Carrier upkeep. Why?!

[Troopi]

a FC is a franchise store. You pay for the privilege of using their hardware to operate your store. It's your choice if your store makes profit or you operate it at a loss. But the franchise owner gets paid weekly regardless. You dont own your fleet carrier. You're leasing a franchised location.

I don't think it is. And whomever pays for a franchise and doesn't take profit for himself is a fool, and financially irresponsible. The kind that goes into bankruptcy and shoots himself.

And yes, I feel entitled to argue about the cost of upkeep. I have played enough to have that right. I have given many many hours without resorting to grinding metas, and I consider my credits hard earned. Yes, I don't agree with the upkeep.

 

[Darth Ender]

I don't think it is. And whomever pays for a franchise and doesn't take profit for himself is a fool, and financially irresponsible. The kind that goes into bankruptcy and shoots himself.

it is in every measurable way. and it's your choice to make a profit from it or not. the intention is that you do. that's why it is setup the way it is and isn't just a mobile home.

And yes, I feel entitled to argue about the cost of upkeep. I have played enough to have that right. I have given many many hours without resorting to grinding metas, and I consider my credits hard earned. Yes, I don't agree with the upkeep.

feel entitled all you want. you are still wrong.
i don't know how many examples you need of single activities netting you enough credits for a month of upkeep that takes you 10 minutes to an hour of gameplay you would be doing anyway.
1 is enough to crush this stupid 'i will have to grind forever' argument.

 

[Dragsham]

Do feel for noobs. They face an uphill grind to get the required amount to purchase a fc.
But that's the galaxy for you. Runs hot n cold. One minute its meta op next its pants...life goes on.
Owning a fc is bliss to all those who use it for gameplay. Regardless of how you use it. Its designed we all know for a wing but we luckily own it ourselves..lease it yes.
And to say fees are a burden at this juncture in a fc owning cmdrs career isn't right. Surely when you own one your well set know a earning curve and enjoy the carriers capabilities to your taste. Be it combat exploration or trade.
Do think the tritium player trade should have been allowed to continue. But that aside there's good and bad ways to make lots of credits or whatever it is your amassing.
Fc are here to stay id pay 10 times the asking weekly fee if it meant keeping one.
I think we got off lucky in the last round of changes. Doubling the range for example.
So no complaints from me.

o7

 

[VirtueXOI]

regardless of any argument here i still think upkeep is a poor mech.

The original purpose was to limit player carriers / afk carriers by adding a time consuming and real time dependant negativ mech.
Currently it is still a negativ effect , but it does not even serv the purpose for what it was designed.

Get rid of upkeep, add carrier "storage" for long afk. Add running fee to the approx same amount.
Fixed.

Dont let some fool you about passiv income or whatever. There is no passiv incoem with carrier. Any credit you make with it is player dependant.

 

[Dragsham]

Frankly anyone who can't make money with a fleet carrier shouldn't and more pertinently wouldn't have one. Its those penny pinchers hehe. Early burlys that are out at 5am hogging the sun loungers on holiday hehe.
Seriously though earning enough is a doddle

 

[ChipStar65]

And the discouragment definitely works on me - someone who goes afk for 9 months at a time. I see it as a soft subscription fee using in-game currency.
But I have come to terms with it - I don't need this brick for anything - I would just be spamming another "Event Horizon" in some backyard orbit parkinglot. And if I did need one - then I'm sure somebody out there would be willing to let me come aboard for the periods when I'm active.

"That's the spirit!"
-- Roy Batty

 

[CMDR D Noize]

And what about new accounts how do they feel about the cost/upkeep.
Will be a pretty hard credit grind for any newbs.

It’s not content designed for noobs, it’s “end game” content for experienced players that can comfortably earn the required upkeep, which isn’t much at all at that level of game play.

Mine has all the basics and costs me about 13mil a week.
2 or 3 high end Assassination Missions (about 15 minutes work) and it’s covered for the week.

If anything they should cost more to both buy and operate as they are a bit of a blight in popular systems and a bit more deterrence might be a good thing.
I love my FC and while it doesn’t have any shops it does offer all the basic repair/rearm/refuel services, buys Tritium for well over the galactic average and is open to all.

In contrast the amount of FCs I’ve encountered clogging up systems that have no docking permissions, services or even a name is staggering.
If you’re gonna go to the effort of buying one, why not set it up to turn over at least a bare minimum profit?
I’ve even seen the occasional FC graveyard where they’ve clearly been left to rot for whatever reason.

Unless you have a loads of ships for different jobs or you’re a bulk miner/trader you don’t really need one.

 

[jacozilla]

In my mind, you have to separate the two different player scenarios - those playing actively, and those concerned with time between breaks.

a) if you play actively, by almost any definition of 'active' that you can imagine - 1 day / week or every day - the upkeep costs are math pov essentially negligible to zero factor. This isn't a comment about how and what you should 'feel' about the upkeep, just the cold hard math of any bizarre definition of 'active' play will allow a player to maintain their FC quite easily.

b) therefore, the real issue and/or pain point - is both the actual financial math and the 'feeling' pov of what happens if and when you take breaks from the game. Sure, there is decommissioning, but it is legit point to not want to run down your bank while offline. And sure you can manually sell, like I did when taking break from game, but the bottom line is --->

1) Fdev basically punishes you for taking break from game unless you are careful enough and take specific steps to sell your carrier first. This also discourages - even if only a tiny amount - players from returning to game. e.g. can't and won't say it is big or small factor, but it's reasonable to infer -some- negative obstacle to return is setup if the player feels like 'eh, I'd have to re-setup my FC, redock all my ships there, etc

For many players, this obstacle will mean almost nothing. For others, it will be the tiny extra speed bump that makes them click on another game in their library.

Bottom line point is I think regardless how you 'feel', the cold hard math is if playing even a few hours actively per week, upkeep is zero issue. So the real concern is the taking break from game point of view.

My personal preference would be that upkeep is simply halted when offline after XX days/weeks/months, whatever reasonable long term 'break' time estimate. Have the FC decommissioned in sense of removing from galmap, etc, but allow player to still own the FC, all ships docked stay docked, etc, and simply reactivate the upkeep when returning. You could also even add a similar penalty to like how rebuy insurance works - you pay portion of your earnings to additonal upkeep for some X duration of time based on your break length.

Because you are now back actively playing, paying an additional 10, 20, whatever percent more upkeep for some X weeks will be no issue because active play affordability has never been the problem. That's my .02 cents any rate.

 

[metatheurgist]

It’s not content designed for noobs, it’s “end game” content for experienced players that can comfortably earn the required upkeep, which isn’t much at all at that level of game play.

It's "end-game" content designed for people that actually know how the game works and will actually play it for at most an hour a week, instead of writing forum posts about how "hard" everything is.

 

[Phill P]

Frankly anyone who can't make money with a fleet carrier shouldn't and more pertinently wouldn't have one. Its those penny pinchers hehe. Early burlys that are out at 5am hogging the sun loungers on holiday hehe.
Seriously though earning enough is a doddle

I agree. A carrier is an investment. Like any other investment you speculate in order to accumulate. If people go into it without planning how they intend to pay for it the fault is with their lack of planning, not the process. If you can't cover the costs and are unwilling to spend the necessary time to do your research properly then don't invest. That's true IRL and in the game.

My carrier has a weekly upkeep of 25 million. I can earn that in an hour or two taking my time. Even out in the black this is the case. A single terraformable HMC with first discovered and first mapped bonuses nets you a million and the galaxy is full of them. Find one, search for more under the same mass code, hand the data in to your carrier, job done.

Worth every credit to have my own mobile station with all my stuff on it, that I can take where I want when I want. If only I could transfer fuel from the cargo bay to the tank without having to go back to it and physically transfer it with a ship it would be perfect. That's a dumb mechanic, what do I pay a crew for, the lazy buggers can't get some tritium from the hold and put it in the tank and apparently get paid to sit on their arses all day, but the rest is fine as is.

 

[Darth Ender]

or you could mine a little bit while out in the black in between being bored about not finding anything interesting in the thousands of systems you've visited. Then come back to one of the bubbles once a year and make a billion credits and then not have to worry about upkeep for another 2 years. rinse and repeat.

 

[Phill P]

or you could mine a little bit while out in the black in between being bored about not finding anything interesting in the thousands of systems you've visited. Then come back to one of the bubbles once a year and make a billion credits and then not have to worry about upkeep for another 2 years. rinse and repeat.

Pretty much what I did except I earned the credits first, enough for a carrier and at least 2 years' upkeep.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

All upkeep currently serves is a means to limit the population of carriers by defunct players or players who have no business operating one.

Which it doesn't do particularly well either - a billion credits, which is an easy amount for anyone capable of getting a carrier at all to earn, will upkeep a basic services carrier for a couple of years. I have four years of upkeep on mine and could double that to eight from my personal funds if I expected to be away for a while, which has all been obtained in the two months since I originally bought it. And income just keeps going up... I have nothing else to spend it on... I'll probably have a couple of decades of upkeep stashed away on the carrier in six months time, and then what? Odds are the game will end before that runs out. (And I am incredibly unoptimal at earning...)

The base price fairly effectively stops people getting them if they don't need them, but at best upkeep is going to marginally slow the rate of increase of carrier numbers.

All it's really doing is adding a bit of immersion for owning a giant spaceship, in the same way that the trivial refuel/repair/rearm costs do for owning a medium-sized spaceship. (And that's fine)

 

[[VR] Bulbulunufus]

Get rid of upkeep, or better make them mothballable at a nominal fee, AND make them attackable instead.

 

[Troopi]

I would exchange that for a battleship. 100ly jump range, scoopable fuel, 12 Large guns 6x6 broadside + 3 huge guns top (2 prow+1 rear), LOTSA module space, a figurehead on the prow and a ram to put thargoids in respect.
OH, and a capital size gun at the front - wanna have some Yamato moments)

 

[Greasetrap42]

A fleet carrier is not necessarily a Hotel or a Franchised Store. Its a Fleet Carrier. It says it in the name. Its a Big Building that floats in space that allows you to park ships on it and do various other misc things. The owner can use it for whatever purposes they wish. Store, hotel, parking garage, whatever. If you want to pretend its a space hotel fine.

A hotel is a building. A building is not necessarily a hotel.
Some hotels make money. Some don't.
Some players might pretend their FC is a hotel. Others won't.
Complaining your "space hotel" isn't making money is ridiculous.

 

[Darth Ender]

A fleet carrier is not necessarily a Hotel or a Franchised Store. Its a Fleet Carrier. It says it in the name. Its a Big Building that floats in space that allows you to park ships on it and do various other misc things. The owner can use it for whatever purposes they wish. Store, hotel, parking garage, whatever. If you want to pretend its a space hotel fine.

A hotel is a building. A building is not necessarily a hotel.
Some hotels make money. Some don't.
Some players might pretend their FC is a hotel. Others won't.
Complaining your "space hotel" isn't making money is ridiculous.

You know how analogies work right? it's understood that what is being used in the analogy is not the same as the subject, nor is it helpful to say that something is what it is when that thing has no reference in reality anyone is familiar with directly.

The reason why a hotel is a bad analogy is that a hotel doesn't readily explain the recurring upkeep fee ...nor does anything else about a hotel describe how the FC works other than people can go inside it. It doesn't have any analogue to the primary store functionality built in to the carrier and no hotel is mobile.

There may be something that checks more characteristics than a franchised store to how a fleet carrier works in the game but I'm not sure what it would be. Nor does it really need to be.

The ultimate lore-reasoning things work the way they work in the game is because Fdev made it that way for "gameplay" and no actual sensible reason is going to be given nor will probably ever be given. So whatever real-life thing we can find that fits how a fleet carrier works is at best coincidental. Fdev doesn't consider lore when designing game features.

 

[Greasetrap42]

I understand analogies just fine.

I think pretend fantasy desires get mixed up with what is being provided in the game.

Edited to make it less personally directed. Please note that no analogies are necessary to describe Fleet Carriers. Any player description beyond what they are is building on a player's own narrative. Also yes... there are mobile hotels IRL. Lots of them. Big floaty buildings that travel on water and people rent rooms on. You can often park your cars on them, and they have stores and restaurants. And they have staff with salaries. And regular maintenance costs. If someone wants to pretend they are running a Space Hotel thats totally fine. They just should not expect the game to cater to that specific desire.

Additional Note - Comparing FCs to a modern day franchise is not a very good analogy. I don't see how it fits well into the typical franchise concept. But if a player wants to RP that go ahead!

 

[Darth Ender]

what desires? pick them out. My posts are pretty clear that I'm fine with how the fleet carrier exists currently in the game.

 

[Darkfyre99]

Why?

It’s simple: Nearly 30 years of MMO history has demonstrated that persistent player asset in shared game space, without substantial upkeep costs, become thousands of useless monuments to Ozymandias ruining other players’ experience.

The sad thing is that they had so much potential as a foundation of a player-augmented economy, but there’s so many of them that do nothing but making navigation difficult, thatthey’ll never achieve that potential... outside the DSSA, of course.