Does it make financial sense to explore with a Carrier ?

[Red Rocket]

I got my carrier when they first came out and have made two long trips out into the back only returning to refuel. I have gone through about 36,000 tons of Tritium on the two trips combined, purchasing all Tritium in the bubble at around 4200 credits per ton. When out exploring I would make about 10 to 15 mill credits per hour and been wondering if it makes sense to go exploring with a Carrier now.

Carrier Cost for 10 week trip

Maintenance 18,000,000 a week times 10 weeks = 180,000,000

15,000 tons of Tritium is about 780,000,000. At 52,000 per ton

180,000,000 + 780,000,000 = 960,000,000 or 96,000,000. Cost Per Week

At 15 mil per hour I would have to explore to 6.5 hours per week just to break even. ( remember Carrier takes 25% of sold data )

Also, must look at the time to load the Carrier with fuel. There was a CG to enable full size stations with large landing pads able to sell Tritium. After that CG I haven’t seen one station with a large landing pad have any amount of Tritium over 150 tons of Tritium and I have looked daily. So that puts one loading about 192 tons per trip from medium pad ship.

Time to load 15,000 tons at 192 tons per trip = 7 to 8 hours just to load Carrier, at about 5.5 min per trip.

There was nothing I did on those two trips with the carrier I couldn’t have done in a single ship.

What do you think is it worth the cost to Explore with Carrier ?

 

[Speedcuffs]

Not for me.
Fuel costs not worth it now.

 

[varonica]

Yes.

But....as you say do you need it. I do, but then I have many targets that are beyond the range of the furthest jump range of any available ship.

Maintenance 18,000,000 a week times 10 weeks = 180,000,000

10m + maintenance costs of 100,000 per jump if you only run essential services! No need for shipyard, out stuff to sleep you don't need, like repair, only use it when you need it urgently.

180,000,000 + 780,000,000 = 960,000,000 or 96,000,000. Cost Per Week

Your math is wrong, why are you adding the cost of Tritium to weekly costs, that only makes sense if you have a fixed exploration period, which I know you are proposing but that's not the way to do it. In general out in the black in unexplored territory you can often pull in 15-25m per hour exploring, sometimes a lot more if you find a lucrative system, if you don't set a fixed time then Tritium costs don't need to be amortised over travel period, you only need to amortise maintenance and jump, the only thing you need to be concerned about is that your exploration covers the cost of the Carrier jumping. Let's say you jump your carrier 500ly, then take an hour to travel that distance exploring as you go in a 50ly range ship to meet your carrier at its destination. If you have turned off all non-essential services and kept maintenance to 10m per week the money earned for that 500ly run will be roughly equal to the cost of maintaining the Carrier for a week with enough left over to pay for fuel the Carrier for that jump!

Once you have done one run of an hour you only need to cover fuel costs for the rest of the week.

In other words the carrier becomes a zero cost factor in your expedition and an earner of you stay out longer....but you are correct if you aren't going anywhere you need to carrier to get to then it doesn't make sense to take it.....unless you are using it as insurance against being destroyed on the trip by accident or a ganker and lose 1b worth of exploration data.

Most of my runs don't actually use all my fuel but I do to the tank up just in case.

 

[Riverside]

Worth the cost in terms of profit? Break even at best I'd say, depends how long you are out for & how much data you get at each waypoint. You'd be better off exploring in a ship & when you sell your data it's virtually all profit

But if you want to explore, particularly with a group of friends a carrier will offer you choices that may make the activity more engaging for you. After all, what else would you do with the Credits?

 

[TheRoninX]

I guess it all depends on what you do to make money. If you only make money from exploration then the FC is not financially viable in my opinion.

 

[here_it_comes]

Financially? Fun is what matters, and you can pay your bills with exploration data.

The real question regarding whether to explore with a FC or not is; do you want to be able to swap ships/loadouts while out exploring, and are you willing to mine Tritium in order to do so?

 

[varonica]

I guess it all depends on what you do to make money. If you only make money from exploration then the FC is not financially viable in my opinion.

As long as I break even I don't care, I have a Fleet Carrier, the ships that I want, if I feel I am a little bit down for the trip I just explore for a few more days to boost the kitty up. One of the breakers in FC exploration appears to be the desire to have a fixed length trip, and that's where issues arise. My first round the galaxy trip had me out for I think nearly 6 months with no fixed time for returning to anywhere, with a FC I don't need to return to anywhere at any particular time, I could just stay out forever, the FC is my home!

 

[Red Rocket]

As long as I break even I don't care, I have a Fleet Carrier, the ships that I want, if I feel I am a little bit down for the trip I just explore for a few more days to boost the kitty up. One of the breakers in FC exploration appears to be the desire to have a fixed length trip, and that's where issues arise. My first round the galaxy trip had me out for I think nearly 6 months with no fixed time for returning to anywhere, with a FC I don't need to return to anywhere at any particular time, I could just stay out forever, the FC is my home!

Don't get me wrong, I do love my Fleet Carrier and think its a great addition to the game. Fleet Carriers are very well liked and enjoyed by thousands of commanders, but after the high purchase cost and ongoing maintenance cost I would think that Fdev would encourage their use by lower fuel cost and ease of finding ample supplies so its easer to use your carrier. At least we should find Tritium at a Large pad stations.


PS
Congratulations on your around the Galaxy trip.......... OUTSTANDING
like I said Fleet Carriers are a Great addition to Elite.

 

[Red Rocket]

Yes.

But....as you say do you need it. I do, but then I have many targets that are beyond the range of the furthest jump range of any available ship.



10m + maintenance costs of 100,000 per jump if you only run essential services! No need for shipyard, out stuff to sleep you don't need, like repair, only use it when you need it urgently.



Your math is wrong, why are you adding the cost of Tritium to weekly costs, that only makes sense if you have a fixed exploration period, which I know you are proposing but that's not the way to do it. In general out in the black in unexplored territory you can often pull in 15-25m per hour exploring, sometimes a lot more if you find a lucrative system, if you don't set a fixed time then Tritium costs don't need to be amortised over travel period, you only need to amortise maintenance and jump, the only thing you need to be concerned about is that your exploration covers the cost of the Carrier jumping. Let's say you jump your carrier 500ly, then take an hour to travel that distance exploring as you go in a 50ly range ship to meet your carrier at its destination. If you have turned off all non-essential services and kept maintenance to 10m per week the money earned for that 500ly run will be roughly equal to the cost of maintaining the Carrier for a week with enough left over to pay for fuel the Carrier for that jump!

Once you have done one run of an hour you only need to cover fuel costs for the rest of the week.

In other words the carrier becomes a zero cost factor in your expedition and an earner of you stay out longer....but you are correct if you aren't going anywhere you need to carrier to get to then it doesn't make sense to take it.....unless you are using it as insurance against being destroyed on the trip by accident or a ganker and lose 1b worth of exploration data.

Most of my runs don't actually use all my fuel but I do to the tank up just in case.

On my the last two trips I had a route planned that used 40% fuel out and 40 % back so I had 10 % in reserve ( no mining for Tritium ).
First trip made it to "The Veils"
Second trip made it to " Sag A and Ryker's Hope"

On my trips i will use all but 10% of the fuel so I must include fuel cost into the trip.
Both times I loaded about 21,000 tons of Tritium onboard.

 

[Chaines]

Also, must look at the time to load the Carrier with fuel. There was a CG to enable full size stations with large landing pads able to sell Tritium. After that CG I haven’t seen one station with a large landing pad have any amount of Tritium over 150 tons of Tritium and I have looked daily. So that puts one loading about 192 tons per trip from medium pad ship.

Time to load 15,000 tons at 192 tons per trip = 7 to 8 hours just to load Carrier, at about 5.5 min per trip.

There was nothing I did on those two trips with the carrier I couldn’t have done in a single ship.

I don't understand this part, I just refueled my FC from a large station with over 100k tritium to sell for 50k ? I can find plenty of those; am I missing something ?

 

[ManlyVIK]

I prefer to let others bring the tritium. Just don't be stingy on your purchase price and any buy order you make will be filled in a few days.

 

[K Olley]

I mine and explore out in the black, I have got neither shipyard or outfitting installed, not got any use for either and I prefer the space that they would take up to be used for cargo storage 4,750 ton is a lot of space

When traveling light, it is surprising just how little fuel you actually use compared with a nearly full cargo hold, yes I know some don't like mining but others don't mind and if you are not in too much of a hurry then it is an option.

I do not know where you get the idea that there is no fuel available at large pad stations, I have just looked on INARA - commodities - Tritium - supplies tab and filtered off small pads and there is almost a page full with supplies over 250,000 tons available, and most of these have been reported within the last day

I am just pottering around slowly heading back toward the bubble filling my hold as I go, I shall be there just long enough to sell my cargo, pick up one or two items that may be useful and maybe splash out on a couple of new ships out of my mining profits.

I don't do vast amounts of exploring, but I prefer to be off the beaten track, so I get that little bit extra for first discovery and I do on some of the smaller systems fully probe everything, In the last 6 weeks I am down about 80mil on the carrier account, peanuts really as my last mining sale which I offloaded myself in the Colonia area so it went onto my cmdr account gained an extra 2.4 billion, and some say there is no money in mining now

 

[askavir]

Financial sense? No, you'll make less direct profit.
Loads of fun? Yes absolutely.

It's a matter of what you value the most.

 

[GoldenSilver484]

If I ever decide to go out on a deep space exploration trip, I'll definitely be taking my FC. The ability to switch ships or not care about dying while doing something stupid is too good to not use.

Also, your FC only takes 12.5% of your exploration data and vouchers, the other 12.5% is added to the carrier's balance and can be withdrawn whenever you need/want it.

10m + maintenance costs of 100,000 per jump if you only run essential services! No need for shipyard, out stuff to sleep you don't need, like repair, only use it when you need it urgently.

Since my squadron is mostly on break until Odyssey releases, my FC rarely costs more than 9m a week with everything but the warehouse, shipyard and outfitting installed.

I only enable services as needed, turning them off when I leave, like lights in my house. It only breaks 9m a week if I start jumping it around, so the upkeep is covered by doing whatever I feel like doing, or do nothing for several weeks after running missions or mining.

If taken exploring the upkeep will be trivial compared to the tritium, but again, easily covered by miasions or mining.

 

[Nadreck]

There is plenty of tritium available in the Bubble from Large-pad stations at around 50k/t.

I suspect the problem is that people are still using Inara to look for "Best Exports", and seeing only outposts. Don't do this, use the "Exports" tab instead. Large-pad tritium is too expensive to qualify as a "Best Export", so it doesn't show up there. You only save a few thousand credits per ton buying from outposts, and you triple your loading time. Not worth the hassle.

 

[Oytis57]

FCs are just another layer of grind.

 

[Astaran]

I got my carrier when they first came out and have made two long trips out into the back only returning to refuel. I have gone through about 36,000 tons of Tritium on the two trips combined, purchasing all Tritium in the bubble at around 4200 credits per ton. When out exploring I would make about 10 to 15 mill credits per hour and been wondering if it makes sense to go exploring with a Carrier now.

Carrier Cost for 10 week trip

Maintenance 18,000,000 a week times 10 weeks = 180,000,000

15,000 tons of Tritium is about 780,000,000. At 52,000 per ton

180,000,000 + 780,000,000 = 960,000,000 or 96,000,000. Cost Per Week

At 15 mil per hour I would have to explore to 6.5 hours per week just to break even. ( remember Carrier takes 25% of sold data )

Also, must look at the time to load the Carrier with fuel. There was a CG to enable full size stations with large landing pads able to sell Tritium. After that CG I haven’t seen one station with a large landing pad have any amount of Tritium over 150 tons of Tritium and I have looked daily. So that puts one loading about 192 tons per trip from medium pad ship.

Time to load 15,000 tons at 192 tons per trip = 7 to 8 hours just to load Carrier, at about 5.5 min per trip.

There was nothing I did on those two trips with the carrier I couldn’t have done in a single ship.

What do you think is it worth the cost to Explore with Carrier ?

I'm currently on my second longer exploration trip with my carrier, so here are my 2 cent for what they are worth.

You don't need a carrier for exploration, unless it's for very specific circumstances (reaching systems that require the jump range of a carrier). If you take your time, you don't even need an AspX or Krait Phantom either. You can do it all cheaper in a DBX...or a Sidewinder for that matter. Exploration with a carrier is a vanity project for those who enjoy it. It's just for the fun in a videogame and not to be 100% cost efficient. The main benefit for me is, that I can use different ships while exploring. One day I use my AspX, the next my DBX, then the Anaconda or the Clipper or even the Keelback. Additionally, I can go mining (Tritium or LTDs/VO/Painite) to break up the monotony of jump-honk-scan-map-repeat. That level of freedom and choice is what I need the carrier for.

With that out of the way, what are the financial aspects then? You can easily earn the weekly upkeep for your carrier while out exploring. My carrier runs all services, including outfitting and shipyard (because for this trip, I've taken my brother in his newbie DBX with me as a passenger), and I still don't have any issues earning the upkeep casually by just playing the game. A single good system with ELW, Ammonia Worlds or Water Worlds has the potential to earn almost the entire upkeep for the week in one go.

Tritium costs are a different topic. I've stocked up about 5700tons@50k in the bubble, using my 720t Cutter. Earning that amount of money back with exploration will take a bit more time, but it is doable. In the end it's a matter of time: How long do you want to stay out and how many jumps will you conduct with your carrier? The longer you stay out, the more exploration data and money you earn. The less frequent you jump your carrier, the lower the weekly maintainance and fuel consumption.
I use my carrier as a base of operations, not a base of operations. This means, that once I am in the area I want to explore, I barely move my carrier at all. It's the "home station" I return to, the place to hand in my exploration data and codex entries or to change ships. I will scout for a nice location or a Tritium hotspot and park the carrier for several days or weeks, before I move it again. I usually buy the Tritium for the journey (both ways) before heading out and later only mine additional Tritium for additional jumps in the area of operations. But I will always keep enough Tritium in storage, in case I want/need to move back to the bubble asap without having to mine additional fuel first.

The other advantage of the carrier is, that you can cash in immediately without having to wait for your return to the bubble. How often have we read about explorers returning after several months of exploration, only to get ganked (when playing in open) at the last minute or crashing into the station and thus losing all the data and money and first discoveries they made. This just can't happen to you with a carrier, because you can constantly hand in your data and secure your first discoveries.

So, in short: Are carriers cost efficient explorers? No. But they allow for a different style of exploration (multiple different ships and activities like mining to break up the monotony). In the end it's up to you to decide what's more fun for you. It's a videogame after all, not some cost-benefit calcuation for a real-life corporation. If you enjoy the idea of heading out into the dark with a carrier as a mobile base of operations and a fleet of explorers at your fingertips, do it. You can make enough money to pay for that playstyle. If you want to be as cost efficient as possible, a carrier is probably not the right tool for you.

 

[gooddoc]

It only makes financial sense to me if I also throw in a bit of mining too.
I have both my 'Conda & Cutters set up as Explorominers. Every Metallic Ring I find is scanned & should there be a Platinum hotspot in such Rings, then I spend a little time laser mining for Platinum & Osmium.
Doesn't take long for my 126T 'Conda hold to be full & should I wish to spend more time mining, I jump in my Carrier & swap for my 512T Cutter.

These are the only two materials, as far as I'm concerned, that currently have stable high selling prices in the bubble. These wares are sold & their profits used to part offset the cost of refilling my Carrier with Tritium @around 50k/T, for my next trip.

btw. Though I don't do Core Mining, should I stumble across a Core, while in my Cutter, it's geared up for all types of Mining, so I will blast that 'roid, for the goodies.

 

[Rat Catcher]

Although there is a 25% reduction in the sale price of explo date, assuming you are selling to your own FC, the actual 'loss' is 12.5% as that 25% is split equally between FC and UC/PF(?)
If it were me 'out in the black' for an extended tour I'd not be spending money buying Tritium more than was absolutely necessary, there is an unlimited and easy to acquire supply throughout the galaxy.

 

[gooddoc]

If it were me 'out in the black' for an extended tour I'd not be spending money buying Tritium more than was absolutely necessary, there is an unlimited and easy to acquire supply throughout the galaxy.

I'm yet to be convinced on that part cmdr.

Unless I note that there is better yield of Tritium in Hotspots in Icy Rings, I'd much prefer to fill up my Carrier in the bubble @ 50k/T & only Mine for Tritium as a last resort if I drain my Carrier's hold of fuel.
I've yet to see my Mining of Tritium come anywhere close to being efficient, unlike what I find when Mining in Platinum Hotspots for Platinum.