Please reconsider fleet carriers for solo players.

[CMDR Karrde Sun]

Leaving aside the question of whether FCs are designed for communities or solo players, let's take a look at the math:

Regardless of how many alts you have in your squadron, you can still only fly one ship at a time, so given that the maximum squadron size is 500, which means that it'll take a single player 8 HOURS to do what the full squadron does in a MINUTE.

Now the Gnosis jumps 500 LY, so taking that as a benchmark, if refueling the FC takes a full squadron a minute, they would be able to get their FC to Beagle Point in a little over 2 hours. I think we can therefore assume that FDev intend it to take more than a minute to move a carrier 500 LY. So how fast should carriers move? Well the Gnosis only jumps once a week, so I'll again take that as a benchmark. I think 5 hours per week is a reasonable estimate for play time for an average player, and I'll also assume that FDev are happy for a mid-sized (250 member) squadron to move their FC 500 LY per week. So that's 1,250 man hours to move a carrier 500 LY.

Those of you wanting your own, personal, fleet carriers to take out into the black to explore, you're looking at 2,500 hours just to get far enough out to start getting first discoveries.

Now it may be that FDev set the limits lower, so that a 25 member squadron can move 500 LY per week - but you solo players are still looking at 6 months to move that far, and a full size squadron would be able to move 10,000 LY per week which basically means they can teleport around the Bubble at will, which I can't see FDev wanting to happen.

So everyone may be able to get your own personal carriers, but I'm pretty sure they're not going to be able move it far.

Since we're speculating, i think there are a number of specific factors working against this.

• Doing this will wake the dragon. The mainstream steam review crowd. Frontier are mortified of this crowd. Think steam reviews, the gnosis, the fss in the bubble, removal of credits, removal of rep. In the end, Frontier have proven this is the only demographic that they move the mountain for, and adding a grind doesn't make them happy.
• Im not sure if frontier have a measure internally of cost benefit, but i think even they would balk at over a years development on a feature for barely a few thousand players. That defies all logic. But given they're so resolute about everything they do you can imagine all sorts of things.

Course we don't know, but could land either way.

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

Since we're speculating, i think there are a number of specific factors working against this.

• Doing this will wake the dragon. The mainstream steam review crowd. Frontier are mortified of this crowd. Think steam reviews, the gnosis, the fss in the bubble, removal of credits, removal of rep. In the end, Frontier have proven this is the only demographic that they move the mountain for, and adding a grind doesn't make them happy.
• Im not sure if frontier have a measure internally of cost benefit, but i think even they would balk at over a years development on a feature for barely a few thousand players. That defies all logic. But given they're so resolute about everything they do you can imagine all sorts of things.

Course we don't know, but could land either way.

Fleet carriers were scheduled for release in Q4 2018, and will be released in Q4 2019. This does NOT mean that they have been working on them for over a year. It could be a month of effort that was simply postponed last year and won't actually START until October.

IIRC it was specifically described by FDev as 'deprioritized', which doesn't support the idea of 12 months development.

 

[Captain Willard]

What do you want to bet you will have to have a set number of active squad mates present to make a jump with a carrier.
That would kill any solo cmdr of buying one then being able to make use of it.
How many landing pads did we see? That would be the number.
The dev's aren't stoopid. It's what I would do to keep it MP only.
The blood and adrenaline are pumping now.

 

[lenna]

If Fleet Carriers are placed behind a "you must have a number of Squadron members to unlock purchase" wall then I'll assemble my altCMDRs for any Solo Squadron that wishes to purchase a Carrier (subject to the Squadron already being able to afford it).

As I understood previous statements, a Squadron would retain its assets until the point of disbandment - even if there was only a single member.

For console-based CMDRs, this is fine and dandy - for PC based CMDRs, it is not a viable option without spending real-world cash.

 

[lenna]

The unanswered question remains: Is this a carrier for multiple CMDR's to board with one ship. or will this have the capability for one CMDR to transport multiple ships?

It does not matter whether a ship change is possible or not at a carrier, even with just repair/refuel/rearm facilities it would still have utility for both solo commanders and smaller squadrons.

As it currently stands, certain repairs require a facility thus even solo explorers could benefit from access to one since the carrier would be one such implementation of the required mobile facility.

 

[lenna]

Well, regardless of the (player) logistics for buying or indeed running, they should be available for solo players, I mean plenty of us have multiple ships. If they choose to lock the use of carriers behind massive grind, then I doubt anybody will bother with them. It would be refreshing to see a different approach to gameplay than just grind.

That said, unless things have changed (which of course is quite possible), I got the impression that the limitation on the number of carriers was down to technical reasons at FD's end. Time will tell.

The technical reasoning is a cop-out, there is nothing that says how the spawn management of fleet carriers must work and with some careful thought any perceived technical limitations should be avoidable.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

I hope they don't. It will look silly for a single person flying around in a massive mega ship.

You won't see a single person flying around in a massive megaship. You won't see a groups of people flying around in a massive mega ship.

You will just see a mega ship. Also, you won't likely see it flying.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

What do you want to bet you will have to have a set number of active squad mates present to make a jump with a carrier.

You think?

I think it will just require the squadron leader or whoever to go to a menu and press a button (assuming the requirements to make a jump have been met).

 

[Captain Willard]

You think?

I think it will just require the squadron leader or whoever to go to a menu and press a button (assuming the requirements to make a jump have been met).

We will see eh?

 

[Agony_Aunt]

We will see eh?

Yup.

 

[CMDR Karrde Sun]

Fleet carriers were scheduled for release in Q4 2018, and will be released in Q4 2019. This does NOT mean that they have been working on them for over a year. It could be a month of effort that was simply postponed last year and won't actually START until October.

IIRC it was specifically described by FDev as 'deprioritized', which doesn't support the idea of 12 months development.

Right. That is a very credible theory. If thats the case whipping up a panther clipper for the rest of us could be of interest.

I was imagining something more along the lines of if they admitted there were technical issues, that sounds like something they would want to solve before releasing the feature. Imagine releasing carriers (with publicly stated) problems and just that one extra squadron ordered one and the servers collapsed. So i would suspect it was a longer project they've been working on over time and managed to get it in over the year.

Looking at how the fss landed, the reality is probably a merger of both scenarios and all their details.

 

[lenna]

I predict the popular systems will get clogged with these things, or they will code it so that only squadron members or wingmates get the instance tag within a system.

Neither need necessarily be the case, there are many different ways in which such concerns could be addressed - a key one could be to use instancing combined with limited spawn points - for solo/private group players, the carriers would notionally never be seen in Open (for example). In Open, the theoretical maximum number of fleet carriers in a given system could be limited by the instancing logic.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

You won't see a single person flying around in a massive megaship. You won't see a groups of people flying around in a massive mega ship.

You will just see a mega ship. Also, you won't likely see it flying.

I will see tens of thousands of megaships flying around. Possibly up to a hundred in one system.

 

[Alien]

I will see tens of thousands of megaships flying around. Possibly up to a hundred in one system.

I'll be surprised if I ever see one, but I haven't done half the stuff there is to do in this game, so maybe you will see lots of them, who knows?
EDIT: I think I might actually go looking for one, once they are in-game.

 

[lenna]

Right. That is a very credible theory. If thats the case whipping up a panther clipper for the rest of us could be of interest.

I was imagining something more along the lines of if they admitted there were technical issues, that sounds like something they would want to solve before releasing the feature. Imagine releasing carriers (with publicly stated) problems and just that one extra squadron ordered one and the servers collapsed. So i would suspect it was a longer project they've been working on over time and managed to get it in over the year.

Looking at how the fss landed, the reality is probably a merger of both scenarios and all their details.

IMO The FSS more crashed than landed - it is still a mechanic that is tantamount to torture.

As for Fleet Carriers, there was a not insignificant degree of disagreement over FDs initial proposals for them - if FD continue to proceed as they originally planned then it would be disappointing but overall a non-event. That is providing FD do not allow the Fleet Carriers to be used to interfere with the gameplay of others.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

I'll be surprised if I ever see one, but I haven't done half the stuff there is to do in this game, so maybe you will see lots of them, who knows?
EDIT: I think I might actually go looking for one, once they are in-game.

Underestimate of 100,000 players on PC. Plus squadrons having their ow ln. And you think you will hardly see any in the bubble. A bubble comprising of just 20000 populated systems.

Maybe if you are out exploring, but not in the bubble.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

I will see tens of thousands of megaships flying around. Possibly up to a hundred in one system.

You probably have different expectations from FD on this than me. I think they will work like the Gnosis a bit. You tell it to jump and it appears in the target system, probably inside a custom signal source or near to a station or whatnot. You won't see them "fly".

If they appear in their own signal sources then you won't even see more than 1 at a time.

 

[Trotsky2112]

You probably have different expectations from FD on this than me. I think they will work like the Gnosis a bit. You tell it to jump and it appears in the target system, probably inside a custom signal source or near to a station or whatnot. You won't see them "fly".

If they appear in their own signal sources then you won't even see more than 1 at a time.

The instancing may be a problem.
I do think that we will see fleet carriers fly, in the same way that farragut cruisers and majestic interdictors sit there and do nothing.

Who are we kidding? FD is giving squadrons a starport with less services than normal.

 

[lenna]

FD is giving squadrons a starport with less services than normal.

Not quite - a mobile starport with minimal facilities would be a better equivalence.

 

[Trotsky2112]

I agree that the mobility gives a fleet carrier the edge, but apart from that, it's basically a space gas station/truck stop.