Frontier's Mistake

If a CMDR can sell exploration data to their own FC, then he or she can sell their exploration data to Cartographics (and get credit for the discovery) immediately when discovering something instead of being required to survive all the way back to the bubble, to a station to sell the data.

What's so terrible about that?
That cmdr payed 5billion plus ongoing upkeep to be able to do that.
 
Well, if fleet carriers are a mistake then everything frontier has ever done is just one giant mistake as well.

With every feature, when civility is maintained by being optional, you just go though the new stuff and check off stuff that does or doesn't work for you.

This time round, the only thing objectively interesting to people is the fleet carrier combined with 500ly jump range. Everything else is roleplay related group play, or will only be used by other players in desperate extreme circumstances and not at in the bubble. Its possible to rage that there's nothing for you, but its probably not the best to laugh at what is practically dumb without the full design brief (which we actually got around 2016/17, just saying).

ps. the fss is not optional for unexplored systems so that's a completely different issue.

And yeah i did facepalm myself that they spent 2 years building completely pointless things, but thats not something we can hold against them without the white knight squad winning when they find you.
 
Ok, thinking about op and my post, you hear it here first:

Fleet Carriers update will not only give us the Fleet Carrier, it will ALSO give us the Panther Clipper.
It's in line with the other updates, a shiny new toy for everyone.
Also it's fitting to the bulk carrier nature of the carrier.

So you may quote me later 😂
I am one of the players than can afford a carrier and are going to buy one.
Yet I so wish this to become true.
 
Well, if fleet carriers are a mistake then everything frontier has ever done is just one giant mistake as well.

I don't agree with that.
Everything that's been put in ED was revolving around you and flying your ship.
Some features worked out rather poorly and some mechanics are imho not all that but it always was about you and your ship.
FC's aren't, they're a management mini game nothing more nothing less imho.
You don't actualy fly your carrier, you manage a lot of menus.

If I would buy a sports game where you are the athlete and all of a sudden you get an add on in where you can build a factory to make balls for that sport and sell them to other players, that would be totaly out of place too.
I know, horrible example but you know what I mean?
 
If I would buy a sports game where you are the athlete and all of a sudden you get an add on in where you can build a factory to make balls for that sport and sell them to other players, that would be totaly out of place too.
I know, horrible example but you know what I mean?

I know what you mean, but personally thats never been a problem. In the context of a game, adding something completely different in the sandbox could be almost welcome.

The problem is stage 2, even with permission to enjoy, it still sucks. For a solo player, the shipyard and the commodites market being populated by yourself makes them useless. Theres no logic that they could have used as to why they were launched like that is complementary towards the creators. At best its a severe inexperience of other features already built into the game, at best they built it for multiplayer only but are.. you see what i mean.

Pretty much found a use for these exploring without cartographics, but that's from having tagging ocd. What people are saying doesn't sound unreasonable.
 
I know what you mean, but personally thats never been a problem. In the context of a game, adding something completely different in the sandbox could be almost welcome.

The problem is stage 2, even with permission to enjoy, it still sucks. For a solo player, the shipyard and the commodites market being populated by yourself makes them useless. Theres no logic that they could have used as to why they were launched like that is complementary towards the creators. At best its a severe inexperience of other features already built into the game, at best they built it for multiplayer only but are.. you see what i mean.

Pretty much found a use for these exploring without cartographics, but that's from having tagging ocd. What people are saying doesn't sound unreasonable.

The thing that bothers me most is that, imho, FCs don't realy fit in the nature of ED and they released it while other aspects of the game could realy use some extra attention, recourses wrongly spent so to say.
 
The thing that bothers me most is that, imho, FCs don't realy fit in the nature of ED and they released it while other aspects of the game could realy use some extra attention, recourses wrongly spent so to say.

I dont think that cause has much integrity after the fss. Its pan, zoom, click mobile phone interface built into an environment that in some dimension always provides depth and detail. They even doubled down on the concept by moving the most valuable rewards out of exploration into that one swipe and click action.

No integrity sorry.

Even laser mining eg has the substrate for huge detail and depth in how you go about it... Fss.. press click. You win with sparkles and are done.

Its nothing to complain about.. but i did chuckle though when someone said we're paying 5 billion credits just for a bunch of menus.. if you think about the gameplay.. yeah..
 
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I think you're touching on a valid point.

The FC was originally meant for squadrons. At least that's the impression I had in the early days. But after complains or because they didn't want single person squadrons, they now changed it to be single player owned.

And that caused a problem, becase the FC was probably also thought of being expensive from start, and if a squadron owned it, it wouldn't be an issue to buy, upkeep, refuel, etc. But now because it's a single-player item, the price, upkeep, and fuel is suddenly an issue for single players.

This is probably a reason to why I don't think they should lower the price or change the upkeep at all. It's nice to have something really up there, a bit far away to reach for and work towards. But they need to add features and functions that relates to squadrons still, like discounts for friends/squaddies, or limit access to black market to public, etc.

But FD will. My guess is they will probably double the jump range (but keep the same tank size), pop in UC, and lower upkeep.
 
Duck is right. FCs came from when the dev focus was on group play. That train of development has produced such awesome work as Powerplay, Squadrons, Player Made Factions - stuff that very little have touched and appealed to very little people. But they couldn't change course once it was announced. Hopefully that's behind us now and we can get stuff for everyone. A New Era even.

They were unpopular because they were not iterated on. Powerplay as an example has been essentially feature frozen since 1.3 bar Grom and consolidation. FD should have improved these as they rolled out updates to continuously sharpen and improve, rather than rely on a monolithic update at some unspecified point.

Unless FD make ED like old Elite games multiplayer is here to stay and can't be an ill thought out add on, mainly as PvE is disjointed (i.e. NPCs lack persistence), repetitive and dull to achieve high level play (bgs, PP).

The sobering aspect is New Era might repeat the same pattern, with more ill thought out / superfically great things and you wait years for more development. If you can land on a planet with an atmosphere- great! Now what.....its the same bases with the same jobs.

Don't forget also with no lore or story its groups that drive the games 'story' now. Lockign everyone in thin PvE prevents a great deal of interaction and emergent conditions.
 
Old Duck totally missed the point. Fleet Carriers probably started out with after years of playing the game players had billions of credits and wanted something to invest in. It also takes care of players wanting their own base using a Fleet Carrier to pull it off.Don't put down an FC until you fly an FC. Don't have the 10 billion credits to properly outfit it and keep up the weekly maintenance? Opps.

Regards
 
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Well its a cute scenario. The only time the thought ever occurs to you about cargo storage is for the engineer that requires modular terminals. Given missions have been buffed so that you get them all in one go these days, zero.

Forgetting to sell your limpets is not a reason for cargo storage. And you still wont be able to use your smaller ship without dealing with the cargo anyway.

I mean back in the 80's people needed cargo storage sure.
 

Deleted member 38366

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Personally seeing lots of uses for Players parking Carriers in the Bubble or in Colonia.

However, two critical things are missing for me (actually three) :
  • Exploration Carrier role next to useless (tons of downsides, barely any upsides)
  • cool experience of owning and flying a Carrier is entirely AWOL (IMHO an absolutely critical mistake)
  • Mining role for longer Deep Space campaigns lacks new Deep Space-only ores to make sense (no reason to go mining far outside the bubble)

So with no "wow, this is so cool!" factor at all, only a totally bland UI, no sense of ownership (impacted even more by the upkeep)... the Carrier concept falls short in several quite important aspects.

Still, we'll see quite alot of them in the bubble and quite a few people will be happy with their Utility.
A few things they've done right, so not everything is bad.
(me personally will have no use for one, though, currently can't imagine even a single useful scenario.... I'll probably still fool around with one and see if I find >any< use, since I got the Credits)
 
I agree. If it weren't for the last couple of years with no real content (even reduced content...) people would have an easier time accepting that "FCs just aren't for you".
 
But FD will. My guess is they will probably double the jump range (but keep the same tank size), pop in UC, and lower upkeep.
They probably will. In a way, I don't want them to change it too much. Price and upkeep are steep but still okay. Fuel, probably needs to be reasonable, but we don't know yet what it is, so as long as it's not too crazy in mining to get, it might be fine too. Spin down/up time, well, maybe a bit too long with 2 hours, but I can live with it. But seriously though, don't touch the jump range. The jump range is fine. More than fine.
 
They were unpopular because they were not iterated on. Powerplay as an example has been essentially feature frozen since 1.3 bar Grom and consolidation. FD should have improved these as they rolled out updates to continuously sharpen and improve, rather than rely on a monolithic update at some unspecified point.
+5 b.

If they had done some tweaks, additions, and improvements on each and every feature at least once a year, I think we all would have been tickled Elmos. For instance, added some new SRV, maybe a more tanky, large one with more cargo space. Added so you can have multiple NPC crew members for different tasks. And more.

Don't forget also with no lore or story its groups that drive the games 'story' now. Lockign everyone in thin PvE prevents a great deal of interaction and emergent conditions.
I still believe they need to add user created missions. The carrier would be perfect for this.
 
Thing is, I can cash my expo data at any asteroid base found in most nebula, thus I can already head out and never return. /OT
You may be able to restock on fuel as well at these bases. If you use 20000 units of the FC storage for fuel can do 21000 Ly before a refuel. Go to an asteroid base hopefully refuel, sell your data, pay for the upkeep and go on your way. And that's all without mining for fuel.
 
More options like smaller FC's for personal use and big squad FC's for multi player use. We got neither in 2+ years of planning and delays! These seem over-thought which entailed most players were over looked.
 
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