Like I mentioned in a previous post I did a run where I stacked multiple VIP explorer missions to try boosting the explorer rank. The other post can be found here.
This was my experience shared with my squadron, giving them some thoughts and ideas on how to run such missions. It was not all a walk in the park, some challenges with the ship (the other post). Then there were the challenges with the missions themselves, and the process of filling all the cabins with those explorer wannabe VIPs.
Here is my experience with VIP passenger missions:
The missions:
The VIP passenger missions can be a bit challenging.
Unless you want to run into potential trouble, avoid wanted/illegal passengers. Having those on board will make your ship inherit their status, but only if scanned. If scanned, you will in most cases be attacked. To avoid scanning, make sure that you master the art of fast approach to stations to avoid scanning. Don't stay in regular cruise for to long, eventually someone will jump in and scan you and then attack you. Do what you need to do and jump back to supercruise or next system.
How do you identify those missions with illegal/wanted passengers? I'm not sure, the mission text will not contain info about that. It is probably the threat level of the mission. Threat above 4 (red?) will probably involve such missions. But those can also be high value passengers that are likely to be attacked. Those mission also involve avoid scanning, and will have a high reward. But you will not be attacked if scanned by bounty hunters or law enforcement.
Remember to have cargo space for 2 items per mission accepted. VIP missions will involve demanding passengers. They can require you to find specific items to purchase for them. That usually is clothing and domestic appliances. Probably will not all missions activate that demand, but they will often occur. In my case it was in 4 of 7 missions, with total of 12 items. I had room for 16 cargo in total.
Running VIP missions need to be planned well. That is because VIPs don't share their cabin with others. If you choose to place a group of 5 in a 12 seat cabin those 7 spare seats will be useless. Then you will also have to drag that extra weight with you on the trip. To avoid that, make sure that you have the minimum required cabin for that group.
Then you have the cabin class. If that group require 4 seats in economy class you don't want to give them the 4 seat first class cabin. They will not pay any extra for the higher class cabin. If you do that you will have to haul a 20 T cabin when you could use a 5 T cabin. So make sure that you assign the proper cabin to each mission. If you stack missions like I did, 7 in total, you could end up with hauling over 100 T of excessive mass. That will affect both fuel economy and jump range.
Here is the problem. There is no way of telling which class the passengers require. You have to pick cabin to see the total number of passengers in that group, and the class is not mentioned. I ended up assigning cabin, but not accept mission. Then I would have the number. Then I went back to outfitting and changed the cabin class to Economy, then tried to assign cabin to that mission again. It was a lot of jumping between outfitting and mission board.
Eventually I filled all passenger cabins. But that is when I discovered that I had an illegal passenger onboard. I have lost a lot of ships to that, so I want to avoid such situation. Especially now when I have 7 groups of passengers boarded on the ship. So I decided to abort that mission. I've done that before, it is just to go through the missions to see who is wanted in several systems. But that information is for some reason no longer available. I had the choice to risk loosing the ship with all groups on board or abort all missions.
I decided to take the chance. After all, I have mastered the art of lining up with the station for a direct approach, boosting in and entering the dock with a hot boiling ship. The heat is not from silent running. It is from boosting with the Beluga Liner, the overheating big luxury passenger liner.
This was my experience shared with my squadron, giving them some thoughts and ideas on how to run such missions. It was not all a walk in the park, some challenges with the ship (the other post). Then there were the challenges with the missions themselves, and the process of filling all the cabins with those explorer wannabe VIPs.
Here is my experience with VIP passenger missions:
The missions:
The VIP passenger missions can be a bit challenging.
Unless you want to run into potential trouble, avoid wanted/illegal passengers. Having those on board will make your ship inherit their status, but only if scanned. If scanned, you will in most cases be attacked. To avoid scanning, make sure that you master the art of fast approach to stations to avoid scanning. Don't stay in regular cruise for to long, eventually someone will jump in and scan you and then attack you. Do what you need to do and jump back to supercruise or next system.
How do you identify those missions with illegal/wanted passengers? I'm not sure, the mission text will not contain info about that. It is probably the threat level of the mission. Threat above 4 (red?) will probably involve such missions. But those can also be high value passengers that are likely to be attacked. Those mission also involve avoid scanning, and will have a high reward. But you will not be attacked if scanned by bounty hunters or law enforcement.
Remember to have cargo space for 2 items per mission accepted. VIP missions will involve demanding passengers. They can require you to find specific items to purchase for them. That usually is clothing and domestic appliances. Probably will not all missions activate that demand, but they will often occur. In my case it was in 4 of 7 missions, with total of 12 items. I had room for 16 cargo in total.
Running VIP missions need to be planned well. That is because VIPs don't share their cabin with others. If you choose to place a group of 5 in a 12 seat cabin those 7 spare seats will be useless. Then you will also have to drag that extra weight with you on the trip. To avoid that, make sure that you have the minimum required cabin for that group.
Then you have the cabin class. If that group require 4 seats in economy class you don't want to give them the 4 seat first class cabin. They will not pay any extra for the higher class cabin. If you do that you will have to haul a 20 T cabin when you could use a 5 T cabin. So make sure that you assign the proper cabin to each mission. If you stack missions like I did, 7 in total, you could end up with hauling over 100 T of excessive mass. That will affect both fuel economy and jump range.
Here is the problem. There is no way of telling which class the passengers require. You have to pick cabin to see the total number of passengers in that group, and the class is not mentioned. I ended up assigning cabin, but not accept mission. Then I would have the number. Then I went back to outfitting and changed the cabin class to Economy, then tried to assign cabin to that mission again. It was a lot of jumping between outfitting and mission board.
Eventually I filled all passenger cabins. But that is when I discovered that I had an illegal passenger onboard. I have lost a lot of ships to that, so I want to avoid such situation. Especially now when I have 7 groups of passengers boarded on the ship. So I decided to abort that mission. I've done that before, it is just to go through the missions to see who is wanted in several systems. But that information is for some reason no longer available. I had the choice to risk loosing the ship with all groups on board or abort all missions.
I decided to take the chance. After all, I have mastered the art of lining up with the station for a direct approach, boosting in and entering the dock with a hot boiling ship. The heat is not from silent running. It is from boosting with the Beluga Liner, the overheating big luxury passenger liner.
