Some of you may recall years ago that we had an artificial demand between Deois and the orbiting facilities as a way to earn revenue as a player.
At some point we started tracking colonists individually (name, relationships, dietary restrictions, etc) and that old system was broken.
We finally circled back to get the ticketed passenger system back up and running - with a number of notable enhancements!
Laborers (employed colonists) accrue vacation time. They also each have a "desire" to travel which varies from person to person. Once they have enough vacation banked and they get the impulse to book a trip they then look at our new TripAdvisorLike system which sorts destinations based on a number of variables. It could be facilities (like casinos or parks) or themes (like agriculture) or just going from a bustling metropolis (Deois) to a quieter, simpler Amish community (like Lancaster). Only colonies that have a public airfield (requires 4 letter identifier) are eligible.
Once the laborer (and their family, if they chose) are ready, they will appear on this "Passenger Demand" matrix which is on the Player Portal:
When you are at the point of origin, you can pick up passengers headed to multiple destinations. For example, picking up at Alphaville (VALP) there are people wanting to go to Deois (VDEO) and Easydock (TAC). I can say "VDEO,TAC" and I will load passengers to both destinations (meaning we now support mixed destinations!). Passenger PODS are required for these operations as revenue passengers are prohibited from sitting in the jump seat or crew seats). The whole idea here is that the passengers to TAC are on a "through flight" which means they deplane briefly at Deois before heading to TAC (like a connecting flight). Each stopover will reduce the ticket price!
You will also notice that the flight attendant will make cabin announcements any time revenue passengers are on board!
Before going live, the ticketed passenger system was used for a huge "reunification" project where we corrected hundreds of families being separated over the years (i.e. employee at Alphaville but wife is in Kansas and their kid who is not old enough to work is in Deois!).
Other bug fixes:
Inner Marker sound was not shutting off on Deois approach
GLD and flight spoilers position was not properly set on vehicle transfers