An unfortunate observation about Fleet Carriers

[Ian Doncaster]

But for others 1h a week can be a sizeable junk of their weekly playtime.

True, but at that point they probably don't have a carrier to start with. The upfront cost is 5 billion for 5 million/week upkeep, so if you can't reliably make the upkeep in a week it'll take you 20 years to afford it in the first place (plus a bit more for the fleet to store on it)

For a services-heavy carrier, then maybe 7 billion upfront for 20 million/week upkeep, that's still seven years to afford the carrier if the upkeep is a significant portion of your weekly earning rate.

Obviously if you play a lot with a much higher earning rate, buy a carrier (leaving yourself cash-poor) and then significantly reduce how much time you spend in game before your reserves have built up again, it can bite at that point, which isn't ideal.

Another question: What's the benefit of upkeep? Some people defend it very loudly.

"Immersion", same as refuel/rearm/repair not being free.

(I'd argue there's no point in charging for those, either)

 

[Aerendyl]

I had about a billion, shut down services and went off to play through the entire Dishonored series, and Prey. I've just come back and my carrier is in debt. So night after night I'm flying around trying to find plants to scan instead of doing whatever else I would be doing, so I can get out of debt. This strikes me as bad design because there's a barrier to getting back into the game. As I look down the list of hundreds of games I could play, this one has debt and chores associated with it. I cannot just pick up this game, I must tread water to stay above water.

 

[Shurimal]

Just a few days ago I dropped 50 units of surplus weapons schematics into my carrier storage and set a sell order for around 1.5 millions each. They were all gone an hour later, and my carrier had more than a month extra of upkeep paid Where did I get that surplus? There was a bug with on-foot missions that caused the mission item to not respawn, needing you to relog a few times—I quickly learned of a nice side effect it had with larceny missions. The lazarus, push, synthetic pathogens and other such stuff pays millions, too.

If I get a good instance, 1 hours of bounty hunting with KWS will net a weeks upkeep plus a crapton of engineering materials.

A high intensity on-foot CZ pays around 12 millions each round and is quite fun.

Half of the 8,5 billions I have stashed away on my carrier came from exobio, though. It pays crazy good.

Credits are not really a problem.

 

[metatheurgist]

Just a few days ago I dropped 50 units of surplus weapons schematics into my carrier storage and set a sell order for around 1.5 millions each. They were all gone an hour later, and my carrier had more than a month extra of upkeep paid Where did I get that surplus? There was a bug with on-foot missions that caused the mission item to not respawn, needing you to relog a few times—I quickly learned of a nice side effect it had with larceny missions. The lazarus, push, synthetic pathogens and other such stuff pays millions, too.

Yes, I really did appreciate Frontier giving me a valid reason to relog.

 

[Hellrider]

if upkeep, even after few months of break is issue for you, it clearly mean, that you aren't ready for carrier. Or that you earned this billions by spamming 1 goldrush which gone, and you don't know about any other things which can generate credits.
Yesterday I earned credits for 2 motths of upkeep by doing...2 trade runs, full of various, small trade missions

 

[Factabulous]

I had about a billion, shut down services and went off to play through the entire Dishonored series, and Prey. I've just come back and my carrier is in debt. So night after night I'm flying around trying to find plants to scan instead of doing whatever else I would be doing, so I can get out of debt. This strikes me as bad design because there's a barrier to getting back into the game. As I look down the list of hundreds of games I could play, this one has debt and chores associated with it. I cannot just pick up this game, I must tread water to stay above water.

'Decommission' is found in the FC admin page. Then you can buy another if you play again. Simples

 

[Hellrider]

"bad design, I have to scan plants instead mining, or trading, or blasting pirates, or doing any activity, because only thing, which don't give me billions is piracy"

 

[Helmut Grokenberger]

I had about a billion, shut down services and went off to play through the entire Dishonored series, and Prey. I've just come back and my carrier is in debt. So night after night I'm flying around trying to find plants to scan instead of doing whatever else I would be doing, so I can get out of debt. This strikes me as bad design because there's a barrier to getting back into the game. As I look down the list of hundreds of games I could play, this one has debt and chores associated with it. I cannot just pick up this game, I must tread water to stay above water.

I'm confused. You make it sound as if your carrier debt came out of the blue, but I just did the math. No guarantees, correct me if I got something wrong.

It all depends on what services you had installed of course; but you said you suspended all your services. So a worst case maxed out carrier with suspended services costs 16.8 million per week; having eaten up a billion in the carrier bank means you didn't just take a "break" or "didn't have much time to play", you pretty much stopped playing (or at least supplying any cash to the crrier) for 60 weeks, much more if you had a minimum viable carrier (just suspended RRR costs 7.25 million per week - that's 137 weeks on a billion banked). I don't think it's entirely fair to blame that on the system.

Did it not occur that you might either uninstall services you didn't need, or, at some point, just should decomission the carrier? You suspending all services suggests that you knew you wouldn't play for a while, and you could have taken the steps necessary to avoid running into debt.

There's nothing wrong with taking a break, or stop playing, or focus on other games. But your carrier running into debt isn't as surprising or unexpected as your OP makes it sound. You might not like it, and that's totally understandable. But it wasn't exactly a surprise.

 

[Helmut Grokenberger]

To add: did you do anything else with your carrier balance, like having a large buy order for Tritium open?

 

[aRJay]

I absolutely love having a fleet carrier - the freedom of long jumps, the convenience of going where I like with all my ships and facilities... chef's kiss!
But I have noticed that when I go through periods when I don't have much time to play, I tend to have to spend all of what little time I have grinding for upkeep. This is an unfortunate consequence of having a fleet carrier. I wish there was a way to make it a bit more self-sustaining.

I'll always love Elite and will play it for as long as the servers stay on - but there are other games too!

Well I play an hour per day on average.
I didn’t buy my carrier until I had enough credits to put over a billion into the carriers bank, actually I misread the fitting out costs so ended up just under budget.
The running cost is 14.7 million a week or thereabouts.
There are several of exobiology items that pay that much for a sample and lots if you get the first discovery bonus.
I never expected it to be self financing so from the start kept in mind that I would need to periodically have sessions to just build up the finances but the changes to exobiology changed that I recently parked it in a good system in Colonia transferred the credits from the recent bio hunting and exploration loop into the bank then set a buy order for Tritium using that money which was attractive enough even at Colonia prices to get my carrier fuelled up in no time.

I know this was tongue in cheek, but upkeep clearly isn't doing it job, if that job was to reduce amount of FC cluttering.

As a lot of people keep saying, just put a couple of billion credits into your carrier and you won't have to think of upkeep for years to come. So with the (only?) upside gone, it seems there's only downsides left for upkeep.

If lots of people can afford to do that I am struggling to see the downside.

 

[GJ51]

One trade run covers more than a week's fees

1 hr of play can cover 2 months of FC upkeep

But

many people still live paycheck to paycheck...

 

[Schmack]

I'm sure it's about the principle to a large degree.

But in you example you say it takes about one hour to make enough credits for the upkeep. That's not a problem for people who play Elite five hours a day anyway. But for others 1h a week can be a sizeable junk of their weekly playtime.

Another question: What's the benefit of upkeep? Some people defend it very loudly.

Benefit? It's a carrier with a crew and services. It only makes sense for it to have upkeep. However, the benefit is that people who don't pay upkeep and just park it somewhere for years will lose it, so it doesn't clog the system. It's ever present in all modes, so it has to have an expiration date for folks who quit playing. Could you imagine if ships were omnipresent like that? They'd park on a pad and never leave, ever. They'd quit the game and that pad is forever lost.

No, there has to be some mechanism to expire and retire a carrier.

My carrier has just short of 50b in credits. Upkeep is high, since I run almost all services, but I don't care. On the other hand, my commander is relatively poor, always has just enough to rebuy if needed plus maybe grab a deal or two at a pioneer site if I find one.

 

[Marvin the Martian]

But I have noticed that when I go through periods when I don't have much time to play, I tend to have to spend all of what little time I have grinding for upkeep.

I don't see how that's even remotely possible. I've been playing for a year and a half. That's it. My fleet carrier has enough cash to where I could never log in for the next 7 years and it would be just fine.

That's not even counting the money I have on hand I could put into the carrier's account.

 

[Fixitman]

The carrier is extremely well suited for exploration due to it's high jump range. There is no cut taken when using Vista Genomics on a carrier. It's trivial to find a system with enough exobiology discoveries to pay for several week's upkeep. The process to discover, scan, and turn in that much can take a few hours at most. Even at one hour a day, you can cover a month of upkeep in less than a week.

 

[Rainbro]

Benefit? It's a carrier with a crew and services. It only makes sense for it to have upkeep. However, the benefit is that people who don't pay upkeep and just park it somewhere for years will lose it, so it doesn't clog the system. It's ever present in all modes, so it has to have an expiration date for folks who quit playing. Could you imagine if ships were omnipresent like that? They'd park on a pad and never leave, ever. They'd quit the game and that pad is forever lost.

No, there has to be some mechanism to expire and retire a carrier.

Or we could have an implementation of carriers that doesn't clog the system. A lot of this is just the side effects from the framework that was setup to handle normal stations (static, limited in quantity) not being well-suited to handle a much larger number of moving stations. It's a UI problem and whatever limitations exist in the code about number of stations around one body, not something that had to be the case had the feature been given more time to make a direct solution.

 

[Greasetrap42]

But in you example you say it takes about one hour to make enough credits for the upkeep. That's not a problem for people who play Elite five hours a day anyway. But for others 1h a week can be a sizeable junk of their weekly playtime.

If a player is only playing for an hour a week... is their much of any upside to having a fleet carrier at all? Why do they even have a fleet carrier? What is it used for? Is it just a trophy? How did they even afford it? Did they bankrupt themselves just for the purchase?

 

[Schmack]

Or we could have an implementation of carriers that doesn't clog the system. A lot of this is just the side effects from the framework that was setup to handle normal stations (static, limited in quantity) not being well-suited to handle a much larger number of moving stations. It's a UI problem and whatever limitations exist in the code about number of stations around one body, not something that had to be the case had the feature been given more time to make a direct solution.

Agreed, but with the current design choices, carrier expiration is the only choice. If no one ever quit playing, they'd probably have the funds to do more with it.

If you don't play for 2 years, you basically quit the game. I wouldn't be against having things remain in your account as long as they aren't omnipresent like carriers are. I think that design was a big mistake but that toothpaste isn't going back into that tube.

 

[Schmack]

If a player is only playing for an hour a week... is their much of any upside to having a fleet carrier at all? Why do they even have a fleet carrier? What is it used for? Is it just a trophy? How did they even afford it? Did they bankrupt themselves just for the purchase?

There's been a long standing gripe here that all content should be made available to all level of players, even if they only play 15 minutes a month. I see the same in other games where people don't have time to play - they complain about the cost of in game items and that they'll never get to realize game content since they have a full time job. Sometimes that game doesn't fit your lifestyle. It's why I never got into games like WoW.

 

[Old Duck]

Am I the only one who actually liked having a reason (paying the bills) for earning credits in Elite? What many consider a "bug" (fleet carrier maintenance costs) I consider a feature! I only wish Elite (and X4 and most other games) had MORE bills to pay!

 

[Greasetrap42]

If you don't play for 2 years, you basically quit the game. I wouldn't be against having things remain in your account as long as they aren't omnipresent like carriers are. I think that design was a big mistake but that toothpaste isn't going back into that tube.

Ya, if after 2 years of not logging in to the game carriers could "vanish" from the game until the player logs back in. If the system is no longer available... too bad, push the carrier to another nearby system. Regardless of maint fees or whatever... declutter the old unused stuff. I have seen this suggestion many times. Seems good to me.