Carrier upkeep. Why?!

Nadreck

N
As they have a crew, I think some sort of upkeep absolutely has to be there. It could have been a percentage of income (like our SLF pilots), but as the Carrier is persistent when the owner is logged off, I'm OK with it being a flat fee.

Using upkeep (especially flat-fee upkeep) as a means of controlling Carrier numbers was frankly a dumb concept. To exclude a significant number of players, upkeep would need to be so high that many of the remaining players would have to endure a godawful neverending grind to make enough cash just to keep theirs. I rarely play for credits nowadays, I would resent being forced to. I'm glad the beta-1 upkeep got cut down to size. It's also entirely possible that someone at Frontier decided "hey, now we've installed a marketplace, some people will be able to make money buying/selling to other players. So let's make a new gameplay loop for them, where they have to make enough money per week or go bust!" ...And what about the rest of us, who just wanted a Carrier to move our stuff around? Too bad.

As for the ever-increasing Carrier numbers: They really need to deal with the map-clutter problem (it just needs an icon for "two or more Carriers here", with a little number showing how many Carriers are present, in an expandable list). But if they want to actually remove inactive Carriers, a fairer way would be to base it on last login date. You shouldn't even need to visit your Carrier (I'm thinking of the DSSA here, where the owner might be thousands of lightyears away): just log in with that account once every 3 months or whatever.

The current level of upkeep is fine by me. I have three accounts (main, Bubble alt, Colonia alt) and each now has a Carrier. With all basic services installed (refuel, repair, armoury, cartographics) and suspended when not in use, upkeep is just under 10 million per Carrier per week. And a Carrier can be used to transfer money between accounts, so only one account actually needs to make money anyhow.

I prefer to park my Carriers in uninhabited systems. Partly so that I don't add to the map-clutter problem, and partly to avoid scaring the bejesus out of BGS players when one of my Carriers arrives in "their" system and they wonder what I'm up to. I expect some Carrier owners have already been falsely accused of working against a player-supported faction which happened to come under attack (by others) at around the same time as a Carrier arrived.
 

gorankar

gorankar
One or two hours a week using one of at least two ways to make 100M+ an hour.
FC upkeep costs are negligible.
FC purchase/outfit price comes out to around 50-80 hours of play using current metas. Upkeep is 1 hour or less per week using those same metas. This seems reasonable to me.

Just b4 and just after the FC update, I was easily making 500M an hour with mapped SSD mining. The eggslpoiters were making 750M an hour. Prior to that madness, I was making around 100-150M an hour VO/LTD core, and LTD/painite laser mining. That is similar to what can be made today with stacked passenger or stacked massacre missions. So while it was easier for older players than the new players, it is not some impossible task for them to earn their way to one, or pay upkeep for one now.
 

Commander_Brunox

C
I HATE the way they take power play contribution from me weekly too. When I miss a week and real life gets busy, I honestly feel like quitting the game. Heck, I've done so. More than once :(

They should get rid of the entropy affect entirely across all forms of gameplay mechanics.
 

Michael Whatever

M
I regard the fleet carriers as a massive piece of capital equipment that you rent.

The "purchase price" is simply a refundable security deposit that you get back if you leave the carrier in good condition (location) and the upkeep is really the ongoing rental for using the equipment and crew. If you stop paying the rental charge and your carrier will be re-possessed, eventually.

I just think it was presented badly as cmdrs wanted to "own" one.
 

Spacegamejunkie

Spacegamejunkie
Someone has confused newtons law of opposites for the law of balance.
Maybe why nothing positive can be added to the game, without an equal and opposite negative being attached.
 

Misty_Dark

Misty_Dark
jacozilla said:
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.
Click to expand...

I do agree with the A and B... and the B is not really an big issue, it is more of a mental hurdle.


But what if we would rethink some of this stuff.
What if the "upkeep" cost was changed to monthly fee to the pilots federation, to have your fleet carrier announced in the galaxy map and system maps. So if you provide service on your fleet carrier, like a shipyard, that is open to the public, and you want them to find you, you pay the fee to announce the shipyard facility. We can do so with all the facilities, and if you do not have enough cash to pay for the announcement, all that happens is that you are simply de-listed from view. And with this we could now also add better filters for what carriers we want to view, So this should remove most carriers that are being used as private mobile bases by their owners from the system map! which could be a significant improvement, as I suspect most Carriers are for personal use anyway. and those who actually want to offer some public services could get a better exposure.
And if we want change how many carriers that are anounced, we can adjust the announcement costs for the various services, so higher costs should result in fewer announced services..


Then some Quality of life stuff, add an option to flag carriers as a favourite, so you can find you friends carriers etc. and you do not need to pay the announcement fee for that purpose, You get an option on each CMDR, who owns a carrier to tag their carrier as a favourite (in the same manner as you can block CMDRs), and we show these in a different symbol/colour, so even if there are plenty of announced carriers in the system, you can easily spot your friends carrier easily.


So this should deal with a common problem with MMO's and persistent resources, that otherwise could stay forever. now we could have millions of "private" fleet carriers, but if only very a few, like an exaggerated low number like 10 of them are announced, then there would be no clutter of Fleet Carriers anywhere, and friend (and squadrons) would add their carriers to their favourites lists and easily find the carrier they want to use.
 

michalfoc

M
Also costs were suppose to deter having more carriers than players... by cutting those costs after betas now I spend 10mins looking for stations in system map because of all those space-dust collecting junkyards that all those carriers created.

Rant over.
 

gorankar

gorankar
Schmack said:
Since OP didn't return to the thread, I'm thinking it's just a way to get views for Yamiks.
Click to expand...
Jokes on him then. I don't bother with videos from content creators for this, or any other game anymore. Let them get their clicks elsewhere.
 

Eshackleton

E
ohforf3 said:
Carriers never should have been made own-able by a single player. It was obvious everyone would try and get one and over clutter the map with seldom used persistent ships.

They should have been added as a squad base with a much higher cost to buy.
Click to expand...
Agreed if they were clan owned they would be expected to have it protected 24/7. Which means we could destroy them and declutter our system.
 

Nadreck

N
Interesting that some people disapprove of Carriers being owned by a single player, yet they choose to imagine their group "owns" an entire star system.
 

ohforf3

O
The complaints about everyone owning a carrier is more about the massive clutter on the map and squads not really having any reason to exist. Doing it based on clans would make a social hub for the squad and it could be incorperated into raid like missions where the carrier jumps into battle to deploy personal ships as fighters while other members man the weapons/fly the battle barge.
 
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