If they nerf Void opals, this game's gonna be pretty much dead for me, which is really sad. It's the only way I'm ever going to dream of affording this Carrier thing.
In NMS, the Fleet Carrier had progressive development with fun opportunities to personalise it to your liking. Also, personalisation brought connectivity to more elements of the game, such as creating fleet expedition operations rooms in order to manage Expedition Squadrons, market access, by building trading hub terminals, and of course, the vessel hangar bay.
This is all a lot of continuous fun and it just required some gaming time in order to achieve it and enjoy the experience it had to offer.
This, I will STRESS, was intended for an individual to enjoy.
The critical issue that will determine who gets to have fun with this and who has to be excluded and let down all depends on Fdev's careful attention to making the Fleet Carriers work BOTH in single play and multiplay. So far, all I've seen is group activities leading the evolution of this game and though I love the incentive and all, I can't help feeling like the quiet stranger, stood at the back of the room at the party. I don't feel comfortable playing this game, getting griefed every 5 minutes, losing everything I spent my precious, (little), free time I have between work and RL stuff. I much rather prefer to play closed sessions with friends but that's very rarely, most of the time I'm solo play, because I love that. It's MY TIME, rest after hard work.. play space games, fly around space doing sciencey things, shooting pirates landing on planets, discovering planets - having fun!!!
All I would like to see, even before this Fleet carrier thing was a thing, is to be able to have more than 5 poxy ships to fly in the game at any one time. ALSO, having to go to the destination I want to teleport my ships to, then having to wait for them in real time (ok I don't actually mind it that much but it's an unwanted mechanic to be honest, it just degrades fun and breeds tedium and repetetive tedium at that). That is really restricting the game's progress and potential to grow for me.
In fact, regardless of this carrier's properties, one thing that should DEFINITELY be improved upon is the whole logistics of moving the ships around; I think that you should interact somehow with a User Interface, so let's say that it happens in the Galactic map tab. It could even SHOULD, even be in the carrier itself, providing access to frame-shift hyper-jumps to a plotted destination that you just made whilst stood in that carrier!!! You should be able to move the carrier/starport around from the comfort of your ship, using the galactic navigation interface. Currently, you have to actually go to where you want things to move to, which seems caveman, stone-age tech... clunky and basic. (sorry I don't mean to offend, just being factual with the designs, and constructive regarding development)
One thing I would see as a possibility is to introduce several forms of fleet transport and storage, so that players can choose according to their playstyle:
Multiplayer options:
Fleet carrier ships for Squadron wing players, Damage control (but NOT destructible carriers, all that money needed to buy one again? Or even the insurance could be a thing? Maybe they could be used for PVP? Would multiplayers like that? Maybe they could have challenges to reach milestones, in order to impress certain alien races that might let them engineer their carriers to perform in certain ways to suit their squadron's play style? Perhaps massive powerful turrets could be installed, to make them almost like battle cruisers?
Single player options:
Stations that require building first, for long term intricate micro-management single players who like tasks, challenges and to take their time playing with it, BUILDING IT, like Lego; The player themselves, ALONE, determining colours, room layout, structure layout, etc etc. The store could potentially sell different things here for Fdev, helping to keep income generation go towards maintaining quality and a future for the game, by offering decoration outfit styles, materials, rooms, decor, operations modules, such as Shipyard maintenance, so that things can move along more smothly around the galaxy...
These are just ideas, I hope Fdev works towards providing fair and inclusive content for ALL players alike. Fair and free to have fun is all I want everyone to enjoy in Elite, not become subject to discrimination by being excluded from things, like has happened before in this game. Deep scars, deep scars... take a long time to heal.
