Logistics Guide: Passenger Transport

[Obsydian]

Logistics Guide: Passenger Transport

External Resources
CIG Design Document: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14804-Design-Civilian-Passenger-Transport
Wiki page:

Applicable Ships
Crusader Industries Genesis Starliner
RSI 890 Jump
RSI Constellation Phoenix

Mining Roles
Pilot
Flight Attendant


“Most people focus on where they want to be.  We’re the ones that obsess about getting you there.”

Star Citizen’s Civilian Passenger  Transport is one of the more unique occupational roles that a player can  assume.  As with mining, discovery, repair, rescue, and scientific  research the focus is not on combat.  Instead, passenger transport is  about competing with other players and characters in much more subtle  and diverse ways for the right to provide a critical and necessary  support service for the proper operation of the entire galactic  ecosystem.  Whereas other endeavors demand a player’s attention at key  points throughout a mission, with passenger transport the journey is the  mission.  

STARTING A CAREER
Passenger Transport is a heavily regulated activity, and the first  step in an aspiring transporter’s career is to obtain a license at the  government offices of the various landing zones from which you wish to  pick up or deliver passengers.  If your criminal record is clear and you  have no prior experience in the field this is a quick and painless  process.  A recurring fee for the license is required, with the amount  dependent upon how much passenger traffic travels through that landing  zone.  Larger transports with fuel efficient engine upgrades and finely  honed crews focus on those central traffic hubs, driving the ticket  prices down to the point that a player will need considerable experience  and an advanced ship in order to profitably compete.  Smaller and  first-time operators tend to therefore stick to those landing zones that  don’t have as much passenger traffic.  Those locales will take a bit  longer to sell out a flight, there will be little demand for the long  distance flights that are often the most profitable, and most of the  travelers will only be interested in basic low-cost fares rather than  cutting edge comfort.  However, there will also be considerably less  competition, and thus better profit margins for less experienced  operators utilizing less efficient ships.


   
Passenger Transport requires a specialized type of ship such as the  Starliner, which is being offered today in a concept sale.  There are  four classes of comfort â€" Coach, Business Class, First Class, and Luxury  Class â€" but many ships support only one or two of these.  Fuel  capacity, consumable storage capacity, and engine efficiency are the  primary determinants as to whether a given ship is classified as short  or long range.  The Starliner is the top of the line â€" a long range,  Luxury Class transport ship equipped with a prodigious seating capacity,  fuel efficient engines, an advanced quantum stabilizer to minimize  occurrences of vibration-induced nausea, private sleeping cabins, and  much more to remove all of the discomfort from an extended voyage.
  Once a compatible ship and a license to operate have been obtained, a  player need only park on a public landing pad and initiate a connection  to the local Flight Schedule Computer in order to get a sense of  passenger traffic at that location.  Desired destinations are shown in  order of popularity, with the number of passengers that have traveled to  that locale over the last day and the average prices they paid for each  ticket class available as a means of reference.
  Players may select a destination for their flight, set the price for  each ticket class that they offer, and specify a departure and estimated  arrival time.  The flight can then be published, at which point  travelers can see the flight and begin to purchase tickets.  Depending  upon the amount of passenger traffic seeking to travel to that location,  the prices that you set, your departure time and flight duration, the  number of competing flights, and your reputation, travelers may begin to  exit Customs and board your ship in a trickle or a flood.
  The ship’s pilot receives real-time feedback as to how many tickets  have been sold out of the available inventory, and may change the price  of unsold tickets at any time.  The pilot may terminate the ticket  offering prematurely, but may not modify the departure or arrival times  without cancelling the flight entirely, which would not be well received  by those passengers that had already purchased a ticket.  No additional  tickets will be sold beyond the scheduled departure time.
  The real work begins once the pilot has made the decision to depart,  and continues non-stop until the passengers have been deposited at their  desired destination.

  REPUTATION
 To transport another character is to have them place their trust in  you, and as such your most important business asset is your reputation.   Allow that to be sullied and it will be a long, hard road to regain the  community’s trust and business.  Reputation directly impacts two  things:  whether your license to operate is temporarily revoked or not,  and how much of a discount you must suffer or premium you may enjoy when  competing against others and offering an otherwise identical level of  service.
  Reputation is measured via how well travelers are being safely  delivered to their destination, and the overall level of satisfaction of  those players with the flight experience.  While the former is very  straightforward, the latter involves the evaluation of many different  components.
  Every passenger keeps track of their flight experience in a number of  different ways, and their ticket class directly impacts how forgiving  they are in their evaluation.  While the higher fares that can be  charged for First Class may seem very appealing, adequately dealing with  the increased difficulty of satisfying a more demanding clientele will  require much more than simply the one-time purchase of a ship offering  the desired seating comfort and amenities.  Travelers that purchase the  higher tier seating classes expect superior service, higher quality food  and drink, a greater selection of entertainment offerings, prompt  medical treatment, and better access to shipboard facilities.  How well  these expectations are met will ultimately determine how a player’s  reputation in the passenger transportation field evolves over time.

  ICES

 ICES â€" an acronym for Information,  Communication, and Entertainment System â€" is the computer centerpiece of  a passenger’s flight.  It allows them to do things like order food and  drinks and engage in various forms of entertainment.  Every seat on a  passenger transport flight is equipped with a holographic projector in  the ceiling above and to the front that is tied to an ICES  blade in the hardware room at the back of every ship.  These devices  will on occasion fail, and in such cases it is of paramount importance  to quickly resolve the problem given how prominently it factors into a  passenger’s enjoyment of a flight.
  ICES blades may fail for a variety of  reasons, and each requires a specific procedure to resolve.  Burned out  units are simply ejected and replaced with another, assuming that the  player had the foresight to restock their ship prior to departure.   Excessive radio interference may prevent a solid communications data  link from being established, which can in turn be addressed via a player  quickly matching a set of binary filters to a hexadecimal status code  before the interfering frequency and offsetting status code change.   Recalibration of a misaligned audio processor can be accomplished via  pressing a sequence of eight buttons associated with musical notes to  match a test melody whose length is dictated by the extent of the  failure.  Carefully soldering a loose connection â€" while ensuring that  the main circuit board isn’t damaged in the process â€" can remedy contact  failures.

    THE MIXMASTER
 
One of the more common service requests is for a mixed drink.  Passengers key in their order through ICES, which immediately transmits that information to the MixMaster associated with that particular section.
  The MixMaster is connected to eight different beverages and has a  rotating set of nozzles.  Pressing one of the eight associated buttons  causes the corresponding beverage to dispense until the button is  released.  Alongside the seat of the passenger that ordered the drink  and the time remaining before a reputational penalty starts to accrue is  the formula for the desired concoction.  A formula such as 1-1-4-8  would indicate that two parts beverage 1, one part beverage 4, and one  part beverage 8 are required.  The quality of the drink â€" displayed on  the MixMaster â€" is determined by how accurately the portions were  allocated.  If the player isn’t happy with the quality of the drink they  can simply press a key to discard it and start anew, but ships carry a  limited supply of beverages so this tactic should be used sparingly.   Upon acceptance of a drink it is moved to a conveyor belt on the side.   Thus, players can prepare multiple drinks in a row and then move to  deliver them, or one player can mix the drinks and another can focus on  getting them where they belong.
  While a passenger in Coach would be fairly forgiving with regard to  slow delivery times and a poor mixture quality, travelers in Business  Class and up would expect much more, and repeatedly disappointing them  would have an adverse effect on their opinion of the flight, and  ultimately the player’s reputation.

  CUSTOMIZATION AND UPGRADES
 
Passenger Transport ships support a considerable number of potential  upgrades, including more fuel efficient engines, larger fuel tanks,  additional storage space for consumables and spare parts, quantum  stabilizers that can reduce the potential for inducing nausea in  sensitive passengers when traveling at extreme rates of speed, and other  things of a “more traditional” upgrade nature.
  Many aspects of the customization process, however, are much more  subtle in nature and will require more time and effort on the part of  the player than simply opening their checkbook.
  The MixMaster, for example, accesses an array of beverages to  formulate its drinks, but the quality of each individual component is  dependent upon its source.  Restock your supplies at a city known more  for industrial manufacturing than fine liquors and more discerning  passengers will certainly notice â€" regardless of whether you portioned  everything out perfectly â€" and take that into account when determining  their overall level of satisfaction with your flight, which will in turn  affect your reputation.
  Go the extra mile and purchase your liquors at an obscure moon off  the beaten path â€" which might take a bit longer, and cost a bit more â€"  and you’ll find that it’s a bit easier to maintain a sterling reputation  given how ecstatic your passengers will be at the high quality drinks  you’re serving in flight.
  Movies are even more distinctive.  Every Passenger Transport has a MovieBank in its hardware room â€" next to the ICES blades â€" that can store a fixed number of movies and that makes them available to passengers via their ICES  projector.  Movies are classified as either classic or modern, and all  have a popularity rating that denotes how attractive they are to  travelers as an entertainment option.  The popularity of a modern movie  declines over time, so that reliance upon them means continually seeking  out newer releases and updating your library.  Classic movies retain  their popularity in perpetuity, but finding one that’s extremely popular  is much more difficult.
  Passengers consider the total popularity value of a movie library â€"  as well as the percentage of the flight for which they had access to it,  as a malfunctioning ICES device can  completely eradicate the benefits of a solid movie library â€" when  calculating how pleased they were with the overall level of  entertainment options on the flight.

  MEDICAL DIAGNOSIS AND TREATMENT
 One of the most challenging areas of passenger transport is in  dealing with illness.  There are a wide variety of potential maladies  that may befall a passenger, and each has its own particular set of  symptoms.  Careful monitoring of a passenger’s behavior â€" to ascertain  whether a cough is accompanied by severe chest pains and shortness of  breath, whether a migraine is accompanied by an aversion to light,  whether a sore neck is accompanied by itching â€" provide important clues  as to the cause of the affliction.  Because symptoms will only gradually  reveal themselves over a period of time, the best players will need to  become adept at keeping an eye on a suspect passenger or two while  continuing to fulfill their other responsibilities.  An onboard computer  allows symptoms to be input and compatible illnesses to be identified,  but faster diagnosis â€" by learning the tell-tale signs of at least the  most common diseases â€" is imperative for those looking to achieve a  superlative reputation by dealing with such situations as quickly as  possible.
  Every passenger transport ship is equipped with at least one medical  supply cabinet that contains some basic diagnostic equipment that may be  of use in determining the cause of some ailments.  It also contains a  number of different treatments, one of which will address or at least  alleviate every illness that might be encountered.  Care must be taken,  however, as prescription of the wrong medicine to a passenger can make  the situation worse or even cause death.
  Illnesses may transmit their effects throughout a cabin via two basic  mechanisms â€" Fear and Contagion.  Fear represents the concern and worry  that a healthy passenger near another that appears sick would  experience, and its effects are directly proportional to the intensity  of the visible symptoms.  Fearful passengers will frequently turn and  look towards the traveler that concerns them, and their experience will  continue to impart a penalty to the ship owner’s reputation for as long  as the situation persists.  Contagion, on the other hand, represents the  actual spread of the disease, and is only applicable to some maladies.   Slow or incorrect diagnosis of a serious issue can quickly spiral out  of control, creating a cabin full of concerned passengers or, worse, a  full blown epidemic that would result in a player’s passenger transport  license being suspended for a period of time.

  FLIGHT ATTENDANTS

Concept art - Meridian flight attendants

  Passenger Transport ships come in a wide variety of configurations,  with the two primary differentiating factors being the ticket classes  supported and the number of seats.  A single experienced player can  likely handle a ship with 20-30 seats by themselves, but if they want to  graduate to the larger and more efficient ships that dominate the  busiest and most profitable routes they’re going to need some help if  they wish to keep their reputation intact.  Towards this end, players  may always invite their friends along on a flight to assist, deciding  amongst themselves how best to split up the various responsibilities.
  At some point, though, most players will seek to supplement their  operation with one or more non-player characters, if only to allow the  player to focus on those tasks that they find most interesting or where  they truly excel.  This can be done via traveling to one of the  recruiting stations that populate larger cities.  These businesses  contain profile information on a large number of job applicants and can  sort their personnel database according to the desired job.  Every  applicant has their own unique mix of skills and knowledge, with the  more capable stewards and stewardesses commanding a higher monthly wage.
  Once hired, a flight attendant remains in the employ â€" and on the  payroll â€" of a player until they are dismissed.  They remain constrained  to the city in which they were hired until transported elsewhere by the  player, and can be summoned to a player’s ship at any time prior to  departure.  They can be directed to focus on only a particular part of a  ship, and if so desired to only focus on certain aspects of the job.   Once assigned to an area, they automatically begin moving to address the  demands of passengers.

    TOUCHING DOWN
Upon arrival at the intended destination the pilot must give  passengers an all-clear signal from the cockpit in order for them to  begin exiting the ship.  Immediately upon departing each passenger will  determine how satisfied they were with the overall trip and therefore  how the reputation of the ship’s owner should be affected.
   A pilot may force passengers off of their ship prematurely â€" at any  public landing zone â€" but in such cases passengers will ignore any  experience that they had while on board and instead contribute the  lowest possible satisfaction rating. For larger transports one or two  premature ejections can easily cause a license to be suspended.
  Once all of the passengers have exited the ship, the pilot is free to  submit a new flight plan to the Flight Schedule Computer.  That system  also allows for basic transport supplies â€" food, beverages, medicine,  surplus ICES units, etc. â€" to be purchased and loaded into your hull while you wait on the tarmac.
  Within minutes of touching down, then, you can again be prepped for  departure.  That’s life as a Passenger Transporter â€" always in motion.