Best Guess on How much for the Fleet Carrier will cost

Watcher

W
OutLord said:
I haven't been able to find any more details other than the "Purchase with a Large amount of credits", so..

How much and why?

I'm guessing 2 Billion because any more would be out of the reach of the average player.

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Gosh, I've been playing since it came out and I have maybe half that all in.. :D I'm curious where on the bell curve I am... What is 'average'.
My guess would be closer to 5B, they might want you to really work for it and it doesn't have to be for the average player anyway. More an end game sort of thing.

If we want to extrapolate from something like an Anaconda it should probably be much more than that. What is the mass/volume of this relative to a ship like that - much much more. I ran some pretty random guess numbers and came up with a number more like 150B and that could still be conservative :) I doubt they'd set it that high... Probably.
 

CmdMarty

C
Florenus said:
Guys, I just went for my first mining trip and cashed rewards (little late, but somehow I wasn't interested before). With Type-10 full of Void Opals I can earn about 650mil per mining trip. Let's even say 500millions. And after you learn few things it doesn't even take that long (not to mention it was surprisingly fun and relaxing).
If you play in a squadron and wing up with other members who also mine, you get tens of millions in trade dividends for just being in a station when they sell.
And this isn't some kind of hardcore, hard to find out about, gold rush.

Billions are not what they used to be.

I'm starting to think this is no coincidence.
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I'm not a miner and not interested in this fake mining economy!
 

Stealthie

Stealthie
Watcher said:
Gosh, I've been playing since it came out and I have maybe half that all in.. :D I'm curious where on the bell curve I am... What is 'average'.
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I guess this is where the whole "blaze your own trail" thing has pitfalls.

Somebody decides to roleplay as a space-gypsy, earning very few credits, but then, when something arrives that requires "a large pile of credits" the roleplaying all goes out the window and they want that thing regardless.

I thought most ED players agreed that actions should have consequences.
Weird how, when the consequences affect people, they're suddenly not so keen any more. 😕
 

Backelaer

Backelaer
Ian Skippy said:
After 4000 hours I am a triple elite cmdr that, if I sold all my ships, could probably get to about 2 billion. If that is your definition of 'the casual player' I think we use the term quite differently. :p Basically what you, and others, are suggesting is that the carrier should be almost exclusively for people who mine DOP or VO, or those who have been grinding something else for stupid number of hours.

Some of the topics remind me of a discussion in, IIRC, the US senate some time ago.

"Many people do not have medical insurance."
"Well, that is their choice. People should do with their money as they please."
"But it isnt a choice, they just dont have the money."
"Then they should get a job."
"They already have a full-time job."
"Then why dont they have the money?"
"Because many jobs dont pay enough to afford it."
"Then they should just get a better paying job!"
"..."
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Analogies with real life never work when talking about a game. Access to affordable medical care is kind of a life-and-death issue. Getting a FC isn't. Not even within the Elite universe.

(I gotta grant you though that as an anecdote it is both funny and horrifying)

And ok, I can get aboard with your previous idea about low base price and much more expensive modules / extensions. I just fear that that might entail way more work than Fdev is prepared to put into this particular part of the game.
 

The Lawful

The Lawful
After three and a half years of play (21 weeks last time I checked), I've finally arrived at ~6.5 bn overall assets, avoiding any exploits or quick rich schemes, and I did no Void Opals yet. I can't imagine me starting to grind for money now just to buy one of these, even though I'd like to own one ofc. So whatever they finally decide upon, about 2-3bn is my personal limit.

But in any case, let's simply hope they don't introduce some kind of ARX booster packs ;)

O7,
🙃
 

BDelacroix

BDelacroix
Mine is not an exact number but more an algorithm.
Query database for player with largest liquid assets.
Multiply that asset number by 5.
That's the price.

So no matter how much you make between now and then it won't be enough.
 

Ian Skippy

Ian Skippy
Backelaer said:
Analogies with real life never work when talking about a game. Access to affordable medical care is kind of a life-and-death issue. Getting a FC isn't. Not even within the Elite universe.

(I gotta grant you though that as an anecdote it is both funny and horrifying)

And ok, I can get aboard with your previous idea about low base price and much more expensive modules / extensions. I just fear that that might entail way more work than Fdev is prepared to put into this particular part of the game.
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Oh, didn't want to compare the two that way, rather highlight that some seem really out if touch with 'the average Joe'. :p
 

zimms

zimms
I'm very confident when I say if you have 1-2 billion credits in assets you're among the top 1%.

I guess somebody would respond with "Yeah, but that's just because most accounts are inactive."

Exactly. Maybe Frontier wants them to come back for a new update though.

I'd be very surprised if a stock carrier would be anywhere near double digit billions.
 

Red_Beard_98

R
I would like to think that Fleet Carriers would be made available to most Commanders who put a reasonable amount of time into the game. The cost should not be based around whatever the latest get-rich-quick scheme is since not every player will partake in such activities but it should still be a good chuck of change. A starting cost of 400-500 M (Roughly double the current most expensive ship) would be good, in my opinion. There could then be upgrades and new modules that you can spend countless billions on if you so desire.

If FDev do base the cost on some kind of average of what players currently have in the bank then the top and bottom x% (they can determine an actual number based on whatever criteria) should be eliminated from the calculation. Neither extreme represents the average player. If they want to skew it in favor of the rich then eliminate a larger percent from the bottom. Say remove the top 5% and the bottom 15% then average from there. I think that would be a decent way of determining an initial cost.

Edit: I'm also not any sort of math wizard so maybe there are reasons this would not work but it sounded okay in my head.
 
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Xintar

Xintar
14 Billion. That's the high bid ladies.
Do I hear 20?
I can't calculate how many ships I'll have to pirate.

Could a "personal" fleet carrier boost membership in squadrons so to always have a player(s) maintaining/upgrading the behemoth? (assuming it is persistent which we don't know yet, so...)

I'm thinking 2-5 B depending on module types, etc... Any more and I'll have to scrap my fleet.
 

Backelaer

Backelaer
zimms said:
I'm very confident when I say if you have 1-2 billion credits in assets you're among the top 1%.

I guess somebody would respond with "Yeah, but that's just because most accounts are inactive."

Exactly. Maybe Frontier wants them to come back for a new update though.

I'd be very surprised if a stock carrier would be anywhere near double digit billions.
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I would think the 2020 update is the one they expect to bring back old players with. And attract new ones of course.

Ian Skippy said:
Oh, didn't want to compare the two that way, rather highlight that some seem really out if touch with 'the average Joe'. :p
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Fair enough
 

CMDR Jayce MacLeod

CMDR Jayce MacLeod
I'm going to say a billion on the low end, 5 billion on the mid range end (which I personally think it will be) and 10 billion on the high end. No word if there will be modules to purchase to upgrade the carrier as we do ships. I am about 4500 hours into elite as of now and I currently own one of every ship in the game, fully A rated and engineered, and triple elite. Unlocked all guardian and tech broker stuff, and have 7.5 billion in liquid assets (which I will be mining to bring that total to at least 15 billion by December). So yeah, any new "toy" I can get my grubby little hands on at this point will keep my interest in this wonderful game afloat!

The only other thing I haven't done is found Raxxla, give me a week on that... lol
 

SpongeJim

SpongeJim
I still find it funny that most of the arguments for a nearly unobtainable cost (without dedicated, single-activity grind for 20+ hours just to hit base level) are devoid of rational thought.

Questions people seem to be asking themselves who want an enormous cost (5B+ CR):
  1. Does this sufficiently reward people who have grinded for max CR?
    1. Why it's irrational: for all but the very very tippy top 0.1% of players, that CR came from mining over the past several months and little else. How do I know? I myself grinded Robigo smuggling, 17 Draconis skimmer blasting and Quince self-destruct scanning. Hours and hours and hours. I don't have 10B CR. I'll put my time investment up against anybody's for CR grind. I mean, it was as recently as last year that 50M CR an hour was considered "gold rush" territory. No, people who decided to spend ALL their time doing mining simply for the CR aren't heroes and they don't "deserve" anything (nobody is and nobody does), no matter what their feelings tell them.
  2. Does this sufficiently punish people have not grinded for CR?
    1. Why it's irrational: how does anyone else's CR level affect you? The answer: it doesn't. CR's were completely devalued even before the mining rush so to suddenly expect something to arrive that suddenly re-values them isn't logical or sensible, it's just punitive. FDev isn't your best friend because you have high CR, they're your best friend because you bought the game. People with 1 CR also bought the game, so you're on equal footing.
  3. Is my pre-conceived notion that fleet carriers are a "vanity item" sufficiently satisfied?
    1. Why it's irrational: the only true vanity items that exist in the game world and are visible by other players are the rank-grind ships. Existing high-CR ships have been pretty easy to obtain for a long while (see the previous point about the devaluation of CR). In-game lore would indicate that the rank-grind ships are a reward for loyalty not vanity. What in-game lore has a ship builder building a fleet carrier for not just one stratum of society, but one occupation in that society? Loyalty to the (non-existent) "Miner's Guild"? Of course not. That ship builder wouldn't care where your riches came from, but existing game mechanics dictate there is really only one occupation that can get you to the "obscene range". So why build a support vessel for anything other than mining? It's the only job that matters, apparently.
  4. Will an overabundance of fleet carriers negatively affect the performance of my game?
    1. Why it's irrational: on the surface I'd say this is a valid question, but it's not one that anybody needs to worry about because FDev have several different ways to avoid this being an issue. Wishing for a pay wall to an in-game item because of an inferred performance crisis is, however, irrational.
Here are some logical, rational questions I'd suggest people to ask themselves instead:
  1. What level of cost makes sense to the game world? (Example: my core fleet has 9 fully G5 engineered ships and their value is only 1.5 B - mostly in the Cutter - so why should a transport carrier for those ships cost 5x more+? By way of comparison, to purchase EVERY ship in the game and fully A-rate them is only 5.5B CR, and to go fully balls-out on every component is around 11B CR. Suddenly a carrier for less than half that number of ships doesn't seem that valuable, does it?).
  2. What has dictated the high cost of ships up to now? What is the most expensive component? (Answer: module upgrades/technology in general).
  3. What would FDev want to achieve through the CR cost? Does making it mostly unobtainable help FDev reach its goals?
  4. How much does letting a lot of players purchase this item affect me? (Answer: it doesn't, at all - except you might actually get the content QA'ed/debugged).
  5. What mechanic does a fleet carrier add to the game, beyond a "movable picture frame for my ship collection"? (Answer: ostensibly this is a quality of life improvement to reduce the hard block around role-ship-availability. One might project this to mean FDev intends to put more content "out in the black", and that would be great, but on the simple premise of it being QOL, isn't everyone entitled to that?).
With all of this said, we don't know what FDev will do until they do it. Several things already in the game can be considered irrationally applied or conceived, but I'd at least say that FDev have taken steps to alleviate such things and have learned a lot about the player base's habits and preferences.
 
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