Elite / Frontier Private package deliveries in Frontier

[hayesey]

I'm playing the Amiga version of FE2, in 1993 it somehow passed me by, I think I was too busy playing Cannon Fodder... anyway i'm loving it now.

One thing I can't work out is the success or failure criteria for doing private package deliveries (not the military ones). When I do these, I frequently get the message "Don't even think about asking for payment, I'm reporting you to the authorities" when I deliver the package and I can't work out why.

Is there some unwritten time limit on doing these deliveries? I can see time limits on the military ones but on the private ones there is no mention of time limits.

Or do they not like me having a criminal record? Although I only had one from the Federation earlier on and still failed the delivery in Imperial & Independent systems.

 

[Arioch]

I'm playing the Amiga version of FE2, in 1993 it somehow passed me by, I think I was too busy playing Cannon Fodder... anyway i'm loving it now.

One thing I can't work out is the success or failure criteria for doing private package deliveries (not the military ones). When I do these, I frequently get the message "Don't even think about asking for payment, I'm reporting you to the authorities" when I deliver the package and I can't work out why.

Is there some unwritten time limit on doing these deliveries? I can see time limits on the military ones but on the private ones there is no mention of time limits.

Or do they not like me having a criminal record? Although I only had one from the Federation earlier on and still failed the delivery in Imperial & Independent systems.

If I remember correctly the non-military missions have a month time limit. It’s a hidden reputation system that you have - do well on the delivery stuff and you can eventually ask for more credits.

If you take longer than a month to get passengers to their destination they refuse to leave the cabins and you are stuck with them for the rest of the game - the only way to solve the situation is to use an escape pod and leave them drifting in space grumbling away to themselves

 

[Manfred Belheim]

Yes the time limit is a month, but if you're regularly hitting that limit then you must be doing something wrong as that's usually more than adequate. Unless you're just hoarding lots of deliveries and not going directly?

If you take longer than a month to get passengers to their destination they refuse to leave the cabins and you are stuck with them for the rest of the game - the only way to solve the situation is to use an escape pod and leave them drifting in space grumbling away to themselves

This must depend on the version of the game as I've never had this issue. I possibly have a later version than most release versions though as I sent my disk back for an update a few months after release. Annoyingly it fixed all the "fun" bugs, but none of the bad ones. But I don't recall having the bug you mention even on my original version.

 

[hayesey]

ah OK thanks, I am probably hitting a month when they happen. When I say regularly, I'm not doing many of them as I'm mostly concentrating on Elite rating. I have an imperial courier right now which is good for bounty hunting & getting kills but it's quite slow. When I had this package issue last night I had probably done 4 hyperspace jumps to get to where it needed to be, the time limit seems undocumented.

I will avoid package deliveries for now then unless they are a single jump away and come back to stuff like that later on when I "downgrade" to a Viper or similar to do some missions like that.