I have a question about this. 10-20 jumps doesn't seem like much to me, even with refueling (assuming you aren't using a wicker basket attached to your ship with duct tape as a scoop). It's a matter of, what, an average of maybe 2 minutes per jump with the refuel bundled in? Now, these are big jumps in the carrier, but I was under the impression that carrier jumps take a while as they go through a bunch of sequences before jumping and require a post-jump cooldown. Is that not the case?
Current State of Carriers
- Thread starter Shabine
- Start date
Would love it if carriers could have a "factory" module that basically let you craft items from smaller items:
All these produced items could be sold on the carrier (so you'd need the other carrier modules required for that: pioneer supplies, outfitting and a shipyard) and take up inventory space. At the moment, selling modules and ships from a carrier is very limited because you can only stock specific packages of items - everyone agrees this is a terrible system and should be retooled. And taking a carrier out into the black for mining isn't particularly useful since you still need to come back to the bubble to sell anything. At the end of the day the only real assets we have are ships and modules, so why not give us the ability to procure them from anywhere in the galaxy instead of being limited to inhabited systems?
- combine mineable minerals to make basic commodities
- combine basic commodities to make advanced commodities
- combine commodities to make ship modules/pioneer supplies suits/weapons
- combine modules+commodities+minerals to make entire ships
All these produced items could be sold on the carrier (so you'd need the other carrier modules required for that: pioneer supplies, outfitting and a shipyard) and take up inventory space. At the moment, selling modules and ships from a carrier is very limited because you can only stock specific packages of items - everyone agrees this is a terrible system and should be retooled. And taking a carrier out into the black for mining isn't particularly useful since you still need to come back to the bubble to sell anything. At the end of the day the only real assets we have are ships and modules, so why not give us the ability to procure them from anywhere in the galaxy instead of being limited to inhabited systems?
The “normal” carrier jump time is 15mins and the cool down period only effects the next carrier jump, ships onboard can leave as soon as the carrier arrives at its destination.
I say normal because the sever infrastructure that manage the carrier jumps can get overwhelmed and if this is the case the length of time to jump increases. It’s never happened to me but I do see it reported here, with times up to an hour per jump reported.
I am stunned - stunned, I tells ya - to discover there are people who don't play Elite telling us Elite players how to play Elite. That would be like me telling Tony Hawk how to skateboard, despite not having been on a skateboard myself since 1978. How very dare they!
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I am pretty confident that there are people on the internets who tell Tony Hawk how to skateboard.
I never jump my carrier as means of travel. Except in ships without scoop or a small emergency scoop, I am always faster in a ship than with a carrier. You can jump your carrier every 20 minutes. With my Dolphin, I can do the minimum of 45 seconds per jump by charging while scooping, with most other ships I am in the 60 to 70 seconds bracket. In a 50 ly ship that means 1000 ly before the carrier jumps a second time. All that is of course if I only travel. Scanning a system obviously slows you down.
Bottom line: With an engineered FSD and a somewhat well built ship you are always faster than by carrier.
Lol, if taking the neutron highway you can go from the bubble to Colonia in a little more than an hour (maybe a few if it's the first time). Try doing that in a carrier 
I'm curious to know how exactly that's achieved.Lol, if taking the neutron highway you can go from the bubble to Colonia in a little more than an hour (maybe a few if it's the first time). Try doing that in a carrier
I know that by supercharging your FSD using the jet stream of a neutron star you can make a jump 4 times longer than normal (which, as far as I know, was actually a programming mistake at first, as it was originally intended for the boost to be 25%, not 4x, which was then ascended to an official feature), and I have even tried it once just for the sake of trying it, and I have heard of the "neutron highway". However, I don't understand how you pull it off. Wouldn't you need to stop after each jump to find a next suitable neutron star system within jumping distance and approximately in the correct direction? Those systems are quite rare. If you need to manually find them and select them in the galaxy map after each jump, that sounds like it would take about as much time as it would be for you to just make those 4 normal jumps.
Neutrons aren't rare once you get a decent distance away from Sol (specifically away from the X/Y/Z planes that it sits on). The in-game jump plotter will even insert intermediate stops at fuel stars so you don't run out on long runs.
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Spansh has some very nice neutron plotters - one basic that will not take into account refueling - so you need to find your own refueling stars and a near perfect one that will take your ship config and plot a route, including fuel stars
For long distance routes, it will f get you into one of the two neutron layers (which will imply some 5-10 normal jumps), then if will plot only neutron jumps with fuel stops when needed
Even using the naughty step highway it will take you 2+ hours. You can't do the Bubble to Colonia in an hour just using Neutrons.
Typical would probably be a few hours. Don't know if this is the current record, but here's a video of less than 1h 30m.
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUSEutFpNsk&t=0s
It is indeed possible to do in under an hour: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/running-the-prison-express.594878/
The Prison Express is the Naughty Step Highway. That's not the simple Neutron Highway.
You specifically said the Naughty Step Highway would take 2+ hours... I said it takes less than one.
That's fine, but the original assertion was taking the neutron highway could do it in under an hour, and someone asked how. You can't. You have to use the naughty step.
Most of the complaints come from Cmdrs trying to park their carrier near Shinrarta.
The limit on numbers was introduced to reduce the Orange Sidewinders experienced by Cmdrs in systems overrun with them.
That from my own perspective is the biggest downside of them.
It also encourages me to keep my carriers in less popular systems.
As for those that make the complaints; demanding that other Cmdrs carriers be removed from systems near Shinrarta, so they can park their carrier near Shinrarta.
The irony seems lost on them.
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The nice thing about a carrier for me with exploration is its a base of operations in the desert. Without it I could travel to a destination faster. But the way I do exploration I pick a spot and explore all of the systems in a radius. When doing that the carrier is invaluable and I end up a very rich man.
If that was me, I said a little more than an hour... I was waffling around about putting an exact number on it and maybe I chose the wrong expression..
I'd imagine that it takes a few hours for most commanders, still way faster than travelling on your carrier.
True, I'm looking at 45 jumps, one every 15 minutes on my carrier, but then I do have about 20 ships to move at once...
That's over 11 hours! Damn, Franky. That's a commitment and a half.