An unfortunate observation about Fleet Carriers

Aerendyl

Aerendyl
I absolutely love having a fleet carrier - the freedom of long jumps, the convenience of going where I like with all my ships and facilities... chef's kiss!
But I have noticed that when I go through periods when I don't have much time to play, I tend to have to spend all of what little time I have grinding for upkeep. This is an unfortunate consequence of having a fleet carrier. I wish there was a way to make it a bit more self-sustaining.

I'll always love Elite and will play it for as long as the servers stay on - but there are other games too!
 

Helmut Grokenberger

Helmut Grokenberger
Can I ask: How much does your carrier cost, how much cash do you have, and how much is in your carrier's bank? Some people complain very loudly about the upkeep, but is it really such a grind? Or is it more about the principle?

My carrier has RRR, UC, Vista, Pioneer, and a bar, and it costs 19.5 million per week plus jump costs. For me, that's trivially easy to earn - that's basically three dead Cyclopses. Or an hour of bounty hunting with missions. I'm not an experienced hauler, but you can probably do that in an hour with a suitable trade loop, too. If I fill my mining AspX (that's about an hour of relaxed core mining), that makes me about three weeks of upkeep. I'm filthy rich without even trying hard. I even skipped the last gold rush CG.

What I'm saying is: Earning credits is trivially easy; I can see it being an issue if you're out in the black and have no cash coming in unless you return to civilisation (or have a carrier with UC and vista nearby), but otherwise...

What is it that you like to do when you play that you don't automatically make enough cash? These days I feel like it's hard to not earn credits the moment you leave the hangar...

Honest question, not trying to put you down or something.
 
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Helmut Grokenberger

Helmut Grokenberger
HappyMoonMonkey said:
I clearly didn't look up where the party was at. Picked a random site and was the only one there. Picked off a few by myself though.
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It was a sort of pre-planned mini-event on Brother Sabathius' stream. We were in Pegasi Sector IH-U b3-4, and at peak we were like ten players or so. But all you really need is a single team of players who sort of konw what they are doing, I think.
 

zimms

zimms
Helmut Grokenberger said:
Can I ask: How much does your carrier cost, how much cash do you have, and how much is in your carrier's bank? Some people complain very loudly about the upkeep, but is it really such a grind? Or is it more about the principle?

My carrier has RRR, UC, Vista, Pioneer, and a bar, and it costs 19.5 million per week plus jump costs. For me, that's trivially easy to earn - that's basically three dead Cyclopses. Or an hour of bounty hunting with missions. I'm not an experienced hauler, but you can probably do that in an hour with a suitable trade loop, too. If I fill my mining AspX (that's about an hour of relaxed core mining), that makes me about three weeks of upkeep. I'm filthy rich without even trying hard. I even skipped the last gold rush CG.

What I'm saying is: Earning credits is trivially easy; I can see it being an issue if you're out in the black and have no cash coming in unless you return to civilisation (or have a carrier with UC and vista nearby), but otherwise...

What is it that you like to do when you play that you don't automatically make enough cash? These days I feel like it's hard to not earn credits the moment you leave the hangar...

Honest question, not trying to put you down or something.
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I'm sure it's about the principle to a large degree.

But in you example you say it takes about one hour to make enough credits for the upkeep. That's not a problem for people who play Elite five hours a day anyway. But for others 1h a week can be a sizeable junk of their weekly playtime.

Another question: What's the benefit of upkeep? Some people defend it very loudly.
 

Rock Hunter

Rock Hunter
I don’t have all services on mine and if I’m not playing for a couple of weeks (work/rl etc) I’ll suspend services on my last play session which means my weekly outgoing is around 9.5 million per week. That equates to two very average hauling missions with an Allied faction.

I’ve got two other accounts that don’t have a FC that I try to play in a low key way, meaning attempting not to become a multi billionaire, so it can be a month before I log into my main account. I’ll freely admit that logging back in and seeing how much has left my account can feel like I’ve lost a wedge and it’ll take a while to top up but it’s just so easy to make credits it’s absurd. I don’t bother chasing gold rushes, even the crazy ones, as it’s just not needed but if you are concerned then think about jumping on the next one that takes your fancy and you’ll be fine for years.

If you’re not on Inara, I’m sure there are other sites that will show this too, join up and you can see how long you can run your Carrier with the funds you have. I can run mine at current costs for twenty years without earning another single credit. Yet those credits just keep rolling in despite me only doing what I enjoy….and as mentioned above (no “Doom” intended) the servers won’t be running in twenty years, maybe I won’t be running in twenty years👻:)
 

Astaran

Astaran
Aerendyl said:
I absolutely love having a fleet carrier - the freedom of long jumps, the convenience of going where I like with all my ships and facilities... chef's kiss!
But I have noticed that when I go through periods when I don't have much time to play, I tend to have to spend all of what little time I have grinding for upkeep. This is an unfortunate consequence of having a fleet carrier. I wish there was a way to make it a bit more self-sustaining.

I'll always love Elite and will play it for as long as the servers stay on - but there are other games too!
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Just fill it up with a few billion credits from xenobiology and you can forget about the upkeep for the remaining lifetime of Elite (even with all services active 🤷‍♂️)
 

metatheurgist

metatheurgist
zimms said:
I'm sure it's about the principle to a large degree.

But in you example you say it takes about one hour to make enough credits for the upkeep. That's not a problem for people who play Elite five hours a day anyway. But for others 1h a week can be a sizeable junk of their weekly playtime.

Another question: What's the benefit of upkeep? Some people defend it very loudly.
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You can do it in 3 hi ground CZs. 10-20 mins each depending. Do it over 3 nights if you need. Only issue there is if you take too long the war might move. The benefit of upkeep is it reduces the amount of clutter in the sysmap; look at how effective even this insignificant amount is. 😛
 

Rock Hunter

Rock Hunter
zimms said:
I'm sure it's about the principle to a large degree.

But in you example you say it takes about one hour to make enough credits for the upkeep. That's not a problem for people who play Elite five hours a day anyway. But for others 1h a week can be a sizeable junk of their weekly playtime.

Another question: What's the benefit of upkeep? Some people defend it very loudly.
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Apologies for jumping in when you quoted someone else.

A large part of the design behind the FC was as an ‘end game’ asset. Something for those Cmdrs who‘ve played since 2015, play every day for hours at a time or have amassed billions of credits over the years.

There will always be those who can’t amass enough credits to buy or maintain it, were it not for the gold rushes FDev now appear compelled to shove our way every so often.
 

Helmut Grokenberger

Helmut Grokenberger
zimms said:
But in you example you say it takes about one hour to make enough credits for the upkeep. That's not a problem for people who play Elite five hours a day anyway. But for others 1h a week can be a sizeable junk of their weekly playtime.
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Fair point. As far as my profile goes: I usually have time to play for about four hours on three days of the week. So that probably counts as "a lot" for many. But I'd argue that, if I only had one hour, I'd still be doing what I like. Go an hour core mining - three weeks. Go to an AX CZ for an hour - three to four weeks easily. It's not a grind for upkeep for me, I do stuff I like anyway.

zimms said:
Another question: What's the benefit of upkeep? Some people defend it very loudly.
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I am guessing credit sink, and maybe raising the barrier a bit so not every player has one after two minutes of playing? But I guess that ship has sailed.
 

zimms

zimms
metatheurgist said:
You can do it in 3 hi ground CZs. 10-20 mins each depending. Do it over 3 nights if you need. Only issue there is if you take too long the war might move. The benefit of upkeep is it reduces the amount of clutter in the sysmap; look at how effective even this insignificant amount is. 😛
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I know this was tongue in cheek, but upkeep clearly isn't doing it job, if that job was to reduce amount of FC cluttering.

As a lot of people keep saying, just put a couple of billion credits into your carrier and you won't have to think of upkeep for years to come. So with the (only?) upside gone, it seems there's only downsides left for upkeep.
 

Rainbro

Rainbro
zimms said:
I know this was tongue in cheek, but upkeep clearly isn't doing it job, if that job was to reduce amount of FC cluttering.

As a lot of people keep saying, just put a couple of billion credits into your carrier and you won't have to think of upkeep for years to come. So with the (only?) upside gone, it seems there's only downsides left for upkeep.
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My thoughts exactly. It kind of reminds me of a lot of aspects of the current legal system, where the main point in its favour is that it's easy to bypass...only existing as annoyances to those who don't know the specific tricks to invalidate it.
 

zimms

zimms
metatheurgist said:
Yeah, but it's enough to keep people like the OP's carrier out of an extra system. ;)

And FCs are clearly not for casuals. If you can't do an hour a week, it's not for you.
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Just one more reply, then I'm done.

I'm not sure if it really reduces amount of carriers, even for more casual players. I guess it just changes how many services they install/keep running. For example, I really don't need to be able to sell Sidewinders to other CMDRs. It's not worth an extra 6.5 million credits in upkeep (more than the standard upkeep for the carrier itself). But every time I run through my carrier's corridor, it's a bit sad to see the closed shops.

Have Frontier ever said which content is for whom?
 
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