Newcomer / Intro Carriers questions

[James Son]

I haven't had the chance to check out carriers (not in a test release at least), so how does this work?

1. When you purchase one, do you have to also purchase additional modules in order for it to create money and have a positive balance?
2. What happens if you have much time to connect to ED? Is the carrier affected? Is it possible for it to start loosing money (while you're offline) without you realizing it and you end up loosing it to the banks ?
3. Is there a way to know in advance (before buying it or any additional module) if the carrier will have a positive balance?
4. Playing in Open or Solo: are there any positive or negative effects in the Carrier's economics in each case?

 

[nemolomen]

Drake-Class Carrier

Fleet carriers are massive ships fitted with multiple hangar bays, functioning as a mobile base of operations. Services offered by a fleet carrier can be fully customised by the fleet carrier's owner; this includes the traded commodity types, available outfitting modules and the contents of a...

elite-dangerous.fandom.com

Fleet Carrier FAQ

(Revised version from the Beta. FAQ ) Fdev Official Fleet Carrier FAQ https://customersupport.frontier.co.uk/hc/en-us/articles/4404350872210-How-do-Fleet-Carriers-work- Also worth checking out the in-game Codex section on FC as that explains a lot Buying a Carrier You can buy FC in these...

forums.frontier.co.uk

 

[Northpin]

You may want to check this

Fleet Carrier FAQ

(Revised version from the Beta. FAQ ) Fdev Official Fleet Carrier FAQ https://customersupport.frontier.co.uk/hc/en-us/articles/4404350872210-How-do-Fleet-Carriers-work- Also worth checking out the in-game Codex section on FC as that explains a lot Buying a Carrier You can buy FC in these...

forums.frontier.co.uk

However,
1) the carrier does not create money by itself, players actions are needed (to trade or to use your carrier services), but it will be a sink for your money due to upkeep costs
But yes, it's better to have UC - your carrier get a part of the exploration data value that gets sold at your carrier (12.5%)
Vista Genomics is good to have, but your carrier will get nothing out of it - still good to be able to sell Exobiology data at your carrier, even more so when you are out in the black
2) IF your carrier bank gets to zero, your carrier will eventually get decommissioned - you will lose some money in the process, but you will get most of it back (like 95% or so)
3) Again, if you dont make money and deposit the money in the carrier bank OR if you dont keep selling stuff on your carrier to make a profit out of those sales, your carrier will run out of money
Minimum upkeep is 5 millions per week + 100k for each jump. With a fullly outfitted carrier, the upkeep is almost 35 millions per week + 100k per jump, fuel not included.
4. The carriers are like stations (they are not ships) - so they are visible no matter the mode or the platform (well, now the live game is only on PC but in legacy carriers are visible on all platforms - pc, xb, ps)

 

[James Son]

Thanks to both of you for answering.

2 Northpin:

From what you say:

1) the carrier does not create money by itself, players actions are needed (to trade or to use your carrier services), but it will be a sink for your money due to upkeep costs
3) Again, if you dont make money and deposit the money in the carrier bank OR if you dont keep selling stuff on your carrier to make a profit out of those sales, your carrier will run out of money

it seems that if you have a carrier, you have to spend (in the beginning at least) a significant amount of your E.D. time dealing with it. It's not something that you configure at start and leave it there to produce whatever profit it can. You have to constantly pay attention to it and perform actions. What if you are offline for i.e. 6 months? Will it get into trouble financially?

 

[metatheurgist]

Depends on what your weekly upkeep is. I put 5B in it right from the start so there's years left before I have to think about it

Fleet Carrier Calculator — CMDRs ToolBox

Easy to use calculator to find out if you can afford a fleet carrier in Elite Dangerous

cmdrs-toolbox.com

 

[James Son]

OK, i used the calculator from your sig and got an idea (more-or-less) on how things work. So, realistically you should have at least 6.5-7 billion to spare in order to buy one, equip it with some modules (about half of what's available) and make sure it will last (financially) at least about a year.

Now, gathering this amount of money to purchase one only to find if it's too much trouble seems much to me. I wish there was a "sandbox" for this...

Anyway, i'm still not sure how much time will be required to spend in the carrier's management, so if and when i manage to get all that money, i'm still not sure if it will be worth to purchase one. Would it be possible to purchase one and gain a steady profit out of it (even a small one) without having to login to E: D i.e. once a week just to manage the carrier? Trying to be more precise, the question i'd like to ask a carrier owner would be "does owning a carrier feel like a job/something to constantly have in mind"? What happens to it if i.e. i decide to go on a yearly exploration trip?

 

[K Olley]

A lot depends on your playstyle and experience. There are some aspects of carrier ownership that some find to be a drag, they can be a money sink and they can be an asset.

If you want to use one for exploration which is what mine is used for. (Link in my sig please feel free to look around) then they can be a great asset, you can cash in any Exploration and Bio data as you go, But first things first - learn how to equip and use a decent mining ship before you go.

When planning to buy a carrier you need to know how weight's and capacity work, every service that you install not only costs in credits but also in weight and reduced carrying capacity, weight wise is an increased amount of tritium used for each jump. your own ships and spare ship modules take up neither space or weight and for solo usage neither shipyard or outfitting are required.

 

[James Son]

2 K Olley

Thanks for the interesting tips. In addition to some things you have clarified for me, an example of what i'm basically concerned about is the following. People (and NPCs?) come to your carries and sell (buy too?) commodities. You get something out of each transaction. If you login to E: D a couple of months later, will the amount you gain out if these transactions have reached a ceiling (meaning it will top and stop increasing)? If so, will the upkeep costs keep amassing? If so, you face a risk that if you do not login to E: D regularly, you may end up loosing money just from owning the carrier.

Is that the case or have i misunderstood how things work?

 

[aRJay]

I haven't had the chance to check out carriers (not in a test release at least), so how does this work?

1. When you purchase one, do you have to also purchase additional modules in order for it to create money and have a positive balance?

Yes it is best to budget for buying some modules when you get the carrier if only because it will save finding a system with the right facilities to add them later. The balance is down to you so also allow for that when saving up to buy one.

2. What happens if you have much time to connect to ED? Is the carrier affected? Is it possible for it to start loosing money (while you're offline) without you realizing it and you end up loosing it to the banks ?

There is upkeep collected weekly, on my fairly minimal carrier that comes in at 14,700,000 for crew, Rearm, Redemption Office, Refuel, Repair, Universal Cartographics and Vista Genomics. A nice loop in it to Colonia and back via Sag A* doing exobiology all along the way has left this covered for around 15 years.

3. Is there a way to know in advance (before buying it or any additional module) if the carrier will have a positive balance?
4. Playing in Open or Solo: are there any positive or negative effects in the Carrier's economics in each case?

No. The only adverse effects the players have on your carrier is if a lot of them are trying to jump their carriers at the same time the time for the jump increases and there is a limit to how many carriers that can be in a system which can cause some issues.

I love it and with the funds on board refuelling hasn’t been an issue I have just set a buy order on its market with a price high enough to get other players to mine/buy and ship it for me.

 

[K Olley]

If you set a buy or sell order other people can trade but NPC's do not, they are only for decoration or as a means for harvesting encoded mats. (DWE's yummy)

To be honest trading with general goods from a carrier is a waste of time, there can be good money made on selling foot mats via the Bartender.

Be very careful when selling commodities from a carrier, there is a problem you cannot restrict the amount you sell and you cannot easily stop a sell order when you have 0 stock of an item so some forget about the sell order then buy more from a station and wonder why stock of that item disappears from there carrier.

 

[Ashnak]

Is that the case or have i misunderstood how things work?

Pretty much the latter.

For people (players only) to buy or sell at your carrier, you will need to set up a market and defeíne prices at which you want to buy or sell. When people buy stuff from you, the money ends up with the carrier, when people sell stuff to you, the money they receive comes out of the carrier. Buying stuff at a price that is above the price you can get for selling that stuff later on will lose you money, selling stuff for less than you paid for it will lose you money.
Where you can get a cut from are carrier services - refuelling, repair, restock. You can set a service fee at your convenience, and you'll get that cut from any CMDR who uses these services at your carrier.

In order to actually make money with a carrier, you'll have to work. Figure out what the sales prices for minerals are, then park at a system with good resources and offer to pay less than that for buying those minerals. When youi get to the sales system, again offer the same minerals for sale at a price between what you paid and what the station(s) in that system are offering. You make some profit, the haulers make some profit, the miners make some profit, and nobody needs to jump their loaded ship across several hundred lightyears to sell their stull. But the profit span is small and unreliable (see "volume tax").
This works better in a trade community goal (just had the last one, so the next one is probably some time away): park your carrier in a supply system, and e.g. offer to buy (last CG) Reactive Armor at 5kCr. (supply price was around 1.5...2k). Jump into the CG system (if you can find a parking spot) and offer to sell at 12kCr. CG pays 17kCr with unlimited demand, so your loaders will earn 3k at the source and 5 k at the target while you get 7k for the transport. If you can find enough people to load and unload at these conditions, you can make a full cycle every hour or two.
You can also try that stunt with supplying alcohol to Rackham's Peak when they're in boom - with the added complexity that both the Peak and the last system before are only accessible by carrier, and usually all parking spots in both(!) systems are occupied, leading to a gridlock. And nobody can come or leave except via carrier...

 

[metatheurgist]

There is no management with my carrier at all. It's just a convenient place to put all my ships and stash some goods. If someday I want to change the scenery, I won't have to move all my stuff one at a time. That's the benefit for me.

 

[James Son]

There is no management with my carrier at all. It's just a convenient place to put all my ships and stash some goods. If someday I want to change the scenery, I won't have to move all my stuff one at a time. That's the benefit for me.

OK, from K Olley's and Ashnak's answers, i think i now understand better how things are working (thanks guys). It's a live trading system (you are part of the buy/sell process).

What you say though puzzles me. If (as i have understood from what you said) you don't care about making profit from the carrier, don't you have to make profit another way in order to support it (mining/bounty-hunting, etc)? Your carrier can't be balanced, right?

 

[aRJay]

OK, from K Olley's and Ashnak's answers, i think i now understand better how things are working (thanks guys). It's a live trading system (you are part of the buy/sell process).

What you say though puzzles me. If (as i have understood from what you said) you don't care about making profit from the carrier, don't you have to make profit another way in order to support it (mining/bounty-hunting, etc)? Your carrier can't be balanced, right?

Well a few posts back metatheurgist said they put 5,000,000,000 into its bank which is anything up to 1,000 weeks or 19 years before they need to top it up again.

So while it isn't balanced it is unlikely to be an issue.

 

[metatheurgist]

My carrier has just the facilities I personally need (refuel, repair, rearm, bar, Pioneer Supplies). CR making is so broken in this game I have already made enough to buy another carrier in the time I've owned one and I basically only play 2 hours a week now.

 

[Ashnak]

Your carrier can't be balanced, right?

Right. I made enough money, once upon a time, to buy a carrier and stash another 3 BCr. in its account. If that runs out before I make enough money otherwise, the carrier gets repo'ed. With the current inflation in ED, I don't think that's going to become an issue, though, unless I become too disinterested in the game. Last time I logged in to make some money, I could get 3-4 weeks worth of carrier maintenance from doing a single passenger evacuation run from a station under attack. We don't have these right now (or didn't have the last time I looked), but I'm pretty sure something else that's going to be worth at least 50 MCr./hr with moderate effort will come along.

As for how I use the carrier - similar to @metatheurgist , it's a place to stash my ships and stuff. So I don't need to wait (and pay for) the transfer of that engineered hull reinforcement from station A in order to put it on the ship I left at station B while I wwant to fly some miossions out of station C.

 

[K Olley]

My carrier is a mobile base and warehouse, recently I have made most of my credits on salad bashing (over 40B) and a fair bit of change on incidental mining, mine Tritium keep any Bromellite found and sell to other carriers in bubble (350k to 400K can be up to 10k demand check INARA)

My carrier does not make money but it enables me to make money a lot easier.

 

[James Son]

Ok, i see what all of you are saying. The point is not to make sure the carrier's economics are balanced but to make your life easier. OK, message received.

I recently went into mining (Bromellite mainly but also any other high-paying stuff i can find while mining), so i can confirm that the "50 MCr./hr with moderate effort" that Ashnak mentioned is easily doable. K Olley, what is the "salad bashing" you mentioned above? A rare commodity you are trading?

 

[K Olley]

"salad bashing" you mentioned above?. A rare commodity you are trading?

No Exobiology,

 

[James Son]

No Exobiology,

Hmmm, haven't played in that mode. It has been in my mind to try it out for some time now, i guess it's time to start by doing some research on the matter. Thanks for the pointer. I'm guessing the profits are bigger than mining, right?