Passenger missions approach.

[adders]

I'd been doing trading backwards and forwards between a very close poor agricultural and a rich industrial trading 55 tonnes of computers and 55 tonnes of furs in a Super Cobra for some time and causing witch-drive malfunctions to pick off some Thargoids and get my kills in for a while, but found two issues with this. 1) I barely seemed to be earning enough to cover overhaul costs and 2) I was starting to get a bit bored with it.

With that in mind I decided to have a crack at passenger missions even though I'd seen some opinions that the credits weren't worth it. After experimenting I've decided this is not really correct. The trick is to outfit with a number of passenger berths and and pick up new passengers that are roughly en route with the passengers you already have. This way I've found that my credit earning is way exceeding periodic overhaul costs and it's quite entertaining planning the routes. While planning routes, it's important to take routes with more jumps. For example a particular 6.8 light year jump takes 41 hours, but there's a planet in between that means you can do it in two jumps of 3.6ly (14 hours) and 2.4ly (5.8 hours) totalling 19.8 hours, thus halving the time. I know, the distances don't add up either, particularly as the one in between is a slight detour on the map. Anyway, doing it this way means you save your self loads of hours en route giving yourself more play to take on more passengers at the same time all on longer runs. Getting it running this way means you soon start turning over the credits pretty quickly. Between my last two 14,000cr overhauls I earned 60,000 credits this way and it was probably four or five hours of game play, throwing in a few witch-drive failures and beating up thargoids for a bit of fun on the way.

While doing this I never dock at planets where I'm not dropping off a passenger, rather go and refuel off the sun. When I do drop off a passenger, I take a quick look to see if there are any contracts that fit in with other passengers and keep it rolling like this. Next session I'm going to try and outfit with 11 passenger berths and see how it goes. It's given the game a whole new lease of life for me.

Just thought I'd share my thoughts on it.

[Cody]

Why not carry some parcel contracts too? It's free cash, if they're going your way.

[adders]

That's a good idea. Hadn't thought of that. Thanks!

[Diziet Sma]

And when the gloss wears off that, there's always the cargo contracts.. very profitable..

And after that gets old, there's cim's  New Cargoes OXP, which adds a whole new level of challenge.

[onno256]

I usually take a passenger when I am enroute to a mission location, I've had very profitable runs!

[Sendraks]

Why not carry some parcel contracts too? It's free cash, if they're going your way.

They can also get quite profitable once your rep is up. I'm now getting offerred 5figure parcel contracts. Nothing has broken 20k yet, but you put a few of these on a passenger contract route, and you're looking at 30-50k!

I'm looking to pull in 100k on a cross Galaxy 2 run with 6 passengers and the parcel contracts I've got so far.

Small beer compared to the big cargo contracts perhaps, but for those of us who want to fly smaller vessels, this is a nice way to make a living.

[Boomzilla]

The best thing about parcel and passenger runs is that you can do it pretty much from the start of the game in the cobra3. I can make 60 or 70K in about 40 minutes. The only equipment I need for this is the expanded cargo holds, witch fuel burners, and 7 passenger berths.

any other newbies want to get started in it: trade local until you get good at avoiding pirates and not running into stations. Once you're good at not dying then pick up some passenger compartments and head to one corner of the starmap, pick up a contract to deliver to the other corner. Stop at the first few stations to look for additional contracts that align with your fastest (not shortest) route.

fuel scoop and heat shielding makes it easier since you can refuel at the suns.

learning to dock while burning witch fuel speeds things up a lot as well. Its actually easier for me than docking slow since I don't have to worry as much about matching rotation.

btw, I can't believe I didn't find this game sooner.. Its just like Privateer in all the ways I loved that game only infinitely better, and expandable!

[Cody]

Welcome aboard, Boomzilla - parcel contracts may be a little trickier in the next version of Oolite. I run parcels almost exclusively now, usually going out with an empty hold (which often seems to get filled along the way). I have become addicted to the life of an interstellar courier. It is interesting - and injectors are a must-have.

[Sendraks]

I run parcels almost exclusively now, usually going out with an empty hold (which often seems to get filled along the way).

I tend to run with a hold containing gems, gold and platinum. I always, always buy it cheap from the main stations, con stores, rock hermits and anywhere else I find it for a below average price. Then I sell it on anywhere where the buying price is good.

It is a fairly handy way to make a decent profit from a ship with a small cargo capacity, especially when the rest of the hold is filled with passenger berths.

[Malacandra]

Yes, I found that delivering passengers with a Cobra III with five passenger berths was quite a money-spinner, and then delivering them with a Boa Class Cruiser with 15 - 20 berths paid even better. You have to be a little careful to try to make sure your route really is linear as on one trip I took just too many detours and ended up with about half my passengers quitting on me in disgust, which was a huge rep hit. But once I got that rebuilt I was clearing tons of cash on each pass across the galaxy, and the only reason I stopped was I had more than enough for a fully-optioned Asp II and felt like kicking some more ass.

[metatheurgist]

I tend to run with a hold containing gems, gold and platinum. I always, always buy it cheap from the main stations, con stores, rock hermits and anywhere else I find it for a below average price. Then I sell it on anywhere where the buying price is good.

I do that too. Problem is I'm now hauling 1.5T of platinum and 2KG of gems. Somehow I managed to get rid of my gold. It's great fun watching 1000KG of gold or platinum get destroyed in battle.

[Diziet Sma]

I tend to run with a hold containing gems, gold and platinum. I always, always buy it cheap from the main stations, con stores, rock hermits and anywhere else I find it for a below average price. Then I sell it on anywhere where the buying price is good.

I do that too. Problem is I'm now hauling 1.5T of platinum and 2KG of gems. Somehow I managed to get rid of my gold. It's great fun watching 1000KG of gold or platinum get destroyed in battle.

If you've accumulated that much, you've been hoarding it, instead of selling whenever the price was high..

And now you've found out why that's a bad idea..

[onno256]

I'm really looking forward to the next version of Oolite, probably gonna be time for a new savegame...

[metatheurgist]

If you've accumulated that much, you've been hoarding it, instead of selling whenever the price was high..

And now you've found out why that's a bad idea..

But...it's mah preshus <strokes platinum>.

[byronarn]

I'm still early in the game, so my carrier experience is pretty low and I only have 1 option for passenger every 2-3 stations (I never had that problem before the update, so they must have changed how passengers choose pilots in this update). What I do though is fill my hold with liquor at an agricultural world or computers on an industrial world. I then sell the computers on the next agricultural world and fill up on liquors, or sell the liquors on the next industrial world and fill up on computers. This way I may a few trade runs with each passenger run. The money adds up. Probably not as much as taking several passengers or stocking up on gems and precious metals, though. I may try start noticing the prices for the latter over the next several passenger runs to get a sense of whats high or low and then start buying when i see it low.