Not convinced on the usefulness of Pioneer, either, having installed it.
It doesn't look like the shops get any premium gear the way station shops do (not that I was expecting them to, to be honest).
It seems unlikely that anyone is going to want to buy suits or weapons at a carrier shop. Unless perhaps they've been out of the bubble since before the release of Odyssey, come across a carrier out in the black and decide to pop in for an Artemis.
That leaves the usefulness of Pioneer as really being upgrading (which again could be done at any station) or buying consumables. And most consumables can be just found lying around, to the extent that it's pretty easy to hit the 100 limit without buying any (and then you can't get rid of them and they causes problems boarding your ship, but that's another story).
That just leaves E-Breaches. Useful, yes. But 450 million credits plus another
1.5 million
(thanks @Northpin) per week is a
hefty amount to pay for how much actual use the carrier Pioneer seems to be.
It's much the same as I thought about the carrier shipyard from introduction, really. The facility to store ships and switch them for the carrier owner is included by default. The cost to add it for other players too is, to put it mildly exorbitant - and as for the ability to buy new ships, under what circumstances would anyone even buy one from a carrier? I just don't get it.