Yes, but not where a metal floor is involved
Owning a fleet carrier. My first impressions.
- Thread starter Uname654
- Start date
I wouldn't give up the carrier now. It's become essential to my play just as a place to store stuff.
The upkeep is minimal. At 15M/week it's usually covered by one evening's play.
The real way to get rich in Elite is ... Avoid paying rebuys.
Almost all games have and need what you call "time sinks". If you remove them, you could just run a spreadsheet with your actions. Elite would look like a game of chess ('place ship into station x', 'get profit n', 'influence economy y by m%"
I can't speak for everyone but for myself, Elite is about immersion and the vastness and beauty of space in a somewhat realistic universe. It would be boring if every action could be done in seconds. Yes, exploration is sometimes tedious to fly out to distant systems and planets and find the last mushroom in a mountainous area but no one MUST do that. Find easier game-loops.
Other games like chess are more bare bones and have a greatly reduced game-loop (I recommend to play it online so that you don't have to move the pieces physically which is boring and time consuming
Let me guess, you never learned how to play chess.
This is something I see people talk about but I do not understand this concept at all. What are you people talking about?
What "game persona"? It's a virtual puppet in a space suit you move around the screen to see what happens next. Poor thing cant even run more than 50 m.
I wouldn't give up the carrier now. It's become essential to my play just as a place to store stuff.
The upkeep is minimal. At 15M/week it's usually covered by one evening's play.
The real way to get rich in Elite is ... Avoid paying rebuys.
I still like my FC.
I have traveled with out moving, to places never visited before.
BTW, I was about do delete the game and buy a can of paint so I can watch how it dries on the wall... for fun of course. FC changed my mind and made it all a bit more fun again.
I know, right? I've never played game that requires more intense immersion and takes more time per action than a legitimate game of chess. You have to put people on a timer to manage it. If Elite had the immersive depth of chess, we would all starve to death at our computers.Let me guess, you never learned how to play chess.
Wrong. I learned it but I never became really good at it.Let me guess, you never learned how to play chess.
This is something I see people talk about but I do not understand this concept at all. What are you people talking about?
What "game persona"? It's a virtual puppet in a space suit you move around the screen to see what happens next. Poor thing cant even run more than 50 m.
If you have ever played an RPG, you might know the concept of a persona. There are players who assume an in-game persona that has some background, personal traits and also behaves (more or less) within those persona limits which means that they react to a certain situation within their character. That can be a hotshot pilot, a grizzly explorer, etc.. A persona can range from their real life personality to a completely fictious character. And it is of course up to everyone how serious and consequent you are in your play. For some reasons, my pilot would never join any super power. That limits me to obtain certain modules. Is that a problem for me? Not really because I can enjoy Elite without maxing it out.
If you only see the 'virtual puppet' that is entirely up to you but why do you care about about trash on the floor or not being greeted by your minions? You play only a 'virtual puppet' and are not supposed to care about such details.
I think that we have a different concept of what we mean with 'immersion'. In a game like Elite, Flight Sim or Mass Effect, immersion means more that story, physics, graphics, sound, NPC reactions, etc. give you a somewhat realistic representation of the environment. In chess, I'd say 'immersion' is more the concentration on the strategy and tactics but less on the design of the pieces or the board. I would not assume that a chess player who moves the queen thinks of having tea with Alice?
I used the analogy with chess in my previous post to point out that if you remove 'game loops' to the absolutely necessary minimum, then games like Elite could be completely without graphics and sound and be reduced to moving abstract pieces around on a chessboard (representing the galaxy or a system) or just play it in a spreadsheet.
![[VR] Mad Mike](https://forums-cdn.zaonce.net/data/avatars/m/27/27910.jpg?1553527108){kind=avatar}
I think this is the core of the "problem" with why some of the playerbase want fundamentally different things from Elite. If you dont understand what people talk about and presumably sorry if am putting words in your mouth) you think those players who want "immershun" are weird then what you want out of the game will likely never be the same as what i want out of it for instance.This is something I see people talk about but I do not understand this concept at all. What are you people talking about?
What "game persona"? It's a virtual puppet in a space suit you move around the screen to see what happens next. Poor thing cant even run more than 50 m.
For me Verisimilitude is everything in Elite, even if it means times where i am thinking "for gods sake this is a pain".
I dont have this desire in other games, take the wing commander series. i loved that game but all i cared about was shooting stuff and the quicker i got to the action the better including cut scenes for travel etc.... i wouldnt want it in Elite however.
If Elite has a core issue it is that it has tried to sell itself as all things to all people, and in some cases this has been a mixing of oil and water scenario, often leading to compromises which has never really pleased anyone.
I say that as someone who still likes the game and even loves it still on occasion.. but also as a player who truly believes that as much has the game has improved in some areas with more content, it has also significantly got worse in other areas as well - mostly to appease players who want to speed through the game or get to "stuff" easier..
Last edited:
It's a fine balance to be sure. I've been taking it slow since I rest my CMDR to try and hold onto that role-playing feeling. At 10 months in of (very) casual play I've only got 4 Billion Cr. in assets, of which only 2.5 Billion is liquid. I am starting to get a little impatient though, and am getting the urge to push more deliberately into buying a Fleet Carrier to open up my gameplay options. I never bothered buying one before the reset, so this'll be a first for me. Exobiology here I come I guess. Maybe once I've got the carrier I can slow back down to smell the daisies.
The weekly upkeep doesn't worry me too much. While I am a casual player these days I should be able to keep on top of that with my normal gameplay practices. Tritium is based on moving around, and I honestly won't be doing that much either. I like exploring, but I spend most of the time in the Bubble with my mates. The main thing I want the carrier for is to store things, and experiment with other options.
The other way I look at it is that running the carrier is the motivation to do my usual gameplay, from a role-play perspective. The 5-10 Billion to buy the thing might take a while at a casual pace, but the maintenance of it can be done at my slower pace, and I do rotate through activities regularly. I'll likely spend a few sessions mining for Tritium, etc.
Who knows though, maybe it'll be too much and I'll end up selling it again. If this thread is still going by then I'll provide an update.
if you suspend services that you are not using then i think upkeep is around 750mil a year.
not a trivial amount of money for my play style where i refuse to meta game (i have been playing since before release and i only just now have 6.5bil in actual cash to be able to consider a carrier and still dont have a cutter or a corvette despite over 3000hrs in game.
but its not a lot either.......... with powerplay bonues and care packages i would guess that you could get 750 million in maybe 15 hrs mining which isnt a lot for a whole year of cover.
not a trivial amount of money for my play style where i refuse to meta game (i have been playing since before release and i only just now have 6.5bil in actual cash to be able to consider a carrier and still dont have a cutter or a corvette despite over 3000hrs in game.
but its not a lot either.......... with powerplay bonues and care packages i would guess that you could get 750 million in maybe 15 hrs mining which isnt a lot for a whole year of cover.
Helping the war effort is definitely what netted me the bulk of my cash flow. Now that's gone, it's back to the old school methods of operating. PP2.0 is working really well for me as it acts as a bonus scheme while mooching about doing odd-jobs. For the most part I'm really happy with that, but I'd be happier doing that with a Carrier in-tow if I can. Just a shame that the metas and Thargoid war have somewhat skewed expectations of profit/hour when going for a financial goal. It's one of the reasons I tend to try and role-play those expectations out, but I can't ignore that I really want that Carrier sooner rather than later now.
Only in a competitive face to face match.Don't worry, you will be on a timer
The real way to get rich in Elite is ... Avoid paying rebuys.
Meh, in terms of expense, rebuys are right up there with the cost of fuel and the cost of restoring the integrity of a ship.
I suspect the way most people "get rich" in ED is simply to be around when a gold-rush happens.
I recall, just before FC's were released, I was trying to pad my wallet so I'd be able to buy an FC without ending-up broke and I was making a bit from mining and making a bit from trading but the number wasn't going up very fast.
Then there was a gold-rush (something to do with missions to scan surface bases and then blow stuff up with missiles IIRC) and I earned Cr5bn in about 3 days!
Then there was the xmas when nu-mining arrived, and every abrasion blaster spawned it's own chunks of ore, so if you had 6x abrasion blasters you got 6x the amount of ore.
Over that xmas holiday I earned something like Cr7bn.
Every so often there's a "legitimate" gold-rush too; CGs that require delivery of something expensive with CG-inflated buying prices, which allow you to earn a heap of credits in a short time.
Honestly, I bet if I added up the value of my fleet, the cost of my FC and what I've currently got in the bank it'd equate almost exactly (to within a couple of hundred million credits) to what I've earned from gold-rushes.
The credits I earn from playing the game just cover my overheads (fuel, repairs, rebuys, ammo, new modules, FC upkeep etc).
It's the gold-rushes that inflate my bank balance permanently.
And, on a related note, I've said it before but FDev should consider deliberately creating gold-rushes at least 2 or 3 times a year.
I'm sure it'd entice people to play and it might be useful with Colonisation kicking off.
PowerPlay 2.0 is the first glimpse I’ve gotten into how much my roleplaying has cost me, in terms of credits. While I can’t be certain, based on the number of merits I’ve over the last 12 weeks, and the information in my tactical and strategic sorradsheets, I’ve probably donated about half a billion credits worth… minimum. And while I’ll never know how many credits I’ve “lost” due to BGS manipulation, if the trend continues backwards, I can easily see that total being on the order of 20 billion credits.
And I still complain about credits being too easy to earn
over xmas i was awarded 1 billion credits for the titan CG and that was ontop of the millions (£100s millions? i earned whilst attacking the titan!. i have never ever earned even close to that before given i have deliberately not done anything which paid an amount which felt at all exploity.
i told myself that a battle to save earth jusified a super payday, and added to the fact if ever i want a fleet carrier AND i want to do some planetary colonisation i am gonna have to expand my purse somewhat!.