https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/fleet-carriers-content-reveal-announcement.539505/







5 billion at launch....

5 billion huh? Looks like I'll have to take out my Type 10 Defender soon and get me some LTD's!

.....says EVERYONE PLAYING ELITE.... prices are gonna crash!!

Recluse I think you and I already have it covered. Tritium however is a major unknown. It's not on the crystal shard listings, perhaps mining is an option.

I'm sure there will some bizarre grind for Tritium Fuel.... Also we probably don't ALL need a Fleet carrrier so we could chip in if necessary. It would be silly if the Fleet Carrier OWNER had to be logged in for the ship to be available!!!

We shall see.. I have a paltry 5.1 billion in the bank, so I better start mining!!!!

I would like to pledge the minimal amount to get a place on Wingnut's carrier!

I've got 1.3 billion in cash.

You better believe those trade tariffs will be very high on the carriers for a while since the owners will be wanting to quickly recoup their 5 billion credit investment!

Recluse brings up a very valid point in the "Owner" having to be on line for others to interact with the carrier. Yup I've got 7.5 as I was guessing a 5B buy-in after watching all the comments on the Frontier web site. Before I lay out the 5b for everyone, I'd want to make sure everyone on my friends list, or Nephs PG can interact when I'm not on game! Then donations for fuel would be gratefully accepted.

I am certain we will be able to use it whether you are on or not. I mean, if a player logged off on the carrier, he wouldn't have access to this ship until or unless the owner was on. That would not fly, so surely Wingy being on won't be a requirement. Of course this is all speculation and conjecture, but FDev is pretty good about this sort of thing.

I reckon he WILL need to be on to make it go anywhere though. 500 jump! We could really screw with Wingy otherwise.

Anybody know where I left my fleet carrier? I was sure it was right here....

HEY, WHERE DID I LEAVE THAT DAM CARRIER?

A good thing I have a few long range jumpers.......................................... :bananadance

:

With a mere 339 million I've no hope except to change my name to Ford Prefect and grab my towel...

After reading more details on the fleet carriers I have decided that the 5 billion credit investment isn't worth it for me. I'll just wait for Frontier to release the Imperial Star Destroyer class and I'll get one of those. It will probably cost about 20 billion.

I should have led with "Dude, where's my carrier?"

I think the idea of carriers is cool, and I'm looking forward to them. Any new stuff is welcome. I can't see it as much of a change though. I can see it as very useful outside the bubble, but who is going to do that? Otherwise it isn't all that different than the thousands of stations everywhere. But maybe I'm missing something. What is it that others are looking forward to about it? What do you think it's going to provide? How will it change your gameplay?

Rec are you planning on buying one too?

Chucky, there's affordable financing. 200 million down, and 400k a month for 1200 months. In just 100 years this baby will be all yours.

Wingnuts, have you picked out a name already? Very important. I was thinking SS Bucket of Bolts. Nice ring to it.

Just don't call it SS Botany Bay. That name has a bad history behind it!

Good Call.

Analyzing Wingy's ship names which you can see on Inara, no pattern emerges. Nothing concrete to suggest an obvious moniker.

We're the Hekawi?

Killer Rabbit?

HMS Cromulent?

Just spitballin' here.

TITANIC would be similarly BAD



NO.. I will help bankroll Wingy or Neph or someone who wants to be the Squadron Carrier Commander... Not sure why we would need more than ONE...

Also, my fear is the 5 billion is like the starting price for any other ship in the game, where once it is OUTFITTED to be useful, you have to spend 4-5x the purchase price

OK and I' be happy to contribute as well. I'm thinking that just obtaining the fuel will give me something to do, a purpose, and in Elite that's gold.

I'm thinking the best thing about it is that it will promote something like a clubhouse atmosphere if you know what I mean. Give a group of friends a common home, home turf so to speak. If we can find it that is

I wonder what the insurance replacement cost will be for the carrier? I’m thinking these carriers will be big juicy targets on the open server!

Target yeah, probably. But indestructible too I would reckon. Gotta be right?

They must have lethal defenses, for all that cash I'd say. Some goober comes along and opens fire on your carrier and he should be vaporized without remorse by the carrier's automated defensive suite. If it doesn't work this way I demand Wingy get his money back

Yeah, we had an email conversation on this point. WITHOUT those defenses, you can BET that armies of Gankers would converge on and attack any Fleet Carrier for the LOLZ. I imagine the REBUY is pretty significant.

Apparently, there will be some operating expense involved as well AND if you cannot Pay The Rent, CMDR Snidely Whiplash will FORECLOSE and sell your carrier for PARTS:


https://elite-dangerous.fandom.com/wiki/Fleet_Carrier



Not sure if that is accurate

Names;
Resolute
Wing's Tavern
No-Tell-Motel
Black Sheep Hide
Fresh & Crispy
Titanium Maiden
Tritium Required

Last I read the Carriers were supposed to be indestructible, maintenance though wonder how that's going to work ?

I saw that PC Gamer blurb too, It'll be interesting, because at first glance something like that would require persistent play. Not a problem for some, but would be for others.

Even though i expect the carriers to be indestructible, I could see F Dev coming up with something like hatchbreaker gameplay. or data mining and the sort.

Awesome!

I love Resolute, but I don't think it's kitchy enough. Wing's Tavern fits the clubhouse vibe I'm aiming for haha

If it were mine I'd probably go with Resolute because it's mine.

"Hold My Beer"

Fly the carrier into the SAG A+ black hole and see if the "indestructible" claim is correct.

You'd think so



The spoiler reveals some info a player might want to be unaware of

It's about the current state of black holes in the game

And PMs post brings up another point. Can the carrier be flown around a system like in supercruise? I was thinking it would just drop in to a system and that's where it would stay, static like other capital ships. But that would be unsatisfactory in some systems and situations. So do you think it will be navigable within a system? And if so, will the owner actually fly it like from within a cockpit? Or will it simply respond to coordinates plugged in to an interface?

Anyone catch the livestream? I did not, but I'm reading the fallout.

10 mil per month? upkeep

No cartographics, making it seem useless for explorers (not that I didn't already think it would be)

60 minute jump cool down

Support ships were canned, or somehow incorporated in to the FC

FC will have shipyard and trade, and an Interstellar Factors-like office called Redemption. Not clear how the trade works. The threads I am reading seem to suggest that the carrier owner can set pricing. So theoretically a generous FC owner could buy a ship and then sell if to another player for a lower price. But none of this is clear to me at this point.

Yeah I watched MOST of it... Agree some stuff wasn't clear like putting out BUY orders for Commodities. The did say something like Fleet Carriers operated across instances, so, does that mean that people in OPEN see your FLeet Carrier even if you only fly SOLO/PG???

Gonna look at the detailed posts sure to be in the Forum...

They are saying 500 mil per year upkeep, so it must be 10 mil per week, not per month as I said.

Yeah Rec, we need more info!

Yeah definitely PER WEEK.... People in the chat were saying "Ah, that's 5 minutes in BORANN, no problem...." LOL until the LTD prices hit rock bottom.

Haha, yeah, right?

I was looking in the wrong threads, the salty ones. Not that this one is salt-free, but it's the best recap I've seen.

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/fleet-carriers-content-reveal-recap.540062/

"Fleet Carriers will not be able to enter any Permit Systems, even if the owner holds a permit for that region of space."

No FC's at Shinrarta or SOL, I guess....

Yeah, and one of my questions about navigating around a system was answered. The FC owner chooses the body within the system that he wants to orbit. I saw no mention of defenses, but that system security will set up patrols around it.

NO, FC has defenses like Stations:

I'm now on the fence. Neph's group has 32 in it and I can set the carrier up to include all friends and squad members (that's to say all my friended commanders). I'm guessing weekly maintenance costs 15 - 20m, and initial buy-in 6 billion fully equipped. Quite a sum, even for me with 7.9b at the moment. Big question.......................... DO ENOUGH OF NEPH'S GROUP PLAY CONSISTENTLY TO SUPPORT A CARRIER? I don't think so. Similar to a comment Bo made the other day after making Triple Elite "what's my motivation going to be now?". He has a valid point on goals.

I don't mind spending if it gets used. On the other hand I'm not happy just throwing 2 billion into space dust.

As always thoughts appreciated.

Thanks Rec, I missed that.

Wingnuts I am in. Until I'm not. At some point I'll hang Elite up for two or eight months. So while I'd like to experience it, I cannot be counted on for sustained involvement.

That's a tough call. I think we need to know more about how carriers make money.

I hear you!! We'd have to make a concerted effort to help with the economy. I don't understand why FC didn't allow the Fleet Carrier "BANK" to be accessed by Players other than the OWNER to help DONATE funds or to facilitate Player to Player commerce...

I honestly don't see the real advantages of a Fleet Carrier other than the Novelty WOW factor. How often do we need to jump 500 light years? I can see if they brought back really good CG's and a bunch of folks could jump aboard and go together, or go out to Guardian Sites/ Crystal Shards together, or whatever the NEXT COOL THING OUTSIDE THE BUBBLE would be....but we are often not in the same system anyway..... Tough call!!!!!

And with a one hour preparation (and a one hour cool down), every single one of my ships (even the FDL!) could get there first I reckon.

OUCH!

I can't watch the video as I am at work today. But the jist is that a fully-outfitted carrier is 4 billion per year upkeep?

What's the cost of a fully-kitted out carrier in the first place?

Yeah, that's a lot of money. Is anyone in the beta using one of these? It's a lot of money, but I don't really know how they make money. I'll be happy to conduct business on a carrier in Neph's PG, whether Wingnuts buys one or someone else. It seems a lot of money, but over the course of an entire year I don't think it will prove to be too much burden, especially if a bunch of players are using it regularly.

Wingy's clocked a billion over the past month alone, the man is a money making machine, with entries on Inara every couple of days of several hundred million. With that sort of return, a carrier is pretty affordable. I imagine he had been making a concerted effort in preparation for the arrival of fleet carriers and not the sort of rate he'll maintain over a full year.

Hey Rec, I see you've made your credits and assets hidden on Inara, and if it was me blabbing about it then I'd like to apologize.

Four billion is double what I have amassed over my entire career, so maybe it's easy for me to say this is affordable, with no way I can also afford one. Anyway, it's a feature not aimed at me, but one I can hopefully use and have fun with, but as a visitor, not the owner.

Hard to say. 5 billion to buy but EACH service you add (Outfitting, Shipyard, Commodity exchange etc..) COSTS a one time BUY IN fee as well as Maintenance. BUY in is in the 10's or hundreds of Millions and Upkeep is a significant fraction thereof)





No problem, I didn't specifically make them private, it was just the default.

Edit: I saw it was set to SQUADRON ONLY... I reset it to Public.... I have nothing to hide... and a Corvette Ready if you come for my Credits (or the toilet paper stashed in the Cargo Hold)

So how many of the optionals would a carrier typically have? What's the limit? So fully outfitted we might be looking at 20 billion? More? That would take forever and a day to make back, but I still don't really know the scope of a carrier's ability to bring money in.

Them be for the high falutin' folks. Plebes like me in poverty will have to watch this all unfold from a distance I reckon.

Obsidian Ant said it seemed to him that Frontier didn't intend Players to necessarily trick out their carrier with EVERYTHING, but to make them more specialized which would cost "LESS". He also said the costs were subject to change from the beta, but in his opinion, they would have to be slashed by A LOT, not just 10-20% to make them remotely achievable for most players.

With every service included about an extra Billion and a half upfront with 150 million Weekly upkeep...by the way, that is JUST for the services, you would STILL have to BUY the stuff to put in OUTFITTING/SHIPYARD/COMMODITIES etc.. and HOPE to sell at a profit..


Attachment from the YAMIKS video:

I have to believe we will see a price correction after the beta. That's some serious cash. But it is a magnificent ship.

Where's Wingy's head on the matter at the moment? Are any of you guys in the beta?

IMO of course, I think that a large part of the shock with costs is not realizing that Fleet Carriers are not intended for profit or earning money. To me they seem directly a top shelf toy who's primary mechanic is to waste player wealth (wealth that is now essentially wasted anyway, with some CMDRs stockpiling immense piles of essentially useless credits). Essentially giving something for those credits to do other than stack. And stack.

Fleet Carriers also serve to create a gameplay loop for CMDRs who are both the owners (as management), and non-owners (who will mostly likely be grouped with and contributing/supporting the owner CMDR and his Fleet Carrier mission, as a whole. That gameplay loop is key for Frontier, keeping logins active and engaged in cooperative a multiplayer activity.

Good post and I agree with most of it adlabs. Especially the bit about Frontier looking to keep log-ins going. I see similar things in GTA Online all the time. Keep 'em playing.

I think we all knew it would be end-game content, and early on I knew not for me. It's for commanders like Winguts and Rec who have many billions sitting around doing nothing. And maybe you too adlabs. We are not friends on Inara so I've yet to have a look at your stuff Maybe you've got the dosh for one too.

I think the problem is in the upkeep and decommissioning rules. I for one didn't think the carrier would make money, but could at least help to offset some costs through the market and shipyard. But no one wants to pay a premium so in order to turn a profit the carrier owner needs to buy stock at a discount, and from I've seen so far that's not a thing. Is it?

So if I want to buy a new ship I don't mind paying over the odds to help a friend and his carrier. A 10% premium is reasonable with the knock-on effect of helping out. Actually I don't know how any of that works. Or will work. Or if it works at all!

I think they should just double the buy-in and sh!t-can the rest of the costs. If someone wants to (or is forced to) take a break from Elite, it is silly they will lose the carrier through decomissioning. That's what happens?

It seems Frontier have realized there may be issues if a lot of people buy them, and then want to have them in the same systems. They've built this, but I think have realized they need to find artificial ways to limit how many commanders actually buy one so that the logistical problems of fielding so many carriers doesn't rear it's ugly head.

No, I never really got above 1.5 billion in all assets (ships included). Thing for me was I tended to target specific gameplay elements, and the money was a side effect. So that's mining (most of the money), humanitarian aid (outbreak and famine trade), and salvage/rescue/recovery (no money at all, really... but some fun experiences). It would not be uncommon for me to build a $200 million credit ship for salvage, and never earn $2 million back with it. But I'd play it for hours, and still had fun.

As far as a Fleet Carrier owner buying stock at a discount, not that I'm aware. Ships and modules for the Shipyard, yes, IIRC.

But actually Fleet Carriers are nothing like what I imagined. I was expecting a large up front payment (credit sink), and then mainly get a massive ship garage. Park it where it's straddling my current play area, fill the hangers with my regular ships, and go do my usual thing. Fuel costs I expected for moving the Carrier, but all this stuff like being able to sell ships, or have a Commodities Market, and Interstellar Contacts... basically a player owned station?

Yikes, never thought of all that. And I don't have much interest in those modules, for what I do.

I'm almost thinking that a good bit of my being "underwhelmed" with Carriers is that they are neither decently simple and useful (my early imagination as a garage), nor moderately involved as far as management. Heck for all the modules and costs they are adding, Frontier might have well just made Fleet Carriers into a management/optimization mini-game. Something where I sit at a desk on my Carrier Commander's Office (instead of the controls of a ship), and have a little spreadsheet game to optimize income and expenses, and try to keep the ship finances in the black. Smart placement of the ship for my economic goals, wholesale goods contracts improving as my reputation with local factions increases. Even cooperative profit sharing contracts for CMDRs who contribute bulk mined resources to the Commodity Market for other CMDRs to buy at competitive prices.

*shrug*

I'm underwhelmed too. Not that I was going to get in on this, and certainly not once the price was announced. But as i see it the implementation is a bit absurd. I mean it's literally a fleet carrier that cannot carry a fleet, unless you drop the money on the shipyard. If you buy a carrier, this thing has got to be able to carry your fleet straight out of the box, at bare minimum. But it cannot.

I asked earlier and it still stands, why would a player use this instead of any of the thousands of stations? To carry a fleet far from stations? Yes, but then they've made it so expensive and slow to go to that spot. The whole thing seems a mess and I'm glad I wasn't counting on it to have my fun.

I think we'll see some serious changes through or after the beta.

Well I only have a little over 5 billion, so I am not quite in the ED 0.1%

I do, however, agree with the sentiment that Fleet Carriers are a way for Players who have amassed 10's or 100's of billions of Credits to put them to use with a shiny new toy and embark on another arc of novelty (WOW How's That for a Fleet Carrier Name: "ARK OF NOVELTY")

Not me at the moment. I think I would need at least 25 billion in the bank to take the risk..

I only watched OAs video and read some announcements and forum threads - seems not to be particularly attractive for a player. It's going to be near impossible to make any profit with it, be it with commodity trade or other facilities like shipyard etc. And if at all, it will still be far below the upkeep.

Maybe as a group repairing stations - jump with a bunch of T9s near a station that sells cheap, load the carrier and T9s to the top, hop back to the station under repair and sell at such a price that the carrier and the traders make a profit. With 2 hours (1h jump cooldown + 1h jump preparation) even three or four T9 might be able to fully load/unload a carrier (25000t = ~35 T9 trips).

Deep space seems also to be prohibitive due to time and constant refuel mining (can you carry tritium in your cargo hold to refill from?!). And then I wonder what happens when you die out there - will you rebuy at your carrier or at the last station with your carrier way out there? On the other hand, if you were just a visitor on the carrier, you might actually prefer to respawn in the bubble...

Also wonder whether it's possible to shut it down with thargoid mats, or whether thargs would attack a carrier loaded with such mats (haven't checked, but I guess those are on the list of mats that can't be traded on the carrier, like other rare mats)

All good points WC. I have to believe this will be redesigned. Almost no one likes the way it's been done. As it is, there really isn't much of a point to it, from a gameplay perspective.

For all that cash it had better have a clear and compelling purpose, and right now I can't see it.

Just ditch all this sh!t and make it a freakin' fleet carrier. One time buy-in, it carries your fleet and people can go to stations to do stations stuff.

I read that NPCs use the carrier, coming and going. But they make you no money and you can't stop them from landing. Is that true? Why do I want NPCs landing if I can't cash in?

I give F Dev a lot of slack. And they've built a pretty amazing game. But fleet carriers is a boondoggle in it's current implementation.

In the FRONTIER Livestream they showed an option where you could RESTRICT carrier use to ONLY FRIENDS or SQUADRON MEMBERS. Not sure if that is only applied to HUMANS, or if restricting to FRIENDS ONLY would also restrict NPC's...

From what I read those only restrict human commanders. NPCs are a spawned feature, like the system security which arrives to patrol around the FC. Currently no way to stop the NPCs if I understand it.

Which, unless it's changed, means you could take your FC to the deepest reaches of space and boom, there's all your NPC traffic coming and going, 34,000 light years from civilization. I guess this is what betas are for.

Oh boy, even more costly than I estimated. I've close to 8 billion now and really do want a carrier for the group. Well, we'll see what release looks like, but I'm not going to throw away four to five billion just to find out it
sucks and unfeasible to sustain. Hell I'd rather play in open and use that money for rebuys.

Your thoughts?

Can't you try it in the beta, but have all the money back outside the beta?

And anyway, I don't think it will be released in the same state it is now. So who knows, right?

But if that's how the beta works it seems a good way to try it without risking your mountains of cash.

OK, yeah, they took a snapshot on March 26 of all commanders' accounts. So as long as you had 5 billion then, you can buy a carrier in beta and try it out risk free. As they say in this post, what happens in beta, stays in beta.

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/guide-participating-in-the-beta.540562/

Updates:

https://www.pcgamesn.com/elite-dangerous/fleet-carriers-update-changes

Yep, that was inevitable

Cue Wingnuts' covey of carriers.

More info...

https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/g1q8pl/fleet_carriers_beta_1_feedback_changes/

Universal Cartographics will become available as an optional service.

You can't say they don't listen. That doesn't mean they'll make a change, but at least they are paying attention to the players.

Well,now....


https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/fleet-carriers-update-beta-2-upcoming-changes.544159/

I'm sure they are interested to see how their beta servers handle almost everybody having a carrier huddled in the popular systems.

Yeah, and I think that quote says pretty much that.

It's unexpected for me though, that any player with any money at all can try a carrier on for size, and for free, to judge suitability and know whether to chart a course to 5 billion credits. That's, like, a really good deal, Jake from State Farm. I might even do so. But probably not.