Here's a few ideas I've had over carriers which I think may help in some of the issues players have around them.
1) Despawned Carriers (hyperspace) as a state for carriers.
Carriers in this state are considered child objects of the primary system star (or root point of the system) for mechanics purposes.
Carriers in this state do not appear on the system map for the system they are in (automatically filtered out).
Carriers in this state do not spawn when their location is approached, and do not show as signal sources.
Carriers in this state cannot be docked with or undocked from.
Carriers in this state still accrue maintenance costs (perhaps even at an increased rate).
Carriers can jump from hyperspace to the system they are in for free (or minimal fuel cost- treat as zero distance jump), or to another system for the regular fuel cost, provided the target location has slots free.
Any player spawning onto a hyperspaced (despawned) carrier causes the carrier to become active at the default system drop point (usually primary body). This may incur the usual FSD delay for a carrier jump to sync with BGS. This should only be people that logged out while docked with the carrier. Case handling on this should otherwise be the same as if the carrier is decommissioned.
Basically, despawned carriers are 'invisible' to other players and should not count for system occupancy - this frees space in the system for other carriers.
Carriers start to enter the despawned state automatically on a server tick (or perhaps a number of ticks) if all the following criteria are met:
A) No active players on the carrier. We don't want to strand players on the carrier.
B) Docking permissions set at none OR no public services are offered (no imports/exports, no outfitting etc). We want to ensure that active carriers (offering services to their squadron or the public) are kept live, and that inactive carriers (doing nothing) are despawned.
There are carriers around (especially after the dupe bug) that have billions in upkeep stashed on them that will never despawn if it's kept down to maintenance costs.
On starting to enter the state, docking permissions are immediately denied (you can't dock with a carrier that's about to despawn).
Basically the system works as garbage collection for carriers. They shoud offer something or be despawned.
2) Odyssey concourse or similar for the carrier. Especially useful for on-foot teams - can all gather on the carrier then jump to do stuff. It'd be nice to go chat with the crew, too.
Yes, I run a carrier. No, at the moment you can't buy / sell from it.
1) Despawned Carriers (hyperspace) as a state for carriers.
Carriers in this state are considered child objects of the primary system star (or root point of the system) for mechanics purposes.
Carriers in this state do not appear on the system map for the system they are in (automatically filtered out).
Carriers in this state do not spawn when their location is approached, and do not show as signal sources.
Carriers in this state cannot be docked with or undocked from.
Carriers in this state still accrue maintenance costs (perhaps even at an increased rate).
Carriers can jump from hyperspace to the system they are in for free (or minimal fuel cost- treat as zero distance jump), or to another system for the regular fuel cost, provided the target location has slots free.
Any player spawning onto a hyperspaced (despawned) carrier causes the carrier to become active at the default system drop point (usually primary body). This may incur the usual FSD delay for a carrier jump to sync with BGS. This should only be people that logged out while docked with the carrier. Case handling on this should otherwise be the same as if the carrier is decommissioned.
Basically, despawned carriers are 'invisible' to other players and should not count for system occupancy - this frees space in the system for other carriers.
Carriers start to enter the despawned state automatically on a server tick (or perhaps a number of ticks) if all the following criteria are met:
A) No active players on the carrier. We don't want to strand players on the carrier.
B) Docking permissions set at none OR no public services are offered (no imports/exports, no outfitting etc). We want to ensure that active carriers (offering services to their squadron or the public) are kept live, and that inactive carriers (doing nothing) are despawned.
There are carriers around (especially after the dupe bug) that have billions in upkeep stashed on them that will never despawn if it's kept down to maintenance costs.
On starting to enter the state, docking permissions are immediately denied (you can't dock with a carrier that's about to despawn).
Basically the system works as garbage collection for carriers. They shoud offer something or be despawned.
2) Odyssey concourse or similar for the carrier. Especially useful for on-foot teams - can all gather on the carrier then jump to do stuff. It'd be nice to go chat with the crew, too.
Yes, I run a carrier. No, at the moment you can't buy / sell from it.