reward) is set per passenger.

Off you go.

It would have actually been a lot simpler than the mission system. FD have spoken many times about how ultra complex their PG mission system is.

Essentially, the argument you're making assumes that it would be 100% OK if all content was driven by missions. I'm just going to say it... This game would be awful if that were the case.

A pax career could be greatly enhanced if it wasn't shackled to the 20 sided dice it's currently reliant on.

Essentially, the op is asking for passengers to be included as a sandbox activity in a sandbox game. Doesn't seem so unreasonable if you think of it that way, does it?

 

[CMDR Carbo]

Isn’t that kind of what the “23 medical passengers require transport to Eaves Dock” missions are supposed to be for?

Passengers and trade missions are currently not part of the BGS if I'm not mistaken. Supply on passengers and commodities in missions is unlimited, transporting them has no consequence on supply and demand.

I think the OP is suggesting to have passengers be part of the supply and demand BGS simulation. This would also have the advantage that passenger runs that give insane outcome could be self-limiting.

I think that the OP has a point. Maybe keep the VIP missions for passengers missions and use the tourists, workers and refugees for non-mission based passenger transport.

Edit: ninja'd by Ydiss

 

[Maka Gucci]

Passengers and trade missions are currently not part of the BGS if I'm not mistaken.

Is this true? I would have said I was sure it wasn't, but would love to hear some clarity.
We always talk about Python being a great BGS ship, quickly able to switch out cargo racks for cabins, and land at medium pads.

 

[Imgran]

I want to clarify that there absolutely SHOULD be passenger missions. The mission board of the passenger lounge is important and should remain.

It should, however, be suplemented with the ability to fill your passenger seats in a way that's more organic to standard gameplay and feels less like a tacked-on afterthought.

 

[Ydiss]

In addition, I think that the ppp should increase based on the seats you fill. And the tickets on offer should be based on your reputation.

So, at neutral you can fill only economy seats and the ppp is the base value. But as you gain reputation, you could sell business and vip seats, at a greatly increased value (with vip seats selling several factors higher). Where refugee travel (as an example) pays the lowest but gives you a large amount of reputation and is available no matter your reputation standing.

Obviously, you still need to find travel routes with the right demand in volume for your ship.

 

[CMDR Carbo]

Is this true? I would have said I was sure it wasn't, but would love to hear some clarity.
We always talk about Python being a great BGS ship, quickly able to switch out cargo racks for cabins, and land at medium pads.

Sorry for the confusion, my bad, that's not what I meant. Of course the completion of those missions count to the BGS as they give Rep and Inf.
What I meant they are not tied into the supply and demand of the BGS, as there is currently no supply and demand for passengers like for commodities.

 

[Sapyx]

The difficulty is in designing a system to allow this that doesn't "commoditize" passengers.

Example: the old Transport Tycoon games. In that game, you built roads, railways, airports in different cities on a randomly generated continent and bought transport vehicles to carry passengers between them. Passengers would turn up at your railway station, airport etc. and you would pick them up and take them elsewhere. The faster you took them, the more money you got paid.

While this was a reasonably realistic way of modelling the end-result of a "realistic" transport network, it wasn't truly "realistic" for the individual passengers. In real life, passengers don't simply turn up at a railway station and wait for a train to take them someplace - anyplace, they don't really care, across town or across the continent. The passengers had no choice where they went, or which mode of transport they took, they just got on board the first thing that showed up. They were "commodities", just like the coal, fruit, goods etc that you could also choose to transport around. In real life, passengers have reasons for travelling, they want to go to a specific place for that reason. The mission board is the simplest way of modelling this.

The problem, as I see it, is the relatively small numbers of people under the current mission system that seem to want to be travelling from the major population centres. There should be thousands of passenger missions waiting for pilots wishing to travel from Sol, or Achenar, or any of the other ten-billion-plus population star systems; there should be so many we'd need to filter them by passenger type and destination. Yet the mission board can only handle a couple dozen missions at any one time.

Perhaps a better alternative would be the ability to allow us to "write our own missions". Let us put up a notice in the passenger lounge, announcing how many free cabins we have, our planned destination, and perhaps our expected departure time (so we can fill up our ships while logged off for the night), and then we can sit there and wait for the passengers to turn up. The higher the population of the place we're at, and the more popular our destination, the faster the passengers will arrive; a passenger ship waiting at a really busy starport, bound for a popular destination (like the nearest Superpower capital, or a tourist planet) should fill up pretty quick.

It's be realistic, but perhaps not to the liking of the "it's a game" crowd, who are already upset at having to sit and wait for a transferred ship to arrive.

 

[Ka_Tor]

Passengers and trade missions are currently not part of the BGS if I'm not mistaken. Supply on passengers and commodities in missions is unlimited, transporting them has no consequence on supply and demand.

I think the OP is suggesting to have passengers be part of the supply and demand BGS simulation. This would also have the advantage that passenger runs that give insane outcome could be self-limiting.

I think that the OP has a point. Maybe keep the VIP missions for passengers missions and use the tourists, workers and refugees for non-mission based passenger transport.

Edit: ninja'd by Ydiss

I recently used Trade missions to speed up my factions Boom state so that I can trigger the pending War state. The factio doesn't control a station so i couldn't trade naturally to influence it.

 

[Ka_Tor]

I agree with Op, And I would add the option to add internal simulation activities to the Cruise Liner ships: Spas, Gyms, Entertainment, Wedding Halls etc. All which to attract certain type of customers (WALLETS) and influence their satisfaction. Perhaps even plot tourism routes visiting multiple tourist sites and return.

 

[Enderby]

Maybe build rep with a faction to then be able to buy a license to become one of their licensed passenger ships (or just buy a license straight off the bat maybe). You can then check in at a terminus menu and choose from a number of destinations - and bigger ship with more passengers means a higher wage for the trip.

I dunno.... something to make it seem more like a profession.

Fluff it up a bit make it seem more like you're a space-Otto.

 

[Ydiss]

The difficulty is in designing a system to allow this that doesn't "commoditize" passengers.

Example: the old Transport Tycoon games. In that game, you built roads, railways, airports in different cities on a randomly generated continent and bought transport vehicles to carry passengers between them. Passengers would turn up at your railway station, airport etc. and you would pick them up and take them elsewhere. The faster you took them, the more money you got paid.

While this was a reasonably realistic way of modelling the end-result of a "realistic" transport network, it wasn't truly "realistic" for the individual passengers. In real life, passengers don't simply turn up at a railway station and wait for a train to take them someplace - anyplace, they don't really care, across town or across the continent. The passengers had no choice where they went, or which mode of transport they took, they just got on board the first thing that showed up. They were "commodities", just like the coal, fruit, goods etc that you could also choose to transport around. In real life, passengers have reasons for travelling, they want to go to a specific place for that reason. The mission board is the simplest way of modelling this.

The problem, as I see it, is the relatively small numbers of people under the current mission system that seem to want to be travelling from the major population centres. There should be thousands of passenger missions waiting for pilots wishing to travel from Sol, or Achenar, or any of the other ten-billion-plus population star systems; there should be so many we'd need to filter them by passenger type and destination. Yet the mission board can only handle a couple dozen missions at any one time.

Perhaps a better alternative would be the ability to allow us to "write our own missions". Let us put up a notice in the passenger lounge, announcing how many free cabins we have, our planned destination, and perhaps our expected departure time (so we can fill up our ships while logged off for the night), and then we can sit there and wait for the passengers to turn up. The higher the population of the place we're at, and the more popular our destination, the faster the passengers will arrive; a passenger ship waiting at a really busy starport, bound for a popular destination (like the nearest Superpower capital, or a tourist planet) should fill up pretty quick.

It's be realistic, but perhaps not to the liking of the "it's a game" crowd, who are already upset at having to sit and wait for a transferred ship to arrive.

Your idea is decent, though I don't think there need be a wait.

Essentially, you're right. If we simply step in and take x number of anonymous and apparently queuing passengers to and from two locations, it's no different to the commodity market. And it should be noted that a lot of people said they hoped the passenger system wouldn't just be trading with a different commodity.

FD delivered passengers as a mechanic that avoided that scenario. It is content in its own right, separate from trading, with its own set of rules. But, at its core, it's just trade missions or exploration missions, just with slightly different mission wrinkles. Both equally restricted and restrained as all missions are by random generation.

I still feel passengers isn't currently well designed as a sandbox mechanic. All other career choices are based on an activity you can complete simply by equipping your ship and doing the activity you want, without the need to complete missions.

Trading uses the commodity market. Bounty hunters and mercenaries use the contacts. Mining uses the commodity markets. Piracy and smuggling use the black market. Exploration uses universal cartographics. Prospecting is tied to engineering. Even power play is not strictly mission based. You can choose any activity and go do it, then get the reward at the power play contact screen. Everything except passengers is based on the freedom to do what you want, up to whatever volume you are capable of, then gain the reward through transactions that aren't restricted by a mission. No time limits. No extra conditions. No set locations.

That's the essence of sandbox and, for the most part, that's how ED has been designed. The mission board was always just a way to get a reward for doing some of these things but in a structured, more focused way. Which is a good thing. But this game would be hollow if that was the only form of activities.

That still applies to passengers. And passengers sticks out because of its lack of a truly sandbox approach to how we do it.

I agree, it's important that it not just be trading people as a commodity. But it doesn't take a lot of imagination to bypass that issue and still keep it a separate entity.

For starters, there still needs to be an expectation that you complete the journey in a reasonable time frame. I don't think we can ever get away from that element of the mechanic. We're transporting people who want to get to their destination, so we can't just load up and deliver them whenever we want.

It should also be based on set routes. The BGS should decide these routes and we should be able to pick from a finite list of routes from the current station. What should then happen is we're told how many passengers have requested tickets for that route but the regular operators haven't the capacity to fulfil the demand. We are then acting in the role as a freelance operator for that route. It's not hard to assume that as a scenario where we can step in and take the job.

Demand can be any BGS determined value at this point. Either there are x number of passengers looking to travel to y location, or there aren't. But, as a commander who wants to transport passengers, you're going to seek out the systems where the demand is high, then find the local system destination that has a high enough demand for your ship (in both directions or as part of a round trip, ideally).

All this can happen in the passenger lounge under a separate page (Unchartered passenger lounge).

Yes, essentially, it's trading but where you have a time limit (though I'd suggest the time limit be very reasonable). But I guarantee that there will be a significant number of players who would love to just do that. Because it's a lot more like something you can do in a sandbox game. Because it makes no sense to fly a passenger ship when most of the time you fly with empty seats. Because a lot of them would just enjoy playing the role of the guy who takes passengers from A to B sometimes. Without the need to play a mini game of rng transport the demanding npc.

It can be done. It's how most of the game has been designed already. In isolation, the two methods (sandbox or mission based) alone wouldn't have been enough. I think that applies to passenger content too. So it would improve the game.

 

[NecasekO]

I agree with the OP. This is how I can see it work:

At each station there would be a new section for bulk passengers. Passengers would be listed by their intended destination and possibly cabin class (economy / businness). Destinations should include all stations within some distance (15 Ly), including "local" travel within the same system. Fare for each passenger would be based on distance (both system-to-system and supercruise) and cabin class.

Each batch of passengers you pick will show up as an item in your "inventory" and will have a time stamp. There will either be a time limit to deliver them, or (taken from Transport Tycoon) the reward will be higher if you can transport them faster and slowly decrease over time.

Passengers can automatically disembark when docking at their destination, I don't think there is a reason to require additional UI or manual input. Unlike commodities, there is nothing to be gained by keeping passengers on board.

So a player is free to load up with passengers to a single destination (if demand is high and the economy generates a lot of passengers) or take passengers to different destinations and deliver them in sequence, possibly taking more passengers along the way.

The system would be self regulating as any economy would run out of passengers if too many players try to run the same route.

 

[CMDR Karrde Sun]

I suggested something similar as passenger missions was being released:

- Passengers could be like rare commodities. Pick them up with luxury being the scarcest.
- Have a galaxy map view with all the tourist beacons visible (there are many hundreds).
- Sandbox play. You take them around as your imagination / rp goes with payment increasing based on the number of beacons visited and distance travelled.
- Add multipliers to rewards, so if you took a luxury passenger around for weeks (met their wrinkles along the way?) and visited 100+ beacons you could get the current get rich quick payouts.
- Drop them off whenever you want (mystery tours). Have specific drop off points (tourist economy stations, giving these a purpose too).

Sandbox passengers.. thats what i thought it would be not specialised cargo missions.

But nope.

 

[Imgran]

I suggested something similar as passenger missions was being released:

- Passengers could be like rare commodities. Pick them up with luxury being the scarcest.
- Have a galaxy map view with all the tourist beacons visible (there are many hundreds).
- Sandbox play. You take them around as your imagination / rp goes with payment increasing based on the number of beacons visited and distance travelled.
- Add multipliers to rewards, so if you took a luxury passenger around for weeks (met their wrinkles along the way?) and visited 100+ beacons you could get the current get rich quick payouts.
- Drop them off whenever you want (mystery tours). Have specific drop off points (tourist economy stations, giving these a purpose too).

Sandbox passengers.. thats what i thought it would be not specialised cargo missions.

But nope.

I think that's a bit unnecessarily complicated.

A good start would be, simply being able to declare your destination and see what passengers queue up to go there. Filtering missions for destination would go a long way even with no other changes.