Horizons Whats the best Passenger Ship

Hi CMDRS

Well I've had the Beluga Liner and it's a ship that is hard to get through a port and it does over heat badly....I wanted to try something else. I do have a Asp Explorer. I have tried this with passengers it's quite good but it doesn't have a lot of slots to put cabins in. Any suggestions would be good. [yesnod][big grin]:)

Thanks CMDR'S
CMDR Nettie Out
 
Anaconda's not a bad ship for passenger jobs, and does have the bonus of being configurable for pretty much any other role (for times when you can't find decent passenger missions). Can't fit luxury cabins of course, but tbh I've only ever seen one on offer myself.
 
Difficult to stack missions for passengers efficiently, although I did get 2 missions to Cupids Bow once which was good, so generally I stick with the Asp and just take on the highest paying missions per hour I can. Very easy to get 10 million(ish) Cr missions that take 20 mins to half an hour once friendly with all factions at a station. Even getting a couple of factions allied will get some pretty good pay days.

Mostly it's about jump range and the Asp is as good as you'll get, it's also fast enough for the less reputable passengers not to get scanned. The Dolphin's fun to fly but passenger missions are generally more about travel speed than flying.

Or a Conda but it's hard to get through the slot at speed, if your passenger's wanted.
 
I've used the dolphin, allied with minor factions brought me some short hop missions (one hop in many cases) for 600k+. Easy money when you can run several in no time at all.

Throw in a few short range sightseeing ones and it made some decent cash.
 
The Orca. It's beautiful, fast and agile. Its only disadvantage is that it can not land at outposts.

You know I never really liked the look of the Saud ships but having flow a Dolphin I'll definitely check out the Orca.

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I've used the dolphin, allied with minor factions brought me some short hop missions (one hop in many cases) for 600k+. Easy money when you can run several in no time at all.

Throw in a few short range sightseeing ones and it made some decent cash.

Incidentally one of the ones I did in mine (Dolphin) was the Mountain Range one that I believe you submitted. It's an impressive range alright.
 
I've only had a couple of passenger missions that stacked sensibly, so I'm using the Orca with just one luxury and ond business class cabins.
The scoop allows for those long sightseeing tours.
The Dolphin is good, though a bit short in jump range, but it can manage a good sightseeing tour (approx 150ly) witbout refuelling.

Both are good for non-scan trips - the Beuga is just a bit cumbersome when boosting at the slot
 
At my homebase I have a beluga. Best missions over there.
My heavily engineered ship has no heat issues and can even transport criminal passengers without getting scanned.

The Orca I use when I am in a different system for some time. War, civil war, permit etc. It is cheap to transport and can almost do what the beluga can do. For getting allied locally.

The Dolphin I have for fun, it costs next to nothing to transport all over the bubble. Good for a quicky.

Anaconda for long range passenger missions.

Asp used to be my goto ship until they made the dedicated passenger ships much better. I still use it, depending on where I am. My ships are scattered all over the place.
 
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I really like the Beluga - 'tis a nice looking vessel. And good at moving peeps about. In style.
But I absolutely love the Dolphin. Aaaand, it comes with a cockpit mini-bar as standard!
:)
 
The "current" best passenger for me now is the Dolphin. She is a fun ship to fly. Short range passenger missions are peanuts to the Dolphin :cool:

For about 2 weeks now, I've been thinking whether I want to get a bigger passenger ship - the Orca, Beluga or another Anaconda. Can't really justify the prices and usefulness of the Orca and Beluga aside from being a passenger ship so I might end up getting a 2nd Anaconda that I'll outfit and engineer for long range exploration/passenger missions. Was hoping to do those Colonia tourist runs and make 100MCr from rewards and exploration data :)
 
I use a DBX, only do 1 mission per time but with ly50+ jumprange is does the sightseeing jobs very quick, my aspX with the same mods only has 40ly jumprange for some reason :(
 
I guess there is no 1 best passenger ship as there are two types of passenger missions:
- the 'cargo' passengers, move x people from a to b
- exploration missions which goes all about and back to the pickup station

For exploration missions it's hard to stack multiple ones up, I really like flying the dolphin with these since you have a pretty decent jump range and a good manoeuvrability. I combine these mission types with scanning systems if i have the time for it. So I've outfitted two cabin types and the best deep space and surface scanners on it.

For cargo missions i currently use the clipper (i didn't buy an orca yet) since it can hold more cabin types.
 
Never ever overcharge the Power plant in an Beluga....

I have no heat issues once I solved that issue, and I could even do a low emission upgrade to it.

I run Clean drive thrusters. and now I have no problem charging the FSD while inside the fuel scope range of a star. Before this I would always overheat if I even hinted that I wanted to charge my FSD while I was fuel scooping...



As for the problem entering/leaving the mailslot... you sit VERY low on the Beluga, and the fins on the back go way up....

So if you try to fly the Beluga like a Ananconda, Corvette or even a Cutter, you will most of the time, scrape your fins ort get stuck... So fly really close to the lower part when entering/leaving and soon you will notice that you can actually without much trouble have you landing gear extended too! crazy eh?

If you have the mouse indicator in the centre of the viewscreen, aim for 20-30% lower part of the mailslot. and now even forgetting about to compensate for the rotation when leaving will not cause any problems!
 
The best passenger ship is the one that works best for YOUR play style. I just bought an Anaconda a couple of days ago and it really is a very capable ship in many many aspects. Extremely versatile hull. But it was not for me, I didn't like the way she handled at speed and when not, I also was spoiled by the 128T of Fuel the Beluga carries by default which is 4 times the amount carried by the Anaconda. FOUR!

The Beluga Liner is not for everyone, nor I feel will she ever be as truly versatile as the Anaconda, but what she does, travel long distances easily and worry free of fuel shortages with a myriad of passengers and cargo, she does VERY well. For defense, they both are Fighter Bay capable and I do carry one (as well a planetary SRV) also 5 guns, the Anaconda carries 2 more guns and one being a Huge mounted one. I recommend the Beluga Liner, but make up your own mind.
 
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If you use the external camera, you'll see the Beluga fins will fold down when the landing gear is lowered...

For the long range (non scan passengers), I'll use a long range Asp with 1 cabin. It's good fuel scoop & jump range combine with a stealthy docking ability. Only the Dolphin is easy to dock without being scanned​, or obstructed in the slot.
For long range passengers that are ok with scans, it's the long range Anaconda. Gets there and back as fast as possible.

Depending on the numbers of tourists/ prisoners I'll use the Orca/Dolphin/Beluga as appropriate.
 
The Belugas heat issue is manageable with right upgrades, clean drives and low emission pp go along way in keeping it cooler, the issue is that it is still too slow, can't outrun a scan, so it limits who you can take. The Orca is good for speed and now jump range, got mine up to 37 Lys with a 575 boost speed, can outrun a scan in no time, not great for combat but smuggling passengers is easy. Before the Orca, was using the Cutter, but even though it too can beat a scan, it was limited on jump range. Rarely do I see passenger missions requiring a small or medium dock locations, they all pretty much go to large stations or land bases. The Conda is OK, but lacks speed, can't boost out ta range in time, believe me, I tried, and all my ships are fully engineered with highest upgrades. That's L5 dirty or clean drives, so I have all ships maxed on their best speed, put the clean drives on the Beluga, and it gets about Anaconda speed, the dirty drives didn't give it that much better, plus they run hot.
 
I didn't see anyone mention the Python, here's my bulk-passenger build at around 88-Mil. The bulk-passenger missions and the transport party-X missions are tied to your Trader rank, and I'm Tycoon at around 27%.

So when the tourist missions that I run with a mix of my Conda or an Asp-X, start to peter out, I'll switch to using the Python for a while. And most of the time, I just take one mission at a time. Short runs with just one hop typically, and they pay out on average 800k to as much as 3-Mil. Normally I don't like to take anything less than 800k.

This variation of my Python also has 4-cabins so you can take on more transport party-X missions at a time if you want to. I'm currently in the Procyon system with the Python and the Asp-X, working on getting my Sirius system permit so I can visit Marco Qwent, as a stepping stone to gaining access to Prof Palin.

When I first got there, I was taking more missions at a time, because the runs into Davy Doc (10,457-ls) or Cormack Hub (10,659-ls) do take some time.. they make you work for the permit.

Although I have also done as many of the 'new' Planetary Scan Jobs that I can get my hands on. They're a hoot, pretty easy to do, and very few ramifications vis a vis fines, bounties, etc. Most of them are Rep++ missions. And the icing on the cake, lots of Specialised Legacy Firmware mats. I'm up to 25 of them now, just from these missions. :)
 
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