Why I think luxury cabins are pointless right now

Hello ladies and gentlemen!

I've been saying that luxury cabins and missions are somewhat pointless for a long time, and I thought I should actually put all my thoughts together on the subject, make it more debatable and constructive.

So, on the subject of the luxury missions which are supposed to make luxury cabins worthwhile...

I have no doubt FD has spreadsheets of how things should be working, and network data of how things "are" working. It's clear that, in the grand scheme of things, or at least theorethically, luxury cabins are balanced to provide some advantage. The following is only my personal observations from a LOT of time spent hunting for good passenger missions.

1) As a triple-elite, allied to almost every faction in my high-population tourism-economy imperial dedicated passenger mission hub, I like to think I have access to "The best" contracts available. My luck might be another matter entirely, but I have no control over that...

2) In practice, pound for pound, the average luxury missions has a higher payout. A Luxury mission, for the same amount of people, demanding the same skill level, at roughly the same distance/number of stops, with roughly the same quirks (secretive, criminal, demanding, etc.) will always pay better than an equivalent first class mission.

3) However, since luxury missions are subject to the same random fluctiations as other missions, their parameters are rarely optimal : Even at triple-elite ranking, the amount of missions that demand - and have pay tailored for - aimless ranked pilots is disturbingly high.

4) The sheer rarity of luxury missions makes those fluctuations even worse, as the amount of worthwhile luxury missions (whose parameters lead to a better payout) is pretty much "divided" by whatever rarity factor they were imposed.

5) Given the following, finding the "best" mission (for sightseeing : 6-8 people, demanding, secretive, criminal, 2-3 stops, elite ranking) is nearly impossible. I have personally never seen the planets align in such a way.

6) However, finding such a template among the less-demanding passenger classes (from economy to first class) will be massively easier as they are much more prevalent.

7) Even the average "apex" economy sightseeing mission, which is empirically more prevalent than luxury missions in their entirety, pays better than the average "non-apex" luxury mission. The best I was offered for a buisness mission was 20 mil, once, but as those missions are a lot more numerous, the odds of finding pearls amongst them are much higher, while the best luxury missions I have found didn't go above 7 mil - once again, sample size decreases the odds of ever seeing a valuable luxury run.

8) Statistically, given that lower class missions are more profitable in the end (and take a lot less time to find, which results in more profit but also, most importantly, more fun boosting in and out of mailslots), luxury class cabins serve only to reduce the ship's passenger capacity, thusly reducing the amount of easier-to-get valuable economy to first class contracts - which passenger count may exceed the capacity of said luxury cabins.

9) My first conclusion is that using luxury cabins constitutes a direct nerf to the potential of the ship, in terms of what missins can be gotten in general and of very valuable missions in particular.

10) If you accept this, the obvious corrolary is that passenger ships, whose selling point is that they can embark luxury cabins, don't actually have an advantage over other ships as far as ferrying passengers goes.

11) From there on, the true defining factor of a ship's worth for passenger missions is a : its jump range, b : its cargo capacity, c : its ability to defend itself (either by fleeing or defeating pirates).

12) It is therefore clear that the best passenger ships of all time would be the anaconda, followed by the Imperial Cutter. One has the best jump range, and the other, the best cargo capacity. Ultimately, thought, the Anaconda is probably the best all-round choice (again!) given how quickly it can travel and the horrible grind that afflicts the other.

13) Given how severely limited dedicated passenger liners are at pretty much everything, and how dearly they are supposed to pay in efficiency for being able to use luxury cabins, it is not surprising to see that the bigger the passenger liner is, the more luxury cabins it can bear, the worst it appears to be : As of 2.3, The Dolphin is an amazing little ship, the Orca is now very, very good as well, and the Beluga remains a helpless brick with a massive fuel tank. Its small mass reduction has barely made any difference at all, and did not make a dent in how comically, being the upper-1% "apex" dedicated passenger liner, it compares to the run-of-the-mill, multi-purpose anaconda.

Maybe the 'Conda is better than the other whales because it's a multi-porpoise ship? Huh? Huh? Okay, I'll go take my pills now...

Seriously, the only advantage I can find to the Beluga is how it can boost full-speed through a mailslot (I, personally, welcome our oversized fin overlords) to avoid scans and decelerate powerfully enough to not hit the docking bay's back end. That's it. It's cool, but it isin't the best selling argument.

So, that's my analysis. I'll be thrilled to see what others have to say about it.


As for constructive suggestions... I'm afraid I don,t have much to suggest that hasen't already been written here.

I think making the rank ceiling of available missions more comparable to player rank would go a long way to alleviate many frustrating issues. As a triple-elite, I normally really, really do not bother with low-ranking missions. Every aimless-level quest the BGS throws at me is just taking the spot of a potentially better one.

Overall thought, I think more in-depth changes are in order, and I don't know what FD could do with the BGS to remedy this particular issue... It's always more complicated than it seems.

Thanks for your time, and fly safe!
 
Just found your post after searching for a while to see if there are confirmed bug reports for "Requirements not met" when passenger class & count are less than available 'Luxury' space. I can confirm all your statements above are very fair and true in my eyes, but this bug is worse than any 'balance' observations - it's killing my Beluga Taxi business.

I've travelled to Sol and see missions I can't take, not because of Rep or other things, just because my total 24 (8+8+4+4) Luxury berths aren't good enough for a traveller needing 3 Economy places or 5 Business. Totally stupid. Any one of my four cabins would have done for the Economy traveller and a choice of 2 was there for the Business group.

I'm not going to bother swapping to first or business class on the Beluga, I'm just going to sell and try the Orca, see if the same bugs are there, before I log a report on the bug tracker. Having said that the bugs lists & known issues are a damn pain to search through.

Hopefully we'll see a review of passenger missions as a whole, with bug fixes and more 'Luxury' balance!
 
By the gods! Someone actually read this!

Guess you'll be the only one... But yeah, a buggy quest system isin't really helping luxury missions' case.

Purely balance-wise, thought, maybe when we get space-legs and actual (hopefully) passengers, it's possible that they'll generate revenue en-route through different entertainment centers/shops/dance floors/etc. placed in the ship, instead of just asking for 6 tons of Pineapples and 3 tons of flatscreen TVs for some reason...
 
I agree, the Beluga is a bit of a struggle. I've just got back from a 25kly trip (4 long range missions) in my Beluga - it has a 30ly jump range and granted, whilst it did net 120million (plus exploration data) , it was a huge struggle to complete. It isn't something I'd want to do again :(
 
Couldn't agree more!

I think one way to spice up luxury missions is to make the passengers more demanding and up the reward correspondingly, but not go crazy like requiring you to kill chasers in a Beluga.

Another way, probably unpopular, would be to limit the max passenger cabins non-liner ships can carry to one per fare class.
 
Couldn't agree more!

I think one way to spice up luxury missions is to make the passengers more demanding and up the reward correspondingly, but not go crazy like requiring you to kill chasers in a Beluga.

Another way, probably unpopular, would be to limit the max passenger cabins non-liner ships can carry to one per fare class.

I don't think nerfing other ships' passenger capacity would do the trick ; The dedicated passenger ships aren't actually good at it, making other ships worse would render the whole of passenger transport a more tedious exercise.

For an example, it's clear that the dedicated cargo ships (especially the T-9) are being completely outclassed by multi-purpose ships (T9 vs 'Conda is a pure no-brainer... And don't even get me started with T9 vs Cutter). Nerfing the Conda, Cutter, Python (etc.)'s cargo capacity would not better anyone's enjoyment of the game. The real solution to the T9's problem is to simply give it another "cargo-dedicated" C8 slot.

So when it comes to making dedicated transporters worth it, if they're going to be so bad at everything else, then their performance on passenger missions should be stellar. A greater amount of passenger internals would help (along with a mass-lock factor boost for the 'Luga - seriously, the heaviest ship in game getting mass-locked by a Python???), but what really would do the trick I think would be :

Simply and purely tweak the BGS so that the mission board only offers missions that are relevant to the player's skill.

Every single "Harmless"-level mission you give a triple-elite player is essentially a wasted opportunity. Being one of said players, those missions are just an annoyance to me : If I'm looking for trade missions, low-rank ones don't have a good enough payout, and combat missions have the additional issue of offering no interesting challenge at all.

SO
in the very least, an elite explorer should be offered a majority of elite-level missions in all circumstances, and the rank from combat and trade should also have an influence, albeit smaller, to the point where as a triple-elite, there would at least be no chance at all of getting "Harmless" missions.
 
I fully agree that the current situation with the luxury cabins and the existence of all the liners is quite ridiculous. I haven't been specifically looking for missions requiring luxury cabins but so far, I haven't seen any offered.
 
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