Carriers: general discussion, updates, & suggestions

We still don't know why Carriers were dropped from the 3.3 update, or how far along their development was, or when (or if) they will be introduced. And we didn't get to the stage of having a "focused feedback" thread to discuss them properly with Frontier.

So I'd like to use this thread for a number of Carrier-related purposes:

1. Sharing what little we know about how Carriers were supposed to work.

2. Speculating about the stuff we don't know.

3. Attempting to correct what we consider to be unwise design decisions.

4. Presenting our own suggestions.

For 1, as I recall: Carriers will be linked to Squadrons, with presumably one Carrier per squadron. They will have "hyperdrives" rather than frameshift drives, will emerge from hyperspace directly into orbit around a specified body (star, planet, moon), and cannot supercruise. Like existing megaships, they will be invulnerable to normal attacks. Unlike the Gnosis and other existing megaships, they won't be restricted to jumping only once per week, but can jump whenever they have enough of an as-yet-unspecified resource. They will act as resupply and respawn points for ships based on them: it's also generally assumed that they will carry docked ships with them when they jump.

If they can appear in orbit around a specified body, it's reasonable to infer that they would be capable of in-system microjumps (if this isn't specifically implemented, the same result could be achieved by jumping to another system and then back to a different body). This has implications for trade with stations distant from the primary star (e.g. Hutton Orbital).

It has been suggested that a squadron would need a minimum membership size to qualify for a Carrier: a decision that has been widely criticised and will probably be unenforceable. It's already been confirmed that a squadron won't disband until the last member quits, and that's when the Carrier will be scrapped: so single-owner Carriers will be possible, and people could temporarily join each other's squadrons to meet the target. And IIRC console players can create alternate accounts free of charge, and will simply create as many as they need. For a single player with multiple ships, a Carrier is arguably more useful than for multiple players with one ship each, as the single player can only fly one ship at a time.

We don't know if Carriers will have shipyards, or some similar facility to allow one CMDR to load more than one ship onto the Carrier. The existing ones don't, but this could be justified in-game as the captain's policy, allowing anyone to bring one ship each. For a privately-owned squadron Carrier, this won't work: it should be up to ME to decide if I want to put several of MY ships on MY Carrier! A Carrier without such a facility wouldn't be completely useless to a single player (it could be a mobile base for deep-space exploration or mining), but its usefulness would be greatly reduced for no good reason. It would also inconvenience conventional groups too, because whoever has to fly a supply freighter (to fetch fuel etc) can't park another ship on the Carrier too. During the Gnosis Incident, I was operating from the Orion Nebula Tourist Centre (700ly away) because it was the nearest shipyard, the only place I could park multiple ships.

IIRC, it has been said that Carriers would be "visible in all instances". If so, I'd consider this to be a bad decision that should be abandoned. Popular systems could become crowded with hundreds or thousands of Carriers! Perhaps that's why Frontier want to limit their availability? But there's no need for that. A Carrier should only be visible if members of the owning squadron are present in the instance . When the last squadron member logs out or leaves the system, anyone else present sees the "entering hyperspace" animation, and the Carrier leaves. And in a busy system, even in Open, you only get instanced with maybe one other squadron plus their Carrier only. There's no point in getting instanced with multiple unattended Carriers, it's a waste of resources.
 
All of the following are my own suggestions, they aren't based on anything "official" (which is why I've put them in a separate post).

Carrier base cost: 1 billion credits (payable by the squadron), plus a paid DLC (maybe £5 to £10) payable by any player who wants to be able to make use of a Carrier. For that, you get a basic Carrier with 6 Small hangars, 2 Small landing pads, and a base jumprange of 100ly (which cannot be boosted by jet-scooping or FSD injections).

The jumprange of a Carrier is set by the grade of hyperdrive installed, and modified by the mass being carried. The mass of a Carrier is separated into two categories: "intrinsic mass" (the mass of the Carrier itself, including installed hangars and other basic structural components), and "additional mass" (such as fuel, cargo, and the mass of the ships being carried - including the mass of whatever is being carried in those ships). Inherent mass has no effect on jumprange, because it's assumed that some of this mass includes all necessary suport systems, including hyperdrive (i.e. adding inherent mass makes the whole ship bigger, and all systems are beefed up to compensate for the increase in size). When you increase inherent mass, you must pay a "mass surcharge" to represent these upgrades: for the basic Class 1 Hyperdrive, that's 100,000 credits per ton. The stock Carrier weighs 5,000t: the existing mass surcharge for this works out as 500 million credits, half the total value of the ship. The cost of upgrading the hyperdrive is the increased mass surcharge for the entire ship (e.g. 150,000 credits per ton for a Class 2 Hyperdrive, so you need to find another 50,000 credits per ton for the entire ship's inherent mass, and the mass surcharge for everything you add thereafter will be 50% higher).

The base jumprange is reduced by the ratio of inherent mass to total mass. So if a 5,000t Carrier is carrying 1,000t of additional mass (6,000t total), jumprange will be reduced to 5/6 of the maximum. You can fit "mass compensators" to offset the effect of additional mass, but they are expensive: each compensator costs 200 million credits and negates 500t of additional mass (multiple compensators stack, but additional mass cannot be reduced below zero).

Carrier hyperdrives run on "military fuel" (present in the 1980's Elite). One ton of military fuel will shift a 5,000t mass 1 light year (or a 50t mass 100ly), assuming a Class 1 Hyperdrive. For a 6,000t Carrier (total mass) making the maximum jump of 100ly, that works out as 120t of fuel, which is about half of a standard 256t size 8 tank. Fuel consumption is proportional to mass and distance (unlike the situation with frameshift drives, where shorter jumps are more fuel-efficient), but more powerful hyperdrives are less fuel-efficient, sacrificing efficiency for longer jumprange: at the other end of the scale, the Class 4 Hyperdrive allows 500ly jumps but has half of the fuel efficiency, causing a tenfold increase in the amount of fuel required for a maximum-range jump (this ship could actually travel twice as far on the available fuel with the more efficient Class 1 drive). Military fuel can be bought from stations, but as the Carrier can't dock (except at a few stations with megaship docks), it's usually necessary to use the carried ships to go fetch the fuel.

A "fuel synthesis unit" can be fitted, which manufactures military fuel from liquid hydrogen. But it's expensive (300 million base cost) and slow, converting 20t per hour (though multiple units can be fitted). For this reason, Carriers synthesising their own fuel can typically make only a few long-range jumps per day. They also need more fuel tanks for the hydrogen required, and this must either be bought from stations or scooped from stars by the ships being carried (the Carrier itself has no supercruise ability and therefore cannot scoop its own hydrogen).

The stock Carrier doesn't have the usual "core" systems listed, as these are assumed to be part of the standard package (and upgraded accordingly if intrinsic mass is added). It does include some standard modules that are always present and cannot be upgraded: including a 256t military fuel tank, a 256t hydrogen fuel tank, a 256t cargo rack, a size 6 Economy-class passenger lounge, and a shuttle bay (for short-range commuting to a nearby station, typically to fetch a ship). It also has one vacant optional-equipment slot in each size category from 1 to 7, with some restrictions on what standard modules can be fitted: fuel tanks (hydrogen or military fuel), cargo racks, passenger cabins (any class including Luxury), fighter hangar, limpet controller, docking computer, detailed surface scanner. A docking computer allows ships to auto-dock with the Carrier if they also have docking computers, and a Detailed Surface Scanner allows the Carrier to directly fire probes at the body it's orbiting. These few optional modules count as "additional mass" rather than "intrinsic mass", and are therefore cheap (no mass surcharge to pay), but could slightly reduce jumprange.


Expanding the Carrier: the basic building-block for Carrier outfitting is adding a Small hangar: other upgrades typically involve converting hangars into something else or combining them to make bigger ones. Each new Small hangar holds one Small ship and has a base cost of 50 million credits and adds 200t of intrinsic mass (mass surcharge of 20 million credits for the basic Class 1 Hyperdrive), representing enlargement of the hull, hyperdrive capacity, shields etc. Other upgrades include:

Medium Hangar: holds one Medium (or smaller) ship. Requires conversion of 3 Small hangars and an additional 50 million refit cost (but no mass change).

Large Hangar: holds one Large (or smaller) ship. Requires conversion of 3 Medium hangars and an additional 100 million refit cost (but no mass change).

Small landing pad: 5 million credits, +20t intrinsic mass, number of pads cannot exceed the number of hangars.

Medium landing pad: 10 million credits, +40t intrinsic mass, number of pads cannot exceed the number of Medium or Large hangars.

Large landing pad: 20 million credits, +80t intrinsic mass, number of pads cannot exceed the number of Large hangars.

Mass Compensator: 200 million credits, requires conversion of 1 Small hangar, +100t intrinsic mass, compensates for 500t of additional mass (for maximum range, but fuel consumption is unaffected).

Medium Military Fuel Tank: holds 800t, requires conversion of 3 Small hangars and an additional 10 million refit cost (but no mass change).

Medium Hydrogen Fuel Tank: holds 800t, requires conversion of 3 Small hangars and an additional 10 million refit cost (but no mass change).

Large Military Fuel Tank: holds 2,500t, requires conversion of 3 Medium Military Fuel Tanks and an additional 30 million refit cost (but no mass change).

Large Hydrogen Fuel Tank: holds 2,500t, requires conversion of 3 Medium Hydrogen Fuel Tanks and an additional 30 million refit cost (but no mass change).

Fuel Synthesis Unit (standard): 300 million credits, requires conversion of 1 Small hangar, +100t intrinsic mass, converts hydrogen to military fuel at 20t per hour.

Medium Fuel Synthesis Unit: 50 million credits, requires conversion of 3 standard Fuel Synthesis Units, converts hydrogen to military fuel at 70t per hour.

Large Fuel Synthesis Unit: 100 million credits, requires conversion of 3 Medium Fuel Synthesis Units, converts hydrogen to military fuel at 240t per hour.

Armament Facility: 40 million credits, requires conversion of 1 Small hangar, +100t intrinsic mass, adds the "restock" facility for ships on the Carrier (and the Carrier's own weapons, if these require ammunition).

Small Repair Facility: 20 million credits, requires conversion of 1 Small hangar, +100t intrinsic mass, adds the "repair" facility for Small ships on the Carrier.

Medium Repair Facility: 60 million credits, requires conversion of 3 Small hangars or Small repair facilities, +300t intrinsic mass, adds the "repair" facility for Small or Medium ships on the Carrier (cost/mass reduced accordingly if converting an existing Small Repair Facility rather than just hangars).

Large Repair Facility: 180 million credits, requires conversion of 3 Medium hangars or Medium repair facilities, +900t intrinsic mass, adds the "repair" facility for all ships on the Carrier (cost/mass reduced accordingly if converting an existing Medium Repair Facility rather than just hangars).

Universal Cartographics facility: 30 million credits, requires conversion of 1 Small hangar (turned over to Universal Cartographics for use by their couriers), adds the ability to sell cartographic data on the Carrier.

Commodities Market: 40 million credits, requires conversion of 1 Large hangar (turned over to NPC freighter companies), adds a Commodities Market for selling goods (default stock of zero, so you usually can't buy anything) at 10% below galactic average prices for each commodity.

Optional Module Slot: 10 million credits, requires conversion of 1 Small hangar, adds a size 8 general-purpose internal slot (which could be used for a fuel tank etc). Added optional modules in these slots count as "additional mass" rather than "intrinsic mass", and therefore cost normal prices (no mass surcharge to pay). Wnen empty, this still counts as a Small Hangar for conversion purposes, and can be converted back to a Small Hangar for 10 million credits.

Class 1 Hyperdrive (fitted as standard): 100,000 credits per ton of intrinsic (unladen) mass, max 100ly jumprange, standard fuel efficiency (1t of fuel moves 5,000t mass 1ly).

Class 2 Hyperdrive: requires conversion of Small hangar, 150,000 credits per ton of intrinsic mass, max 200ly jumprange, consumes 30% more fuel than Class 1.

Class 3 Hyperdrive: requires conversion of Medium hangar, 200,000 credits per ton of intrinsic mass, max 350ly jumprange, consumes 60% more fuel than Class 1.

Class 4 Hyperdrive: requires conversion of Large hangar, 300,000 credits per ton of intrinsic mass, max 500ly jumprange, consumes 100% more fuel than Class 1.
 
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Powderpanic

Banned
I speculate that the reason that carriers this far has been dropped are for a number of reasons... Such as

1) Instancing

Getting the carriers, players and their ships into a stable instance is just so difficult, that it isn't worth the effort.

2) What are you going to do with them?

I like the concept of a carrier. I would love to drop in, Galactica style. Carriers fighting each other, while the smaller ships fight etc.
But really, what is the point of a carrier? You can get anywhere in the bubble, super easy. You can rearm at almost all systems, super easy.
What can you really do with a carrier that is worth the effort of FDEV making them a thing?

Powerpanic
The Voice of Griefing
 
Aside from these being called “Fleet Carriers”, not “Squadron Carriers”, and having been axed from Beyond for “Reasons”, that’s pretty much all we do know.

Speculation at this oount only builds unrealistic expectations.

Will they actually be player-owned or hired as a service?
What is the operating range?
How many ships constitute a Fleet?
Can the owner/operator/lease-holder dock their own ship there?

Too many questions to even begin to ask questions at this point.
 
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Aside from these being called “Fleet Carriers”, not “Squadron Carriers”, and having been axed from Beyond for “Reasons”, that’s pretty much all we do know.

Speculation at this oount only builds unrealistic expectations.

Will they actually be player-owned or hired as a service?
What is the operating range?
How many ships constitute a Fleet?
Can the owner/operator/lease-holder their own ship there?

Too many questions to even begin to ask questions at this point.

Another epic typo for the history books!
 
Aside from these being called “Fleet Carriers”, not “Squadron Carriers”, and having been axed from Beyond for “Reasons”, that’s pretty much all we do know.

The ED Wiki has all the info we know so far.

Will they actually be player-owned or hired as a service?
What is the operating range?
How many ships constitute a Fleet?
Can the owner/operator/lease-holder their own ship there?

Too many questions to even begin to ask questions at this point.

Some good questions. They should be player-owned, because lease sounds lame and cheap.

Don't know what you mean with " their own ship". That sounds lewd.

Can we get an official response Frontier?
 
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The ED Wiki has all the info we know so far.



Some good questions. They should be player-owned, because lease sounds lame and cheap.

Don't know what you mean with " their own ship". That sounds lewd.

Can we get an official response Frontier?

It means I’m typing on an iPhone XR, and the keys are 1/8 the size of my fingers, and it got away from me. Original has been corrected.

Leased would be ok if implemented correctly. But we still know too little at this point.
 
Given the large number of single player squadrons, will FD rethink their position on Fleet Carriers not being available for individual players?
 
As I wrote elsewhere some months ago, the problem why carriers have not been implemented is basically scalability.
Presently there does not seem to be a software mechanism for jumping mega ships. Instead they are moved each Thursday by hand. I guess by someone or some script updating the positions in the main table.
Now think of the effort necessary to do that for a number of mega ships two or three orders of magnitude higher than we have now. Not feasible.

On the other hand: seems to be a good job for the guy who released the Gnosis Galnet post early 🤣🤣
 
I speculate that the reason that carriers this far has been dropped are for a number of reasons... Such as

1) Instancing

Getting the carriers, players and their ships into a stable instance is just so difficult, that it isn't worth the effort.

Yes, I suspect it wasn't a coincidence that FDev went quiet about Carriers after the Gnosis Incident. There were problems with instancing then, and perhaps they realised that promoting big multiplayer battles might not be such a good idea after all.

2) What are you going to do with them?

I like the concept of a carrier. I would love to drop in, Galactica style. Carriers fighting each other, while the smaller ships fight etc.
But really, what is the point of a carrier? You can get anywhere in the bubble, super easy. You can rearm at almost all systems, super easy.
What can you really do with a carrier that is worth the effort of FDEV making them a thing?

For use in battles, yes you could just operate from a station instead. It would be unfortunate if FDev shelved them for that reason though. They could be used for ferrying multiple ships around more quickly and easily (and stylishly) than using multiple ship transfers, and you could take a small fleet out into the black where there are no stations, perhaps for exploration (I've noticed that asteroid bases often don't have shipyards).

That's why I'm hoping FDev will make Carriers a paid DLC: to give themselves a cash incentive to actually get on with developing them. Plenty of people would pay money for them, even if they don't really need them. For the price of a couple of meals at McDonald's... why not?
 
All of the following are my own suggestions, they aren't based on anything "official" (which is why I've put them in a separate post).

Carrier base cost: 1 billion credits (payable by the squadron), plus a paid DLC (maybe £5 to £10) payable by any player who wants to be able to make use of a Carrier. For that, you get a basic Carrier with 6 Small hangars, 2 Small landing pads, and a base jumprange of 100ly (which cannot be boosted by jet-scooping or FSD injections).

…. snip ….

So can you explain how this communal finance thing works? Will everyone in a squadron pay/donate their credits into a squadron bank account? Who will have access to this account, will it be all the members of the squadron and their must be 100% agreement before the funds can be used, or will the Squadron owner (i.e. the player that starts the squadron) be able to access the funds as he/she sees it?

At present there is no way for a player to give another player any funds, there is not transfer mechanism, there is no joint accounts that can pool resources. Until I see something from FD explaining how that will work, I will just ignore everything said here about squadron carriers because if there is an opportunity to abuse the system, players will take that opportunity in both hands.

For example, lets say that the squadron owner/commander is the only one that can access these joint funds. What is stopping him kicking everyone out of the squadron, setting the flag to 'no more members' and keeping the 1B plus in credits! After all it is his squadron, he created it, he named it, he set the parameters for what the squadron does, and according to the current squadron mechanics, he has the power to kicked everyone out.
 
if I'd had a Carrier during the Gnosis Incident, I'd have moved it up to a few lightyears from the Gnosis and flown sorties from there (rather than from 700ly away). Even within the bubble, perhaps that's how Carriers would be used: if they're ineffective in battle, park them in a nearby system one jump from the action.

Your enemies might not realise that your ships are jumping in from a Carrier, and even if they do, they'd have to find which system it's hiding in. Could be a bit like the Battle of Midway in WW2, where the carriers of both sides never came within visual range of each other.
 
So can you explain how this communal finance thing works? Will everyone in a squadron pay/donate their credits into a squadron bank account? Who will have access to this account, will it be all the members of the squadron and their must be 100% agreement before the funds can be used, or will the Squadron owner (i.e. the player that starts the squadron) be able to access the funds as he/she sees it?

At present there is no way for a player to give another player any funds, there is not transfer mechanism, there is no joint accounts that can pool resources. Until I see something from FD explaining how that will work, I will just ignore everything said here about squadron carriers because if there is an opportunity to abuse the system, players will take that opportunity in both hands.

For example, lets say that the squadron owner/commander is the only one that can access these joint funds. What is stopping him kicking everyone out of the squadron, setting the flag to 'no more members' and keeping the 1B plus in credits! After all it is his squadron, he created it, he named it, he set the parameters for what the squadron does, and according to the current squadron mechanics, he has the power to kicked everyone out.

We don't know what Frontier had in mind for that. But if the transfer only works one-way, at least the credits could only be spent on the Carrier.

But, yes, there's a risk that a squadron member won't get anything for his investment. I suspect the fewest issues would be with small groups of friends who know each other, or with wealthy players paying for their own Carriers and then possibly letting others use them for free. Or some compromise in which the leader pays for the basic Carrier and then each member pays for his own hangar.
 
My theory as to why we never got fleet carriers is simple,

A: it just to big of a step to introduce squadron and carriers in a single update. They wanted to see how squadrons evolve first and use this guide how to implement game play elements of Squadrons.
B: multiplayer element is still in its infancy, how would combat would, what capabilities would a carrier have. would their be turrets and sensors an other systems to manage by players.
C: Network needed work to support various aspects of carriers better,
D: They wanted to produce something different to the rest of the game, something unique and they simply ran out of time to finish the artwork.
 
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They most likely decided to hold it back for the next expansion and that most likely being space legs would make sense.

Or they could not get the instancing to work well enough which would not bode well for space legs.
 
For use in battles, yes you could just operate from a station instead. It would be unfortunate if FDev shelved them for that reason though. They could be used for ferrying multiple ships around more quickly and easily (and stylishly) than using multiple ship transfers, and you could take a small fleet out into the black where there are no stations, perhaps for exploration (I've noticed that asteroid bases often don't have shipy
That's why I'm hoping FDev will make Carriers a paid DLC: to give themselves a cash incentive to actually get on with developing them. Plenty of people would pay money for them, even if they don't really need them. For the price of a couple of meals at McDonald's... why not?

I’m all for supporting further development and paying for new content, but not when we’ve been told it’s included with beyond. They can’t take that back IMO.
 
I’m all for supporting further development and paying for new content, but not when we’ve been told it’s included with beyond. They can’t take that back IMO.

Unfortunately, they already have. FD realized rather quickly that players were generally looking to carriers as the main feature in Beyond and decided they didn't want to lose out on potential income. If we ever do see carriers developed, which is by no means guaranteed, expect them to be paid DLC and to be developed as a minimum viable product. FD will still be incentivized to minimize development resources and maximize income as that has been their business model for the past 4 years and including carriers as part of a "free" update was likely something they decided against long before they actually announced that they were being cut from Beyond.
 
2) What are you going to do with them?

I like the concept of a carrier. I would love to drop in, Galactica style. Carriers fighting each other, while the smaller ships fight etc.
But really, what is the point of a carrier? You can get anywhere in the bubble, super easy. You can rearm at almost all systems, super easy.
What can you really do with a carrier that is worth the effort of FDEV making them a thing?

For me, Carriers need to have configurable, interactive, internals to give them a purpose.

For example, they need to have their own cargo storage, so you can mine, return to the carrier, dump your cargo and then go out and mine some more.

If it was up to me, I'd start off by creating a handful of basic "types" of carrier; let's say Military, Transport and Exploration.
The Military Carrier would have a heap of guns, lousy jump-range and require a lot of "stuff" to keep it running.
The Exploration Carrier would have barely any defences, terrific jump-range and require a lot of stuff to keep it running.
The Transport carrier would have moderate firepower and jump-range and it's require less stuff to keep it running.

Each type would have internal limitations too.
The Military Carrier would allow you to dock up to, say, 12 large ships or you could swap a couple of the docking bays for things like cargo storage or a repair facility.
The Transport Carrier would allow you to dock, say, 4 Large and 6 medium ships, it'd already have a heap of cargo storage and you could swap half the docking bays for more storage and a repair facility.
The Exploration carrier would allow you to dock, say, 2 large and 6 medium ships, it'd have some storage space and a repair facility there'd be minimal ways to reconfigure it.

Thing is, any carrier that's being used in combat will already be a target for attack simply because it's there to support whoever's doing the attacking.
Carriers being used for exploration will, erm, never be seen again, so nobody cares what they're up to.
Which leaves Transport Carriers.
If they don't have any intrinsic value of their own, everybody aboard one can either leg it or log off and there'll be no point to actually attacking one (except for the lulz).
If they have internal cargo storage, though, that should create a reason to try and pirate them which, in turn, creates a reason to defend them.
 
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