It will be hugely more useful if it has Outfitting and Shipyard services, even if just for the storage options, but neither of those are mentioned in the trailer.
I don't expect it will have cargo storage, which is completely illogical. It might have a commodities market instead which is even more illogical 100kly from the bubble -- how would it determine its prices?
So I take 16 ships to a VO mining site. How many tonnes of VO can I bring home? I think I will only be able to fill the hold of one of the ships. (A squadron could fill all of the ships.)
This.I'd move it into Deep Space with a specific fleet of Ships and then combine Exploration with Mining.
- Explore a radius ~500LY all around it
- go Mining in the best areas discovered and grab that as a Bonus
- after an area is done, it's time to move on to the next spot
Also this.With the latest info being released about Carriers in the last couple days, I propose to use MY Carrier as a forward base to repair, fuel, etcetera during my explorations -
Repair, exchanging modules, or ships during system explores are a PIA when you have to return 500+Ly to a station for just that one or 2 chores and retrace your steps to the POI that required the refit -
* Like losing an SRV, Having several replacements available on the Carrier would simplify things -
Having a small ship, like an Adder, for planetary explorations without having to engineer the inadequate original FSD or Thrusters, of that ship which can land basically anywhere due to its size, would reduce the primary costs of storing discovered materials or items -
After filling all the storage pods of the Carrier, load up and return to the bubble. -
I expect that over time other items discovered, (or implemented into the game), will become quite valuable to the bubble as MetaAlloys have.
A minor detail. Irrelevant to my end goal.You will not be able to land a Carrier at a station due to it's size...
Except that I don't see us being able to "fill up a carrier" in any meaningful way. That would go against previous decisions of FDev that they said were made for game balance reasons. It's a more powerful version of cargo storage.Being able mine way out side the bubble and fill a carrier up with goodies and ship it home sounds awesome. Also it would give squadrons something to do. Some people assigned to mining resources other to collecting fuel and others to fleet defense. I can imagine that a mining spec fleet carrier will look like very juicy target to pirates, players and NPCs alike.
Except that I don't see us being able to "fill up a carrier" in any meaningful way. That would go against previous decisions of FDev that they said were made for game balance reasons. It's a more powerful version of cargo storage.
The only thing that might be possible is a Commodities Market. To make that sensible the market would have to be trading with other pilots. Which means that they have to land on your carrier. In the real world that would open you up to a huge piracy risk, but most of those options don't exist in the game. It also means that the carrier must exist in all instances. Fallout 76 doesn't do that but, if you set up shop out in the black, people have got to be able to trust that your shop is going to be there. They are not going to just come across it and they are not going to travel a thousand lightyears on the off-chance that you are instanced with them.
It would be incredibly cool to have a network of markets widely separated out in the galaxy. You would be able to make a good living by buying VO from miners and shipping them back to the bubble. Fallout 76 does something similar where you can put vending terminals in your base to sell your spare gear to other players. I think it would be necessary for you to be able to define which goods were available for sale or purchase and to set prices. Otherwise other players would wreck your economy. If it worked as part of the BGS the prices would be horribly skewed and selling cargo to it out in space, bringing it back to the bubble and buying the cargo back to sell it in the bubble would mean you would lose money to your own ship, which is stupid.
Edit: It's not just commodities. A player could make money by offering refuel/rearm/repair facilities outside the bubble.
I still don't think they will be persistant as the multiplayer part is P2P and the carrier data would have to be stored serverside somehow.