Fleet carrier decommissioning demystified; and the mistakes in the in-game Codex

[Tsunamicom]

Thanks. This was helpful.

I was able to begin a decommission request today after emptying the storage contents and funds, selling modules, and parking it in a fleet carrier administration system, although I'm concerned I might get dinged on ship transfer fees for not being in a fleet carrier construction system. Still a big confused on that.

Basically going to sit Elite out for a year+ while bugs are fixed and the devs get their stuff together, and felt that the 500M+ I would have been paying in maintenance fees was a bigger hit than the cost to decommission (albeit quite expensive - several hours of mining during the golden months). Hoping for a cleaner experience in the future. Even the process of decommissioning was fraught with UI bugs, crashes, and freezes that reinforced my feelings that they have some fixing to do... lol

 

[Fawkner]

Thanks. This was helpful.

I was able to begin a decommission request today after emptying the storage contents and funds, selling modules, and parking it in a fleet carrier administration system, although I'm concerned I might get dinged on ship transfer fees for not being in a fleet carrier construction system. Still a big confused on that.

Basically going to sit Elite out for a year+ while bugs are fixed and the devs get their stuff together, and felt that the 500M+ I would have been paying in maintenance fees was a bigger hit than the cost to decommission (albeit quite expensive - several hours of mining during the golden months). Hoping for a cleaner experience in the future. Even the process of decommissioning was fraught with UI bugs, crashes, and freezes that reinforced my feelings that they have some fixing to do... lol

Doing the same here, I've just moved all of my Cmdrs to Jameson from my fleet carrier ready to decommission it and just waiting to get my uninstalled odyssey pre orders refunded on my alternative accounts then going to see what happens with the game. I'll still use my kickstarter account just to collect a few mats and fly in EDH until they change it when the consoles version comes out. EDO is just so clonky and I'm running a high spec desktop. Even last night my gold python is now a strange shade of green!!!
NICE!!!.

 

[JonSatriani]

Thanks.

A couple more questions I can't find clear answers to.

1. I have 1000T of Tritium in the TDepot. Is there any way to move that to cargo or to ship? Or once it's in the depot it's use it or lose it? If so, that's a bit dumb.
2. It says you can move your ships to a station for free, but only after decommissioning. It also says in a few guides that after decommissioning your ships are moved to the closest station with a fleet carrier office. At what actual point, and where, can I move my ships back to a home station for free?

Thanks!

1. Yes, you lose all tritium in the depot when you decommission. Use it (which you can do while in "Pending Decommission" state) or, sadly, lose it.
2. There are three states in the process:

• Pending Decommission: this starts when you click the Decommission button, and lasts until the timer runs to zero. During this time you can transfer ships and modules for the regular fee. You can also just dock on the carrier and remove them in the usual way (if you're the owner)
• Decommissioned: this starts after the relevant Thursday maintenance downtime and lasts for, as far as we have counted, 2 months. This is the period where you can transfer ships and modules anywhere for free. You can no longer land on the carrier.
• "Gone": once the decommissioned carrier has been removed from the game, your ships and modules are moved to the Vendor station at the nearest Vendor system. You then have to pay to move them again.

 

[JonSatriani]

Thanks. This was helpful.

I was able to begin a decommission request today after emptying the storage contents and funds, selling modules, and parking it in a fleet carrier administration system, although I'm concerned I might get dinged on ship transfer fees for not being in a fleet carrier construction system. Still a big confused on that.

Basically going to sit Elite out for a year+ while bugs are fixed and the devs get their stuff together, and felt that the 500M+ I would have been paying in maintenance fees was a bigger hit than the cost to decommission (albeit quite expensive - several hours of mining during the golden months). Hoping for a cleaner experience in the future. Even the process of decommissioning was fraught with UI bugs, crashes, and freezes that reinforced my feelings that they have some fixing to do... lol

Great! Read my other response above to see when to transfer your ships to avoid fees. Basically after the clock runs out, for the following 2 months.

Also, given the recent huge increase in carrier ownership and subsequent increased difficulty in finding a parking spot... can I ask for the sake of other owners that you move the carrier to a nice uninhabited system before the clock runs out?

 

[Mercath]

In the Pending Decommission state you can get them off as normal. In the Decommissioned state you can’t access the carrier but you can transfer ships and modules stored on it to another shipyard for no fee.

After that... we will find out! Two of us left ships on the decommissioned carrier and we’re leaving them there until it disappears from the game.

Thanks for the testing, about to decomission my carrier too due to upkeep costs. Not because they're high (if you're playing regularly they aren't) but simply because they exist. If I want to stop playing the game for extended periods of time, I pretty much need to get rid of it. Not a well-thought-out part of carriers if you ask me. Not everybody plays this game regularly.

 

[ZenonSeth]

Thank you for investigating! These kinds of things should be things should be things fdev makes clear, considering the relatively large sums of money involved.

The sum returned (~4.8 billion credits) was not apparently contingent on the costs of the test services and stock (Shipyard and Outfitting, with stock, total cost 502 million credits).

Is this still the case? I have roughly 650m worth of facilities (meaning their combined upfront cost).

If I decommission my carrier, do I not get refunded for that upfront cost?

Is it possible to sell those facilities before decommissioning and recover the upfront cost?

 

[Jo Bangles]

Thank you for investigating! These kinds of things should be things should be things fdev makes clear, considering the relatively large sums of money involved.



Is this still the case? I have roughly 650m worth of facilities (meaning their combined upfront cost).

If I decommission my carrier, do I not get refunded for that upfront cost?

Is it possible to sell those facilities before decommissioning and recover the upfront cost?

As I learned the hard way, you get refunded most of the cost of the Carrier (as detailed above), but nothing for facilities. It seems you need to sell these in a system with a Fleet Carrier Administrator. These can be found from Inara.

I was at Explorer's Anchorage without a means to buy Tritium, so could not move mine to Colonia. I had to suck up the loss.

Hope you have better outcome!

 

[ZenonSeth]

As I learned the hard way, you get refunded most of the cost of the Carrier (as detailed above), but nothing for facilities. It seems you need to sell these in a system with a Fleet Carrier Administrator. These can be found from Inara.

I was at Explorer's Anchorage without a means to buy Tritium, so could not move mine to Colonia. I had to suck up the loss.

Hope you have better outcome!

Oof, sucks that you found out the hard way, but at least your experience is helping others! Thanks for the info!
I'm very much inside the bubble with my carrier, so getting to a system with administrator is no problem. Still haven't decided if I should keep the carrier, so if I decide to decommission that's really useful to know!

 

[JonSatriani]

Thank you for investigating! These kinds of things should be things should be things fdev makes clear, considering the relatively large sums of money involved.



Is this still the case? I have roughly 650m worth of facilities (meaning their combined upfront cost).

If I decommission my carrier, do I not get refunded for that upfront cost?

Is it possible to sell those facilities before decommissioning and recover the upfront cost?

To avoid disappointment and credit loss, I recommend that anyone decommissioning a carrier COMPLETELY empties it before they do so. You get 100% refund when uninstalling optional services in a carrier admin system. You will get a 4.85bn credit refund when you decommission a completely empty carrier.

 

[Neilski]

After that... we will find out! Two of us left ships on the decommissioned carrier and we’re leaving them there until it disappears from the game.

I may be missing it in the posts above, but what was the outcome of this experiment?
And was the "transport my ships home from Colonia" pseudo-exploit ever nerfed?

It's not quite on-topic for this thread, but a related question that I can't find an answer to but probably doesn't warrant a fresh thread:
why would anyone ever bother to suspend a service as against just uninstalling it? I had originally presumed that suspension could be done anywhere (making it worthwhile) but this is apparently wrong. So now, since both suspension and uninstalling can only be done in FC admin systems, I am seeing zero benefit to a suspension [Edit: <-- this is not the case]. Anyone wanting to save cash can also save a shedload of mass (and reduce the upkeep even further) by just uninstalling until they need the facility again... I guess I'm missing something though.

 

[varonica]

I may be missing it in the posts above, but what was the outcome of this experiment?
And was the "transport my ships home from Colonia" pseudu-exploit ever nerfed?

It's not quite on-topic for this thread, but a related question that I can't find an answer to but probably doesn't warrant a fresh thread:
why would anyone ever bother to suspend a service as against just uninstalling it? I had originally presumed that suspension could be done anywhere (making it worthwhile) but this is apparently wrong. So now, since both suspension and uninstalling can only be done in FC admin systems, I am seeing zero benefit to a suspension. Anyone wanting to save cash can also save a shedload of mass (and reduce the upkeep even further) by just uninstalling until they need the facility again... I guess I'm missing something though.

You can suspend/activate them anywhere, I do it sometimes. Why? Simple. I am an explorer, I am out of the bubble for months at a time, I use a fuel scoop so never need to refuel, I don't combat so never need ammo, and I very rarely need repairs, so I suspend refuel/repair/rearm. If at some point I am silly enough to run into a planet and do serious damage I can activate repair/refuel/rearm, once repaired I de-activate it again, that way I only pay 1 week maintenance on that service rather than all the time. It can lead to considerable savings while out traveling for months.

 

[Neilski]

You can suspend/activate them anywhere

Ah, brilliant - ta! (Whatever forum/wiki info I read was clearly wrong, thankfully.)

 

[Sublime]

You can suspend/activate them anywhere, I do it sometimes. Why? Simple. I am an explorer, I am out of the bubble for months at a time, I use a fuel scoop so never need to refuel, I don't combat so never need ammo, and I very rarely need repairs, so I suspend refuel/repair/rearm. If at some point I am silly enough to run into a planet and do serious damage I can activate repair/refuel/rearm, once repaired I de-activate it again, that way I only pay 1 week maintenance on that service rather than all the time. It can lead to considerable savings while out traveling for months.

Is this a bug? Everything I can find says that you must be in a carrier admin system to suspend or reactivate modules. At least that seems to be the intention which is why I’m asking of this is a bug.

 

[yianniv]

Is this a bug? Everything I can find says that you must be in a carrier admin system to suspend or reactivate modules. At least that seems to be the intention which is why I’m asking of this is a bug.

You need to be in an admin system to install/uninstall them. You can pause/resume them anywhere.

 

[Neilski]

You need to be in an admin system to install/uninstall them. You can pause/resume them anywhere.

Indeed, I've just proved this to myself by intentionally jumping to a non-admin system and I could still suspend/resume stuff.
Hard to be sure it's a bug when the Codex (quite amazingly) is totally devoid of any comments about it. The Codex looks like it hasn't been properly reviewed since pre-alpha for FC though.
If it were to be deemed a bug though (see my post above) you'd be back to it being 100% pointless for anyone to ever suspend a facility, or at least I personally can't see why doing so would ever be a better idea than uninstalling them.

 

[Cmdr Esteban]

I always love it when players and groups do this kind of thing. I’m not a carrier owner, but this is some really interesting research Jon Satriani. By the way, I loved Surfing with the Alien. Oh wait, that was Joe Satriani.

By the way Jon, yesterday I docked on your carrier Marching On Together for its scheduled trip to Colonia. Need to sell some culinary and cocktail recipes and pay a visit to Rosa Dayette for a suit battery upgrade. Really appreciate the dedicated carrier owners at times like these. Marvellous work.

 

[JonSatriani]

I always love it when players and groups do this kind of thing. I’m not a carrier owner, but this is some really interesting research Jon Satriani. By the way, I loved Surfing with the Alien. Oh wait, that was Joe Satriani.

By the way Jon, yesterday I docked on your carrier Marching On Together for its scheduled trip to Colonia. Need to sell some culinary and cocktail recipes and pay a visit to Rosa Dayette for a suit battery upgrade. Really appreciate the dedicated carrier owners at times like these. Marvellous work.

Thanks! That's actually not my carrier but is the other half of the weekly FCOC Colonia Shuttle, operated by CMDR Olive_Oyl. I just post the ads on Reddit. We go in opposite directions every week (mine is called Sleeper Service H2T-LHV).

I also love Surfing with the Alien.

 

[Cmdr Esteban]

Thanks! That's actually not my carrier but is the other half of the weekly FCOC Colonia Shuttle, operated by CMDR Olive_Oyl. I just post the ads on Reddit. We go in opposite directions every week (mine is called Sleeper Service H2T-LHV).

I also love Surfing with the Alien.

I’ll be sure to use Sleeper Service next time. Hope you don’t mind me joining the FCOC on Reddit even though I don’t own an FC - you guys help make carriers a great gameplay mechanic even for people like me who don’t plan to own one, and the Colonia Shuttle is very much appreciated.

Cheers.

 

[Danspy501st]

So in theory, I wont loose any ship or models that I end up having stored on the carrier if she goes into decomission. That is nice to hear

It is more I do like to get one, but Im more afraid in making sure it can still make some profit. Not profit as I can use, but more as profit so it can keep itself upkeep. Like I arent as much on Elite as before, and at times it can be months before I get back into the game, and I wont risk on loosing a huge mega ship with all of my other ships on (Is the best idea when I choose to get one) Especially if I keep my miner ship on there to mine for fuel for the carrier

 

[Frankymole]

I've never really found a way for a carrier to earn its own upkeep, but I did spend a couple of weeks mining tritium, then set it to sell to other CMDRs in Colonia - that netted me 2 billion credits, which should pay for upkeep for over 2 years into the future.