The Beluga Liner - a story about doing exploration in the top of the line luxury liner

CMDR Don Samen

CMDR Don Samen
I did this run to gather some ideas and thoughts to my squadron members regarding exploration ranks. Running VIP exploration missions will count towards the exploration ranks. I did this in my Beluga Liner, a stunning and beautiful luxury liner cruise ship. I had not flown the Beluga for years when I picked it out of storage and put myself in the pilots seat. This is my report I posted to my squadron:

I just stacked 7 VIP passenger missions. Those missions will count giving you exploration points to rank up. But I made some few notes on the way:

The Beluga Liner:
  • Don't buy the Beluga Liner. It is basically a rubbish ship.
  • You have to engineer it to don't make it overheat.
  • It is massive, has a huge fuel tank (largest in game) and it has only class 6 optional slots.
  • The largest fuel scope you can fit in that ship is the 6A, which will make the refueling take a looong time. While doing so you will probably overheat.
  • You can't jump to next system just after cooldown from previous jump. You have to wait for heat to get down to below 50 %, or you will end up jumping while overheating.
  • The ship is slow, so if you are attacked you have to either fight or boost away. Boosting will cause the ship to overheat. So, if you engage FSD while boosting away the ship will be boiling good while jumping - in other words massive overheating.
  • It has six utility slots. Using two for defensive gives you 4 slots for heat sinks. You will need those to avoid some of the overheating.

  • If you want to carry bulk passengers the Corvette is the ship that can carry most bulk passengers in cabins. The Anaconda has similar numbers to the Beluga, but it can carry a class 7 fuel scope.
  • If you want to run evac-missions from damaged stations, use either the T9 or Cutter, because then you can combine 2 x class 8 Cargo holds with regular cabins. Then you can pick both wounded passengers in rescue pods, and regular passengers in cabins. If you prefer cabins only, then the Corvette and Anaconda is a better choice.
  • If you are running small groups of VIPs use either the Anaconda, Orca or Python - depending on the number of cabins. Better jump range, heat efficiency, fuel scope, thrusters, weapons etc.
  • If you are running Luxury passengers, use the Orca. It has one class 6 slot for the largest cabin.

I can't find one good reason for buying the Beluga Liner, other than that it looks awesome, every design element of that ship is just WOW! The problem is that it is just bad in every aspect where it should be great. The sad part is that I bought ship kit for the Beluga before I knew all this. I could engineer all modules to make it better. But the grind is not worth it as long as the other ships are just better and worth engineering because of their multipurpose roles.

And when doing exploration missions, remember to bring that darn surface scanner!!!
 

GroG79

G
Seems you have the wrong engineering on your powerplant. That should help with some of the problems you are having

Further Only the liner ships can fit luxury cabins. That might be a reason to get the beluga

And yes lots of valid points.....
 

Florenus

Florenus
So it's not super efficient ship. You don't need to be super fast and efficient. If you enjoy how it looks, then it's enough reason to fly it.

As for engineering - why do you have to grind to do it? Just gather materials as you play and upgrade gradually.
Believe me, when you have engineered ships and all the money, there's little reason to actually do anything in the game.
 

CMDR Don Samen

CMDR Don Samen
GroG79 said:
Further Only the liner ships can fit luxury cabins. That might be a reason to get the beluga.
Click to expand...

Like I said, the Belugas largest slots is class 6, and the Orca can have one class 6. So if you are running Luxury missions, use the Orca. That is unless you manage to find more Luxury missions. But I have not seen many of those.
 

CMDR Don Samen

CMDR Don Samen
Florenus said:
So it's not super efficient ship. You don't need to be super fast and efficient. If you enjoy how it looks, then it's enough reason to fly it.

As for engineering - why do you have to grind to do it? Just gather materials as you play and upgrade gradually.
Believe me, when you have engineered ships and all the money, there's little reason to actually do anything in the game.
Click to expand...
Yes, it is a great looking ship. The only reason to own one is if you are a cruise line commander that want to fly that ship. Then you will spend the time getting all materials to make all modules heat efficient. I don't see the value in that ship because I'm not a luxury line commander. And to be honest, I don't regret buying the ship kit. The Beluga Liner just looks so great with all kits installed. But I can't find myself putting energy into engineering that ship when I have other ships that still need some engineering, ships I use all the time.
 

Schmack

Schmack
I fly ships based more on how they sound internally and how the handle than anything else. I also like the view on some ships. If you're doing planetary missions, you can invert over a planet and see your waypoint on the other side, then fly there.

I own a Beluga as a storage bin. I don't intend to fly it much but I have the engineered modules in my outfitting to trick it out if needed.

After all, it's in the top 1% of all luxury liners out there.
 

Decksmeck

D
You could make a Shieldless Beluga.
Link-
Shieldless Beluga

This one I just made up without to much effort so it can probably be done much better. I made this one with a military hull. It has some armor and with the 6 utility slots I added defensive modules to extend the life of the ship. An ECM if you get a bunch of missile attacks at once along with 3 point defense. I could not place the point defense correctly in the builder but you could put them next to the engines, power plant, and FSD. There are 2 chaff launchers to lower the effectiveness of gimballed weapon fire.

Alternatively, you might put a reflective hull on it for around 70% resistance to laser fire. Along with the point defense and ECM you would be vulnerable mainly to kinetic guns. The chaff will help with gimballed.

There are defensive options for the 5 guns. I loaded 5 turents so they can auto target in the event of a long FSD refresh. I added 3 fragmentation turrents for short range under 2km. Rapid fire. I chose effects that will reduce the effectiveness of enemy ships. I put two burst lasers with rapid fire for ships within 3km. There might be better options for defensive turrents.

This leaves all of the slots open for passenger cabins. The jump range is about 20 light years so the build is suitable for picking up passengers going one way to neighboring systems. I forgot to lower the size of the fuel tank but with this use case it could be lowered to 32 to add a light year. The max fuel for a jump with the 7a FSD is 12.8 in this build so that is 25.6 for two maximum distance jumps with plenty left over. More than enough for the use case of this build.

There are 128 economy seats, 4 luxury seats (1 cabin), 9 first class seats (2 cabins 6 and 3 seats for 2 VIP groups), and 12 business seats (4 cabins 3 seats each for small VIP groups). The luxury cabin can carry any class, so you can carry 13 first class bulk or 16 business class bulk or be carrying up to 7 small VIP groups along with 128 bulk economy. 153 seats total.

The power plant has enough juice to accommodate mainly all shielded modules for a tougher ship and there is plenty of juice left to accommodate hungrier guns.

I added an advanced docking computer in the size 1 module slot to make the frequent docking easy.
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The Anaconda on the other hand is a better attack ship because of the huge power plant and giant guns. I am going to see how it compares for short range passenger missions.

Anaconda short range passenger mission

So I built it about the same way. It has more guns and utilities.

It has the same 128 economy seats. It ha 3 first class cabins 6 seats each for 18 total. It has 3 business seats 6 seats each for 18 total. It can carry a total of 164 seats. It carries more than the Beluga.

I added a module reinforcement in the military slot for more toughness and a guardian frame shift drive booster to bring the FSD range up to about 23. All the modules are shielded or armored for extra toughness. It also has much higher armor.

The Anaconda looks like a better short range passenger ship.
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Now, I suppose that the Beluga might be better suited to something because of the 128 ton fuel tank. That gives it exactly 10 max range jumps unless the fuel economy is modified. That could mean 5 jumps to somewhere and 5 jumps back without a scoop or a circuit of 10 jumps ending at a destination for refueling.

If I change the FSD engineering to max deep range and mass manager, I can get 27.43 without changing anything for light weight or almost 330 light years without a scoop or refueling. Next time I am on, I will have to look on the edge of the bubble for a cluster of systems close to something more rare like a black hole where a Beluga captain might bounce around the cluster and pickup exploration missions to the same destination. If that scenario exists, the extra passenger cabin instead of a fuel scoop could add up to many millions over repeated tours of the destination.

Of course, choosing an economical route means the Beluga can go much further without a scoop with only the standard fuel tank but if the idea is to make money over a career, it is probably going to be more lucrative if you can complete the missions faster.
 
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Helmut Grokenberger

Helmut Grokenberger
Factabulous said:
I stopped reading there. It's a great explorer, only surpassed by the Dolphin.
Click to expand...
Agreed. I have two explorers in my fleet: One Dolphin and one Beluga. I've had others in the past... Phantoms, a DBX, an Anaconda... but nah.

To be fair, making the Beluga work takes some effort. I had to G5 low emission mine to make the heat bearable, and now it's pretty power starved. But it works. See it as a challenge.
 

CMDR X

CMDR X
I built an Exploraluga, just to have. Rarely if ever heats up. Then again I never use it either. 😐
I should though because it has one of the best cockpit views of any ship. Plus I love the idea of
parking it next to a Neutron star and popping some Champagne, in the pool, with my Crew Babe.

Don't mind all the firepower either. I'm a madman so all my ships must deal pain in some form or
another, regardless of its role. No regrets whatsoever.

I say go for it!
Pop-pop, Pew-pew.
See you out there..

The Great Fish.jpg
 

HRDiagram

HRDiagram
I have one Beluga, on my alt account, I have built it (and named it) as a bottom 1% liner, I only carry economy class, it can only carry 4t of cargo, and it's always biowaste.
I got the ugliest, dullest paint job on it (olive, or something similar) and got it completely degraded to look like the rust bucket it is.
I had great trips with it!
My passengers didn't necessarily agree, but that's what you sign up for, if you go for the bottom 1%, it says so on the tin.

I love my Beluga!
 
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