General Why I think Fleet carrier upkeep should be removed.

[Riverside]

There will always be people frustrated with top tier items in video games that they can't easily have. Some people just want things to be easier.

I disagree with making redesign changes for the bottom percent of players that want games to be made easier. Have I been frustrated with games that I can't get or maintain top tier stuff? Yes! That's why people play challenging games. In the case of fleet carriers the upkeep cost is part of the cost/challenge/hurdle of having one. Just like any other top tier accomplishment in any other game. "Oh but you need to keep revisiting the accomplishment to maintain the reward" some might claim. So what? That is part of the baked-in challenge/requirement that the bottom percent of players might not be able to handle.

I think you have the wrong end of the stick here Greasetrap. My proposal would be to add an additional parking fee, independent of whether the maintenance fee is changed, in every respect carrier ownership would the the same as or more expensive than it currently is so I am not proposing something to make this top tier asset more easily obtained.

Schadenfreude is a legitimate motivation for game design - there are plenty of examples in this thread of a desire for others to 'suffer'. My parking fee proposal retains that, on the assumption that that's one of the design requirements of the current maintenance fee. Makes no difference to me whether either fee is added/retained or not/removed.

 

[Greasetrap42]

I think you have the wrong end of the stick here Greasetrap. My proposal would be ...

The idea of parking fees is very good, I like it, it has many merits.

I was responding specifically about costs of ownership and some players desire to "laud over others". The main theme of the OP is regarding costs which the OP wants removed. I believe top tier items should have a cost/challenge associated with them. Its got nothing to do with "lauding over other players". Its about gameplay and top tier items. Not everybody can have top tier items. That's how games are. Its got nothing to do with rejoicing over other people's misery.

I can't fathom why the OP is giving your idea a . Parking fees would add to the concept of required regular payments*.


*Edit: you park in a populated system, you pay regular fees. You stop making payments, boink...

 

[Riverside]

The idea of parking fees is very good, I like it, it has many merits.

I was responding specifically about costs of ownership and some players desire to "laud over others". The main theme of the OP is regarding costs which the OP wants removed. I believe top tier items should have a cost/challenge associated with them. Its got nothing to do with "lauding over other players". Its about gameplay and top tier items. Not everybody can have top tier items. That's how games are. Its got nothing to do with rejoicing over other people's misery.

I can't fathom why the OP is giving your idea a . Parking fees would add to the concept of required regular payments*.


*Edit: you park in a populated system, you pay regular fees. You stop making payments, boink...

The 'lauding it over others' part is not referring to the OP Greasetrap, but addresses some arguments made about the OP's comments. My proposal is independent of (but compatible with) the maintenance fee, as are Misty's comments on using the USS mechanism aimed at addressing the issue with Carriers 'clogging up' the system map & nav panel.

 

[Greasetrap42]

The 'lauding it over others' part is not referring to the OP Greasetrap, but addresses some arguments made about the OP's comments.

I have made absolutely no comments about rejoicing in other player's misery, so I don't see the relevance to any of my posts that you have quoted.

All of my comments are regarding the ability of a player to achieve and/or maintain top tier items in a video game. Some players can do it, others can't or don't want to. Pointing out that an idea is focused on making a game easier for the lower percent players is simply stating a fact, not making fun of people.

 

[Greasetrap42]

In 8 weeks of normal game play (in addition to working 12hr shifts in a factory 6 days/week and family) using my main account which has never before had more than 1 Billion Cr I achieved:

• Purchased a carrier.
• +1.5 years upkeep costs covered. (an extra billion)
• +6000t of tritium fuel

The first several billion I used a Python in Colonia. Last several billion I used a Cutter in the bubble. I also did some non-credit gaining activities. In no way am I a super-gamer. I did some space trucking and got myself a carrier. Does top tier items really need to be made easier?

 

[DemiserofD]

The idea of parking fees is very good, I like it, it has many merits.

I was responding specifically about costs of ownership and some players desire to "laud over others". The main theme of the OP is regarding costs which the OP wants removed. I believe top tier items should have a cost/challenge associated with them. Its got nothing to do with "lauding over other players". Its about gameplay and top tier items. Not everybody can have top tier items. That's how games are. Its got nothing to do with rejoicing over other people's misery.

I can't fathom why the OP is giving your idea a . Parking fees would add to the concept of required regular payments*.


*Edit: you park in a populated system, you pay regular fees. You stop making payments, boink...

I like it because I believe it fixes the problem from a different angle. Like I've been saying since the very first post, I believe that the problem is not the fees themselves, since I believe they are so small they are irrelevant, but rather the fact that they serve no purpose other than being a nuisance.

Removing the fees entirely would fix the problem in the easiest way, by just removing the annoyance directly, but they could also be fixed by giving them a purpose, since an annoyance with a purpose can be beneficial.

Let me put this another way; why shouldn't there be storage fees on all of your ships and modules? If it makes sense for Fleet carriers, why does it not make sense for your other assets?

 

[Dragsham]

I'll say it.. if knowone else will.
Fees are because we lease the carrier we Never Own it. So we cmdrs who lease one have to pay the piper each week.
Personally I think it's OK as is. I pay 35 mill a week l can earn that in any number of ways in an hour easily.
But I'm not new. I have capable ships designed for specific things. Took me ages and alot of mats farming.

Making it easier to own a carrier isn't cricket!
Make it harder!
Parking fees yup deciat should be a 100 mill a week. You'd soon see the ganker carriers that live there flee.
Fact is we don't have alot to do with credits. So this is a perfectly good reason why we have fees.
More I say..

 

[LumpTheNoLeggedDog]

Maintenance fee is about right but what if we will have to pay 100Mil fee for parking FC in populated system. Local system authorities will charge 100 mil parking fee. This may and most likely would clear populated systems from idling FCs.

edit: 100mil per week.

 

[CMDR Jane Canary]

Fleet carrier upkeep is trivial. As anyone who owns a fleet carrier will tell you, just by playing the game, you will rapidly get enough money to support your carrier for years, if not decades. I myself have 12+ years, and that's without even trying. It's basically background noise.

But the more I thought about that, the more I realized it was an apt analogy. Fleet Carrier upkeep doesn't have any real detrimental gameplay effect; its only real effect is being annoying.

So imagine if, instead of upkeep, whenever you got near your Fleet carrier, it would play a high-pitched squeal. Not loud enough to be overtly inconvenient, just enough to be faintly annoying.

That's what Fleet carrier upkeep is. Faintly annoying.

Now, you could make justifications about how it's the life support system, or the FSD, or any number of other things, but when you get right down to it, it's an annoying feature with no benefit, existing for no reason.

So just get rid of it. There's no advantage in intentionally annoying your player base.

If Fleet carriers must have a persistent cost, I would much prefer to be based on something that actually matters, like how many Fleet carriers there are in the system, to force High Traffic Systems to clear out regularly. At least then, players can see the benefit of it existing.

If there was no upkeep, wouldn't the systems fill up with unused carriers from commanders who have long since left the game?

 

[Riverside]

If there was no upkeep, wouldn't the systems fill up with unused carriers from commanders who have long since left the game?

Yes, arguably that's already happening because as the OP states, the current maintenance fee is kinda trivial. Having some sort of decay mechanism is good for clearing out idle carriers, but idle carriers are not really a problem if they are parked in a quiet system; idle carriers all piled into popular systems is (if they aren't providing a useful service to the community).

 

[LifesAJourney]

A daily parking fee proportional to system population sounds good to me. From zero Cr in uninhabited systems to several tens of millions of Cr in the most populated systems. I like it!

P.S. But free of charge for FCs owned by Cmdrs belonging to factions present in the system.

 

[Riverside]

P.S. But free of charge for FCs owned by Cmdrs belonging to factions present in the system.

That's a good point & not really something that needs to be discouraged, but would also be easily exploitable by creating or joining a squadron pledged to a local faction.

 

[Darkfyre99]

Let me put this another way; why shouldn't there be storage fees on all of your ships and modules? If it makes sense for Fleet carriers, why does it not make sense for your other assets?

Personally, I would've preferred to have storage costs for any ship but your active one, as well as modules. And I really wish FD hadn't removed the operational costs of you active ship. What I wanted most from this game was to be a struggling Commander who had to make interesting choices to get ahead in a harsh world. Instead, thanks to eight years of Frontier catering to the Veruca Salts of the community, I get to play a wealthy dilettante who can rake in several million credits just from traveling from point A to point B, and holding down a button.

But the absurd levels of income inflation isn't what this suggestion is about. It's about removing entirely a mechanism, trivial though it may be, designed to eventually remove these obnoxious monuments to Ozymandias: player owned persistent structures that occupy shared game space. Their presence, especially in popular systems, objectively makes everyone else's experience worse. If your desire to flaunt Frontier's ever increasing Monty Haul rewards makes everyone else's experience in the game worse, then I personally think you should have to pay a price for doing so.

Unlike Fleet Carriers, another player's stored ships and modules don't have an impact on anyone else's gameplay. They're tucked away in a pocket dimension, where they can't interfere with others in any way. It would be different if each station had a limited number of docking bays, and once filled up another ship can't dock there. But that most certainly is the case with Fleet Carriers, along with how they foul up the system map, and how they interfere with visual identification in Supercruise.

 

[Greasetrap42]

Let me put this another way; why shouldn't there be storage fees on all of your ships and modules?

Ok, sure. Sounds fine.

But that's not what the OP is about. The OP claims upkeep costs are a just a trivial annoyance. 1-2 billion per year is not a trivial annoyance for many players such as myself. Sure spread across as weekly payments it doesn't look like much. Assuming a player is online making money every week. The extra 1-2 billion is a cost placed on the game item that a player can choose on how to fulfill. Simply removing upkeep cost accomplishes nothing except makes the carrier cheaper to afford. Period.

 

[Shir]

If carrier upkeep could be substantially lessened when the carrier was in a non inhabited system, that should possibly work as a strong incentive to make players park their carriers away from inhabited spaced, thus solving the problem that exists now, with popular systems full of carriers..

 

[DemiserofD]

If there was no upkeep, wouldn't the systems fill up with unused carriers from commanders who have long since left the game?

Yes, but unfortunately, that's already the case. Upkeep is trivial enough that only a minuscule portion of carriers ever get decommissioned, and since it still takes like 3 months for them to actually vanish, most of the time even that doesn't actually remove the carriers.

If their goal is keeping down carrier clutter, they need to find a better way of doing it, since upkeep clearly isn't meeting that goal.

But the absurd levels of income inflation isn't what this suggestion is about. It's about removing entirely a mechanism, trivial though it may be, designed to eventually remove these obnoxious monuments to Ozymandias: player owned persistent structures that occupy shared game space. Their presence, especially in popular systems, objectively makes everyone else's experience worse. If your desire to flaunt Frontier's ever increasing Monty Haul rewards makes everyone else's experience in the game worse, then I personally think you should have to pay a price for doing so.

Same as above; theoretically that's the goal(or at least, so we assume), but practically it has minimal impact. If the goal is improving player experience, it's failing, since it doesn't meaningfully reduce carrier clutter, while simultaneously annoying a significant portion of players.

 

[DemiserofD]

Ok, sure. Sounds fine.

But that's not what the OP is about. The OP claims upkeep costs are a just a trivial annoyance. 1-2 billion per year is not a trivial annoyance for many players such as myself. Sure spread across as weekly payments it doesn't look like much. Assuming a player is online making money every week. The extra 1-2 billion is a cost placed on the game item that a player can choose on how to fulfill. Simply removing upkeep cost accomplishes nothing except makes the carrier cheaper to afford. Period.

First off, 2 billion is a dramatic over-exaggeration. More practically, the vast majority of carriers run with around 10m/week upkeep(or less), or closer to 500m/year. And if that player is going to be offline for a prolonged period of time, they can suspend those services and cut that down yet again, to ~400m/year, which absolutely is trivial if you can afford a fleet carrier in the first place. Even assuming they've been making the exact same amount of money each year and playing since the game was released, they'd have needed to make 625m/year to purchase the FC in the first place. More practically, they made the 5b in a single year or less, and will now need to log on for less than 10 minutes a week to sustain that. That's 1/6th of a decent mission reward. Pragmatically speaking, you can finish that in 15 minutes, once every 6 weeks, for 2.5 minutes a week of gameplay time.

I can't think of any word that better describes 2.5 minutes a week than 'trivial'. Indeed, practically speaking, a fleet carrier is more likely to save you money than cost it; just jumping your FC instead of having a ship delivered can easily save you 10 million credits.

Unfortunately, rather than improving FC clutter, this actually makes the FC clutter vastly worse. Most carriers have had all their services suspended, meaning carriers that might actually be helpful without upkeep are instead utterly useless. So not only is upkeep not serving its intended purpose, it's actually doing the opposite.

 

[Rat Catcher]

I have made absolutely no comments about rejoicing in other player's misery,

Nobody has, (bar the poster, of course) it is just an interpretation of whatever is considered as rejoicing.

Edit: Grammar

 

[Riverside]

Nobody has, (bar the poster, of course) it is just an interpretation of whatever is interpreted as rejoicing.

Nah
If anything, Upkeep should be higher.

There should be a solid difference between skint plebs and the haves

 

[Rat Catcher]

And that is rejoicing?

Oh...

It certainly appeared as sarcasm when I read it.