Frontiers expertise over the years has been with Management/simulation games eg Planet Zoo, Planet Coaster, Jurassic World evolution. It makes sense that they will borrow and adapt mechanics from those games to provide gameplay around fleet carriers.
Those games also incorporate systems of upkeep. You have to pay for staff and keep them happy. Power needs supplying to buildings. Animals need feeding.
In return if you build good parks you get more visitors and make more money. Build a bad park and you will go bust, or the dinosaurs will escape and eat the guests.
I see Fleet Carriers operating on similar lines. It will be possible to lose your carrier by not covering your costs. However if you are sensible and plan, then i think the carriers will pay for themselves and make money on top.
It will be interesting to see if you can generate income when away from the game. Makes absolute sense that if you can lose your ship by not playing for months and expenses not being paid, that you can also be able to earn money while away from keyboard.
I guess that would then create a whole new argument about away from keyboard multi billionaires.
Exactly. I'm the first to call out Frontier on all the many crap decisions they've taken over the years, but this (and the "personal marketplace" idea) might be the best idea they've had in a long time. To require upkeep does not mean that every day you're forced to blow some cores or else next week your FC will be scrapped. We have no idea how expensive/frequent this upkeep will be.
Rather it (should) mean that you have to plan your own economic system to be self-sufficient, to be an actual actor on the stage of the galactic economy rather than the "buy here sell there" bot you are now.
If done properly, it should be an incentive to planned, long-term gameplay (resource-management gameplay, but it's still gameplay) rather than a source of extra grind. It's something that the game sorely misses. The game should have more, not less ways for us to spend our credits (think about the complete irrelevance of the refuelling/rearming costs. Those are dead, completely superflous gameplay mechanics) and therefore for us to organize complex strategies in order to make our gamestyle economically sustainable.
You wanted a "space simulation". Me too. Hoarding mining credits that end up only useful for "extra lives/rebuys" is the definition of "arcadey".