How do you make tourist contracts work

[Ferdoni]

Hi fellow Kerbals!

So I've actually never done any tourist contracts. Mainly because the rewards are just too low.

How do you make a profit out of them?!

[Streetwind]

The same way RL tourist companies turn a profit - you carry many tourists at once!

Try building fancy spaceliners with hitchhiker containers or mk2/mk3 plane crew cabins. You'll often get between 2 and 4 Kerbals per contract and 2-3 similar tourism contracts in parallel, so if you make a rocket that can carry 8, you should be set for almost any eventuality.

[Zyffyr]

You just need to build a cheap ship that can handle them =)

This ship is what I use :

Total cost to launch : 26914

Passenger compliment : 2 (if I were to add a probe core for control, I could stuff a passenger in the command module to make it 3)

Payment from a single "Take me suborbital then to orbit" kerbal : 26000 (19500 completion + 3250 suborbital + 3250 orbital)

Revenue from 2 passengers : 52000

Profit : 25086 + recovery on the final stage

The same ship has enough fuel to fly out to Mun or Minmus and make 2 pickups for "Rescue the stranded kerbal" contracts. So long as nobody is asking you to land anywhere other than back safely at the end of the contract, it will handle all your needs in the Kerbin SOI - unless the two pickups are in opposite orbital directions, then all bets are off.

There are plenty of ways to improve the design of course, but it works for what it was designed to do.

[Ferdoni]

The same ship has enough fuel to fly out to Mun or Minmus and make 2 pickups for "Rescue the stranded kerbal" contracts. So long as nobody is asking you to land anywhere other than back safely at the end of the contract, it will handle all your needs in the Kerbin SOI - unless the two pickups are in opposite orbital directions, then all bets are off.

Hmm combinating tourist contracts and rescue contracts... I like

Btw, is it easy, normal or hard mode you're playing on?

[Warzouz]

I usually bring tourists along with regular mission. I rarely do specific tourist mission. For now I only have Mun and Minmus tourists contract. Classic crew is 11 seats with 7 for the crew, 2 tourists and 2 empty seats for rescuing missions.

I try to fill from 3 to 6 contract for one mission.

As for money return, try to build roket SSTO you can retrieve. They are very cost efficient. My heaviest lifter can send 230T to space for around 450 funds per ton. I agree that in early carrier, it may not be easy to do, though.

[Zyffyr]

Btw, is it easy, normal or hard mode you're playing on?

Normal.

[katateochi]

I've kinda been farming tourists! I got lucky to start with in that I had several contracts spawn around the same time, each to to take 4 tourists to Mun and Minmus (with some wanting to land on each) and that got me started on running bulk missions to take a whole bunch of them in one go and to make the process as reusable as possible. So now I wait and stack up lots of those contracts until I have a large group of tourists (16) wanting to go to do various things at Mun and Minmus.

I've got a a shuttle craft (Moon-bus) that can take 16 tourists (and 3 crew) from LKO to Mun orbit, then transfer to Minmus orbit, land on Minmus and return back to LKO. I've got a 5 man lander that waits in Mun orbit to take a few down to Mun's surface and a fuel tanker that can refuel the lander twice. I use an SSTO to take the tourists up to the moon bus 8 at a time and then bring them back down after. Once setup, the process is very reusable, just requires a fuel tanker to refuel the Moonbus and every other mission a fuel tanker to go to Mun for the lander.

The first run of this mission had high setup costs, to launch the moon-bus to LKO and launch the Mun lander + it's spare fuel and put that in Mun orbit. But even with that overhead I made over 2 million profit on the first mission. Now I just have to launch spare fuel for the MoonBus and Mun lander so it's even more profitable.

I've been able to run that mission 3 times, taking 16 tourists each time. Unfortunately I don't seem to be getting any more of those 4 tourists to Mun/Minmus missions anymore, but it was a good run while it lasted.

I also stack up several of the orbit/suborbital on Kerbin missions and use an SSTO to complete those. The SSTO I use for tourists is a turbo-jet based SSTO as those missions appear long before you have enough science to unlock the rapier. I've posted the SSTO and the fuel tanker I use in these missions on KerbalX:

http://kerbalx.com/katateochi/TurboJet-CrewSSTO

http://kerbalx.com/katateochi/FuelTanker

Basically I think the key to tourism profitability is running as many contracts in one mission as you can and having craft that are reusable.

I think it's a pity that as soon as your pioneer astronauts get out to further planets that tourists start wanting to go there too and loose interest in Mun/Minmus. That's not really very realistic, both in terms of what a real space program would offer and from a business economy point of view. I don't think virgin would be putting effort into space tourism if they thought that after a handful of flights that customers would stop wanting orbital flights and would be demanding to go to Mars instead. It would be nicer if the game gave you a steady stream of Kerbin-SOI based tourism and really encouraged you to design an efficient/reusable approach to doing those and made it a source of income you could rely on.

[Enkiel]

Basically I think the key to tourism profitability is running as many contracts in one mission as you can and having craft that are reusable.

I think it's a pity that as soon as your pioneer astronauts get out to further planets that tourists start wanting to go there too and loose interest in Mun/Minmus. That's not really very realistic, both in terms of what a real space program would offer and from a business economy point of view. I don't think virgin would be putting effort into space tourism if they thought that after a handful of flights that customers would stop wanting orbital flights and would be demanding to go to Mars instead. It would be nicer if the game gave you a steady stream of Kerbin-SOI based tourism and really encouraged you to design an efficient/reusable approach to doing those and made it a source of income you could rely on.

I often still get mission in the 1 and 2 star range that ask me to go to minmus, while the 3 star one ask for Duna...

[capi3101]

Lately I've taken a strategy like katateochi's, bringing tourists to their destinations in bulk in craft that make dedicated runs between Kerbin/Mun and Kerbin/Minmus. I generally drop off tourists at orbiting space stations if their itinerary includes a landing. Gives me a use for space stations after I've fulfilled contracts with them. My station over Kerbin is also where I offload tourists that have finished out their contracts; I pick them up at the station with a spaceplane, again dropping off any new tourists whose destinations take them beyond Kerbin's orbit.

At least, that's the theory. In truth I haven't gotten that far yet - my Kerbin SSTO keeps coming up short on fuel. I also foresee fuel as a problem with this system, though I think I can get something going with mining on Mun and Minmus once my tech will allow it.

[John FX]

All I need for tourist contracts is an easier way to hit that big red X

[justidutch]

If you can build a ship that will carry 6-8 tourists on a round-trip to orbit Mun and then Minmus all in one go, you can do multiple tourism contracts that will net you several hundred thousand kash. Do a couple ''gather science from…" at the same time and bump up the profits even further. You need the admin building upgrade in order to do more that two contracts at the same time, but totally worth it.

[Mahnarch]

"...gather science from..."

Also, "test part 'X' at 'X' meters".

I always bring a few tourists along to test radial decouplers and engine parts, etc.

[katateochi]

Lately I've taken a strategy like katateochi's, bringing tourists to their destinations in bulk in craft that make dedicated runs between Kerbin/Mun and Kerbin/Minmus. I generally drop off tourists at orbiting space stations if their itinerary includes a landing. Gives me a use for space stations after I've fulfilled contracts with them. My station over Kerbin is also where I offload tourists that have finished out their contracts; I pick them up at the station with a spaceplane, again dropping off any new tourists whose destinations take them beyond Kerbin's orbit.

At least, that's the theory. In truth I haven't gotten that far yet - my Kerbin SSTO keeps coming up short on fuel. I also foresee fuel as a problem with this system, though I think I can get something going with mining on Mun and Minmus once my tech will allow it.

yeah once you get mining going then that helps a lot. I forgot to mention in my first post, that now I have mining at Mun I changed the flight plan. So rather than going from Kerbin to Mun then to Minmus and back to Kerbin, I now go to Minmus first and then return to Kerbin via Mun where I have the refuel station. It also seems to be much easier to plot a course from Minmus back to Mun than it was going to Minmus from Mun (but maybe that's just me).

All I need for tourist contracts is an easier way to hit that big red X

awww poor tourists!

[MarvinKitFox]

Mainly because the rewards are just too low.

How do you make a profit out of them?!

Tourists are the most rewarding of all contracts!!

Why, my most recent trip took a tourgroup to Mun, Minmus, Gilly and Ike.

It cost 340000 to launch, and netted me 8.3 million income.

All for just ferrying around 23 idiots.

[Coga19000]

A good way to profit is to make it reusable. Use a nice cheap SRB with fins, then use a small liquid stage to get suborbital, and rumble down without decoupling it ; you should be able to recover the whole thing with chutes.

For orbital missions, also try to save the last stage ;the engine should withstand the heat. For maximum reusability, make your ferry two-staged, and make the first stage go suborbital ;you should be able to follow the first stage down with chutes while the orbiter is, well, orbiting.

[Captain Sierra]

Once I get docking ports and NTRs I keep a dedicated tug in orbit and have built modules that carry 12 people (using the Mk2 crew seats because those mounted via their bottom in 3x symmetry looks good). I stockpile tourism contracts, send up as many modules as I need to load everyone up, and send them on their way. I try to group the modules by destination so if I get 10 people for Duna and 8 for Minmus, I can drop off the 8 lesser paying guys (no bonus trips for you!). i also made a landing module that can land on any non-atmospheric planet other than Tylo (and it can do DUna with chutes) for ferrying them down and back.