Current State of Carriers
- Thread starter Shabine
- Start date
While I see the obvious benefits for those who own carriers and/or need to utilize them, I also see the detriments in Carrier "spam" in game- especially in frequently populated systems.
I think a good set of filtering options for the map displays as well as the HUD would go a long way for those who are annoyed with their frequency. I know personally, the first thing I usually have to do is turn off the display of carriers in the External panel so I can see where I'm going. Even then, if there's 20 carriers parked outside my target, I've got them my HUD constantly popping up in line of sight, etc.
At least give us the option to turn off player-owned objects in game, please.
I think a good set of filtering options for the map displays as well as the HUD would go a long way for those who are annoyed with their frequency. I know personally, the first thing I usually have to do is turn off the display of carriers in the External panel so I can see where I'm going. Even then, if there's 20 carriers parked outside my target, I've got them my HUD constantly popping up in line of sight, etc.
At least give us the option to turn off player-owned objects in game, please.
I'm currently halfway across the galaxy in an Asp X getting me just over 45 LY per jump, on one of the arms. I'd like to have a carrier close to me I could sell data on, instead of having to find a settlement it'd take me weeks or months to reach.
Plenty of carriers out in the black, copy and save the link below, the map is automatically updated every 4 hours.
interactive carrier map
And that's one of the main problems with getting carriers to work different, technically they aren't player owned. Player owned objects, ships etc, are stored in the player database and appear and disappear when the player logs in and out of the game, but Fleet Carriers are persistent, so they can't be attached to the player database, they are attached to the galaxy database and the owning player ( well call them the lesee) is given special permissions to perform action on the Fleet Carrier such as move it, store stuff on it etc. So it's not just a matter of turning off player owned objects, that won't affect Fleet Carriers.
Personally I would have been happy with a personal Fleet Carrier that wasn't persistent and only allowed the player owner access but we are well past that by now.
Yeah, as it stands now the carriers aren't actually ours per se, right? They're just kinda rented out to us.
I don't think there's such a "significant risk", unless you fly and/or drive recklessly. I have now been doing long-distance exploration for a month or two non-stop, and haven't destroyed my ship once. There have been a few very minor collisions with the ground, especially in the beginning, but the shields took all of it every time. You learn to fly carefully (and to look for how many g's each planet has before landing, to be prepared) quite quickly.
But sure, it can be a bit of anxiety-inducing when you have several billion credits worth of exobiology scans with you, and the closest inhabited system you can find is several thousands of lightyears away, but hey... some people like to live on the edge. (I'm not saying that if I owned a carrier I wouldn't use it as a base of operations, it certainly would be too tempting not to, but not having one makes the game... exciting.)
I really think the rewards for exobiology are way too high. They kill any motivation to do anything else, which severely narrows the game quite a lot.
Just last week I finished a quite long trip where I decided, just as a change of pace, do system discovery and detailed surface scanning instead of exobiology (well, primarily instead of, I did scan a few plants along the way). In every system I visited along the way I surface-scanned every single high metal content world, water world and Earth-like world, for maximum rewards (regardless of whether it was an already-discovered system or a new one). I also did a few exobiology scans along the way.
The total number of star systems I scanned in this manner was about 90. I got about 40 million credits for it.
For the exobiology I got about 170 million credits. Can you guess in how many systems I scanned exobiology?
Four.
It just doesn't make sense. There's no incentive to do any planet surface scanning because the rewards are so small. You can scan 4 systems for exobiology and get a lot more credits than scanning planets of 90 systems. It just completely kills any incentive to do planet scanning.
I think it was a bad idea to make exobiology so lucrative. Either it should be scaled down, or scanning planets should be more profitable (or both, so they meet more in the middle).
Carrier is nice, but having imagination, goals and a bunch of sharp tools is far more critical if one wants to play ED for a long stretch. There are phases too: I am Han Solo of Elite Dangerous - fly the “best” ship, life of crime (or not). Then, years later, Han finds out his ship isn’t the best, there’s actually the most fitting ship for each of the jobs. There are also fun to fly ships - the 900 m/s Viper, for one. Long story short, Han wants dozens of new ships. He builds those, stacks them in the carrier and suddenly he can jump 500 ly to immediately become a pirate, miner, data hoarder, passenger ferry, explorer, xeno-hunter, canyon racer, cargo ship, xeno-archeologist… the list goes on. The carrier has become “the ship”, which takes one to new adventures.
Or, Han can restart the game from scratch, dig himself into some silly loop, like unlocking two dozens of engineers and ragequit in flames under a banner of “this game is just a pointless grind”. Which it is, if one keeps restarting in a sidewinder. But some people love pointless grind - they can finally switch off the head and grind. Maybe that’s you, reading this. And that’s fine too, I guess. In any case, I can only share my experience. You will do yours. Good luck in your travels!
Or, Han can restart the game from scratch, dig himself into some silly loop, like unlocking two dozens of engineers and ragequit in flames under a banner of “this game is just a pointless grind”. Which it is, if one keeps restarting in a sidewinder. But some people love pointless grind - they can finally switch off the head and grind. Maybe that’s you, reading this. And that’s fine too, I guess. In any case, I can only share my experience. You will do yours. Good luck in your travels!
My record is 1.5b for 1 system. Previously exploration data was enough to pay for the fleet carrier and fuel with a minor amount left over, exo biology didn't even count in that sum, I rarely even bothered because it literally made no difference. My personal feeling is that the reward for exo on a single planet has to be the same for an ELW (first discovery bonus etc) before any bonus payouts, so they seem to have that right, the bonus for first sample looks large, but remember in the bubble, and a lot of people never leave the bubble, once the first sample bonus have all been used that is going to be the max for a lot of people, the basic payout.
So as I said I think the base payouts are in the right position for most bio, the bonus payout brings bacteria, often just a 1m base, to only just worth collecting if you are desperate for money, fact is I don't unless it's a codex entry for me as well, I skip most planets if all bio are only a million or so each even if there's 2 or 3, and there's no associated no codex entry, much better to go on and get a jackpot system.
5 times the base is debatable, maybe they actually set some of the base payouts to high and some to low and 5 times base would be better with that adjustment, minumum base payout for bio 3m and maximum base payout 10m, but that's up to FDEV, if indeed they actually think anything needs doing.
You have a point there, in that the huge payouts for exo come from first-time scans, while scanning life on planets that have already been scanned by someone else give more moderate rewards. This does motivate to find unexplored systems.
Perhaps the correct solution would be to likewise increase the rewards for surface scans of planets that have yet not been scanned by anybody. This, too, would give more incentive to discover new systems and surface-scan their planets.
Just to add a carrier doesnt stop the traditional way of exploration.
I use mine for expeditions out into areas where i want to spend a few weeks or more, sometimes it can be based out in my favorite spot in Lyra's for a month or so and i use a stripped down 83LY Annie if i need to get back to the bubble quick.
For places i know where i am going to (short trip) i still enjoy the solo ship route, i took my Phantom out to the Conflux sites just after Yule and enjoyed the old feeling of finding a planet to land on at night.
The carrier just gives you the choice.
O7
I use mine for expeditions out into areas where i want to spend a few weeks or more, sometimes it can be based out in my favorite spot in Lyra's for a month or so and i use a stripped down 83LY Annie if i need to get back to the bubble quick.
For places i know where i am going to (short trip) i still enjoy the solo ship route, i took my Phantom out to the Conflux sites just after Yule and enjoyed the old feeling of finding a planet to land on at night.
The carrier just gives you the choice.
O7
I got 2.2B from a single system recently. In my case it's an equivalent of over a year of non-exo exploration. It is also 10 times more than my pre-balancing exo efforts. Crazy, huh? 
Yeah, it's just outright ridiculous. Sometimes rewards can be too good for the game (because, as mentioned, when you get rewards that high, that easily, from one single form of gameplay, it completely disincentivizes any other form of gameplay, eg. exploration in this case, which makes the overall game a poorer and less varied experience.)I got 2.2B from a single system recently. In my case it's an equivalent of over a year of non-exo exploration. It is also 10 times more than my pre-balancing exo efforts. Crazy, huh?
With regards to exobio and exploration specifically, there is a significant time investment involved in getting your money's worth from planets. All that time spent driving or flying around the surface of a planet looking for plants, is time you're not spending jumping from system to system. As a long-term explorer out in the deep black, I basically have a choice to make between earning a fatter wad and being able to finish my expedition sooner. This choice becomes particularly stark when I end up spending an hour or two hunting around for an elusive Fungoida or Osseus sample.
There are plenty of first discoveries to be made in exobio that are close to the bubble, but that isn't going to be the case forever as people mine them out for easy cash.
I enjoy having my carrier. I use it as a mobile base pretty much in the bubble, I don't take it out with me on longer journeys. It is usually stationed one or two jumps away from what used to be my home station (Ray Gateway), and if I stay in any region for an extended period of time and might be needing different ships, I jump it there.
If I go exploring I do it all in the ship, I never bother to drag the carrier with me. I use my fleet carrier in the liteal sense, it carries my fleet wherever I need it. I enjoy having it and would always do it again.
In terms of cost: I have refuel, rearm and repair active, and I have a bar, UC and VG installed, so it costs 14.6 MCr per week before maintenance, which I consider.... pffft. Peanuts. I am sitting on 11 BCr in cash and have 1.7 BCr stored on the carrier, so I don't care about the upkeep.
I really like having my carrier as a mobile home station.
If I go exploring I do it all in the ship, I never bother to drag the carrier with me. I use my fleet carrier in the liteal sense, it carries my fleet wherever I need it. I enjoy having it and would always do it again.
In terms of cost: I have refuel, rearm and repair active, and I have a bar, UC and VG installed, so it costs 14.6 MCr per week before maintenance, which I consider.... pffft. Peanuts. I am sitting on 11 BCr in cash and have 1.7 BCr stored on the carrier, so I don't care about the upkeep.
I really like having my carrier as a mobile home station.
- Certainly with some care a cmdr can use any ship for exobiology. However when collecting +1000 samples on +200 planets certain ship builds will be more suitable.
- I don't know your ship build, but a 45Ly AspX does not sound like a traditional exploration ship where much is sacrificed for jump range. If you have beefed up the ship and given it a decent power supply, power distributer, thrusters, and shields then you have a good multirole exploration ship, probably more suitable for a range of tasks than a traditional paper thin tin can.
- On the thread topic of fleet carriers a dedicated exobiology ship is much more ideal than using a dedicated or multipurpose exploration ship. Features like reduced landing footprint, better thrusters, speed, accel, decel, maneuverability, cockpit view, stronger & faster charging shields: a cmdr can zip around collecting the bio samples faster with much reduced risk. And of course a fleet carrier gives the luxury of convenient repairs and unlimited SRVs. Cumulative damage is no longer an issue. And no need to use raw mats for SRV synthesis.
If you obly fly 1 ship then a fleet carrier gains you nothing. Should be pretty obvious.
- While the advantages are significantly reduced I don't believe that to be very true.
- Most players that have 6 billion* saved for the purchase of a carrier have more than one ship.
- The discussion is moot for those that do not have 6 billion* for the purchase of a carrier.
Hey @Navigare Necesse Est , how is you fleet carrier? Travelled much in it? Now that you are playing in Odessey how do you enjoy it?
* 5 billion for carrier, 1 billion for services and maint fees. Plus tritium fuel.
I would argue that it does... If nothing else you'll have Vista Genomics, you'll be able to jump up to 500ly when you find yourself unable to get further, you can have refuel/repair/rearm, and it can have a bar to relax in after the days work is done.
Nothing that another player's carrier cant do.