I'm still trying to work out what this is about.
Could you give a little more insight into how you arrived at this conclusion?
Not a good move Frontier - Fleet Carrier upkeep
- Thread starter killerofstars
- Start date
What part has you confused?
Looks like FDev is determined to produce features I’m not going to use. It’s a good thing they’re not expecting me to buy anything anytime soon because it’s going to be a hard sell.
So, I think you sort of have a point. I think more info is good, and I'm glad they chose to release info on Carriers. The reactions to upkeep are premature, but also justified IMO. So in a way I'm saying I'm glad they released info, but also I wish they had released more...? Seems entitled of me. But all will be well in a week after the livestream. As in everyone will be justified in their criticism or praise.
I agree we should wait till the numbers come out, from the article and tweet it sounds like upkeep might be relativity cheap and it might take months of inactivity before it's "decommissioned ".
Also hoping this special fuel whatever is synthesizable out in the black for the fleet carrier deep space mapping teams.
Also hoping this special fuel whatever is synthesizable out in the black for the fleet carrier deep space mapping teams.
Okay, I had this in a post elsewhere but a mod killed it last night arguing I already had a carrier thread going.
I did some math. This is all theoretical, but we can make some educated guesses. Rather than saying: THIS IS WHAT IT IS, this is more an exploration of what the ranges might be.
I posted this over on reddit, but I thought it was worth posting over here too:
Lets play a quick game of how much is the fleet carrier upkeep going to be? I'm excited to find out how many of my credits I burn away every week! Aren't you?
Its been reported that the upkeep will be weekly. But Fdevs comments that “We know players want to go on vacation” suggests a fairly rapid timescale for the “decay” and decommissioning of fleet carriers, if they're even having to CONSIDER player "vacations." I mean...this is sounding more joblike all the time. I wonder how many sick days the pilot's federation gives?
How much before a fleet carrier decays? Well, we have zero idea, but lets put on our game designer hats and take a wild stab in the dark. You want it to be enough that it’s a significant enough debt that it doesn't seem trivial (My fleet carrier got lost over only ONE MILLION CREDITS?! WHAT THE HELL?!) and thus feels appropriate to players, but at the same time, you don’t want it to be the entire value at which point players have more incentive to let the carrier decay and buy a new one than pay off the debts on the existing one.
If it were ship rebuy rates, it would be 250,000,000 or two hundred and fifty million credits at 5% of 5 billion. That’s not a bad number so we’ll use that in one of our projections. Actual numbers haven't been announced yet, so it’s almost certainly something FDEV is still figuring out. Note: FDEV keeps saying it's going to be a HUGE debt to get your ship decommissioned (even said so in this very thread) but a huge debt is pretty subjective.
Remember how shocking the ship transfer prices were? Lets say one billion. That sounds like a huge debt when you're paying 5 bill for a carrier.
Now we need to know how fast fleet carriers decay to figure out your weekly payments.
It seems like FDEV have this in mind as a relatively fast mechanic since they have your rental payments on a WEEKLY timescale rather than a monthly one.
Well, lets project some scales. Three months, six months, and a year. Lets say months have an average of 30.5 days, and a year has 52 weeks even.
At three months, a 250,000.000 debt to decommission is going to cost you 19.2 Million credits per week of upkeep. At two weeks, (lets say you don't play a week, that’s 39.4 million credits of debt you have to wipe away.
At six months, weekly, you’re going to be paying 9.6 million in upkeep.
If the 250,000,000 cost is PER YEAR which is the most hopeful but unlikely timescale, you’re going to pay around 4.8 million per week.
Doesn’t sound so bad right? But remember three things: Firstly, this is THE MOST OPTIMISTIC SCENARIO. It feels hard to imagine a carrier would vanish for less than 250 million credits of debt at a FIVE BILLION buy in cost.
The second is that this is not optional. This is not a debt you can avoid by not blowing your credit card. This is the continual rental cost you will need to pay to lease your fleet carrier every year until you decide not to carry it. A continual garnishment to your personal income in Elite.
Thirdly, I don’t think this time scale is realistic, given that fdev are putting payments on a WEEKLY schedule. Also remember, something else about these time scales and how much you have to pay: 250,000,000 to destruction debt over three months is a billion credits you lose per year. (So you'll see some similar looking numbers on our second round of projections.)
Okay, lets go big. 1,000,000,000 credits to decommission. One billion space bucks. At a three month to decommission time scale, the scale I find most likely, your grand total is 76.9 million credits PER WEEK. Every week, that’s 76 million credits. Miss a week? Well now you gotta make 153.8 million credits.
At six months 38.4 million a week. Again, a lot, but as it comes down it almost starts to feel reasonable, until you remember this is basically like buying a new Anaconda from Li Yon Rue every three weeks.
At a full year before decommission at a billion credit debt black hole is going to be 20 million a week. Again that feels...do-able perhaps? Until you don’t play for a month and come back to discover you’ve got an 80 million credit tab waiting for you, and another one to pay next month as well.
I guess for me the question is really becoming, how many hours of my real life am I willing to spend doing grindy, repetitive work just to keep RENTING a carrier that will be taken from me if I don't make my payments on time?
I did some math. This is all theoretical, but we can make some educated guesses. Rather than saying: THIS IS WHAT IT IS, this is more an exploration of what the ranges might be.
I posted this over on reddit, but I thought it was worth posting over here too:
Lets play a quick game of how much is the fleet carrier upkeep going to be? I'm excited to find out how many of my credits I burn away every week! Aren't you?
Its been reported that the upkeep will be weekly. But Fdevs comments that “We know players want to go on vacation” suggests a fairly rapid timescale for the “decay” and decommissioning of fleet carriers, if they're even having to CONSIDER player "vacations." I mean...this is sounding more joblike all the time. I wonder how many sick days the pilot's federation gives?
How much before a fleet carrier decays? Well, we have zero idea, but lets put on our game designer hats and take a wild stab in the dark. You want it to be enough that it’s a significant enough debt that it doesn't seem trivial (My fleet carrier got lost over only ONE MILLION CREDITS?! WHAT THE HELL?!) and thus feels appropriate to players, but at the same time, you don’t want it to be the entire value at which point players have more incentive to let the carrier decay and buy a new one than pay off the debts on the existing one.
If it were ship rebuy rates, it would be 250,000,000 or two hundred and fifty million credits at 5% of 5 billion. That’s not a bad number so we’ll use that in one of our projections. Actual numbers haven't been announced yet, so it’s almost certainly something FDEV is still figuring out. Note: FDEV keeps saying it's going to be a HUGE debt to get your ship decommissioned (even said so in this very thread) but a huge debt is pretty subjective.
Remember how shocking the ship transfer prices were? Lets say one billion. That sounds like a huge debt when you're paying 5 bill for a carrier.
Now we need to know how fast fleet carriers decay to figure out your weekly payments.
It seems like FDEV have this in mind as a relatively fast mechanic since they have your rental payments on a WEEKLY timescale rather than a monthly one.
Well, lets project some scales. Three months, six months, and a year. Lets say months have an average of 30.5 days, and a year has 52 weeks even.
At three months, a 250,000.000 debt to decommission is going to cost you 19.2 Million credits per week of upkeep. At two weeks, (lets say you don't play a week, that’s 39.4 million credits of debt you have to wipe away.
At six months, weekly, you’re going to be paying 9.6 million in upkeep.
If the 250,000,000 cost is PER YEAR which is the most hopeful but unlikely timescale, you’re going to pay around 4.8 million per week.
Doesn’t sound so bad right? But remember three things: Firstly, this is THE MOST OPTIMISTIC SCENARIO. It feels hard to imagine a carrier would vanish for less than 250 million credits of debt at a FIVE BILLION buy in cost.
The second is that this is not optional. This is not a debt you can avoid by not blowing your credit card. This is the continual rental cost you will need to pay to lease your fleet carrier every year until you decide not to carry it. A continual garnishment to your personal income in Elite.
Thirdly, I don’t think this time scale is realistic, given that fdev are putting payments on a WEEKLY schedule. Also remember, something else about these time scales and how much you have to pay: 250,000,000 to destruction debt over three months is a billion credits you lose per year. (So you'll see some similar looking numbers on our second round of projections.)
Okay, lets go big. 1,000,000,000 credits to decommission. One billion space bucks. At a three month to decommission time scale, the scale I find most likely, your grand total is 76.9 million credits PER WEEK. Every week, that’s 76 million credits. Miss a week? Well now you gotta make 153.8 million credits.
At six months 38.4 million a week. Again, a lot, but as it comes down it almost starts to feel reasonable, until you remember this is basically like buying a new Anaconda from Li Yon Rue every three weeks.
At a full year before decommission at a billion credit debt black hole is going to be 20 million a week. Again that feels...do-able perhaps? Until you don’t play for a month and come back to discover you’ve got an 80 million credit tab waiting for you, and another one to pay next month as well.
I guess for me the question is really becoming, how many hours of my real life am I willing to spend doing grindy, repetitive work just to keep RENTING a carrier that will be taken from me if I don't make my payments on time?
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Doom and gloom is an artform. if it's a problem it's generally doing good or it's more likely not enough. You can never have enough doom and gloom!
This is another common thread. WE DON'T NEED MORE INFORMATION TO KNOW THIS IS A PROBLEM. A fair amount has already been said, BY FDEV on this issue.Why is this so hard to understand? The idea of offline upkeep and debt accrual IS THE PROBLEM. I can only imagine that people like you will be saying this exact same thing after thursday's livestream saying "Well wait, lets see how it plays in game!" even AFTER the rest of the information has been announced.
I have to wonder if there are people internally at FDEV who knew this would be a problem and wanted to go another route only to be silenced by such protestations "Well lets see how players react?"
Well...this is the players reacting.
Well...this is the players reacting.
Okay, so I wrote a long post about this, but in brief: FDEV said, IN THIS VERY THREAD, that your ship would be decommissioned after accrual of a "HUGE" (Huge was in caps, FDEV emphasis not mine) debt. The fact ALONE that you can accrue a huge debt simply by not playing is offensive and offputting, but again, what do you think that debt is going to be? What constitutes a huge debt? It's true, none of us know, probably even FDEV who are still adjusting numbers, but I can already tell you it's something I have no interest in paying.
Its one thing to incur some kind of cost while actively playing the game. Its another to incur it during a break. And MOST games have realized this is a terrible idea precisely because it harms the game long term. It creates an incentive NOT to return to the game. "Well I could log back into elite, but (swear) my carriers gone now and I'll have a huge bill to pay and I've lost a "HUGE" amount of credits. Think I'll play something else instead."
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Apart from rage-factor, you appear to be a minority. Most people seem to be taking the 'Not enough info' line before making up their minds.
Stop and look at your posts from a Dev's POV - dial back the rage and rhetoric if you actually want to deliver a message. It's obviously fake and clearly designed to generate salt. Why would the dev's give you one iota of attention in that circumstance? Constructive criticism is the trick, not fake rage, tantrums or dummy spits. One is a mature response, the other isn't. Seems choices here are have not been some peoples best work.
I think it's great that I'm not forced into buying one. This update was always going to be a hit with some and loss for others. The only way to make them for everyone would be that they were so bland that they didn't provide any new gameplay at all. That to me would be an utter failure.
Now whether this management gameplay is any good, we will have to wait and see, but Fdev have a good track record of management games and I trust them more in this department then anything else. It is still probably not my cup of tea even if it is very good, but I'm happy that others will get joy from it.
Unless it can also create money when you are not logged in and it can pay for itself, I can't see he issue there and I see no reason why it can't if it's persistent.
I'm sorry, but you do need to know more to know if it's a problem. For all you know, if a FC is set up well it may pay for itself. We just don't have enough details to know if it's a problem.
Your giant post above was laughable as you are taking a piece of writing and making massive assumptions about it to come to a conclusion and getting all angry about it.
Again we have no idea how this works. How is it offensive or off putting when you have no idea how it actually works.
Again, you are assuming an awful lot here. We do not know hot it works, so let's wait 5 days, or is that too difficult for you to cope with.
This game is a live game when then galaxy continues to move whether we are online or not. Just remember that is what we bought into when we got the game.
If the weekly fee is so insignificant that it has little impact, why have it?
if it is so significant it has impact then why punish players for not playing your game? good way to get players to come back that is.
There are many jobs that require people to be away for weeks or months at a time, not to mention that life happens frequently (jsut look at the news right now).
Punishing your players for not playing your game (which is what any kind of rent/maintenance/weekly fee feels like) when there has been no similar charge in game for the last 5 years is poor design.
In any game, if I lose items because I havent been able to play, I would not go back to it - simple as that. And the possibility of that happening is enough for me to stop playing.
You're reading a lot of emotion into cold text. Every one of my posts has made what (I believe) to be logical and rational arguments against this current course, including points why from a Dev's perspective this is going to have an undesirable result.