Fleet Carrier - Or is it Engineers 3.0?

[Misty_Dark]

I think the next question will be how are you gonna dock your fleet onto the fleet carrier since you can only fly one ship at a time. For instance, you park the carrier outside the station where your other ships are stored, since the carrier is too big to enter the station. How then are you gonna transfer your fleet to the carrier if you are the one piloting the carrier? Unless you call the ships to the carrier and pay for an NPC to bring it, right now that would be the only way I suppose unless they introduce a new way of teleporting to and from. Or you can have a small shuttle that it is only large enough to carry the pilot that he can then fly to the station, then pack the shuttle onto your other ship that your are going to dock onto the carrier. Then unpack the shuttle to get another ship.

Would also be feasible that such a large ship like a carrier would require an NPC crew to man all the stations on it. It would be totally unrealistic to just have you, the pilot, on the ship. Which I would not mind being able to manage an NPC crew, train them up to have them perform their jobs better, to man the defenses whenever I'm off the ship...etc. Wouldn't even mind the cost of upkeep, since I have plenty of credits as it is and nothing to really spend it on. Maybe require you to travel around to different locations looking for specific crew to hire. Lets face it, the grind is here to stay, so lets at least make the grind that we're gonna have to do...mean something.

Thinking about this problem before, the most obvious solution to this is allow you to request your ships delivered... this sounds like a good idea, and if parked outside the station where most of your ships are, it should be done rather quickly.... but if the ships that are being transfered are a bit away, then you could potentially move your Fleet Carrier to a new location before the ships arrive, and then what happens? Will you be able to schedule a move of your Fleet Carrier with ships in transit? if so, what happens with ships that where in transit when Fleet Carrier have moved? will they just get stuck in the system where they are when Fleet Carriier moved? will thye autodock at the closest station? Shoudl ships still move to Fleet Carrier at new location, will you have to pay extra for that? the risk is that the transfer is now longer.... so many questions, and few easy answers....

There are still alot more of what and ifs to spin on this issues... if we will actually be able to have our fleet of ships on our Fleet Carrier. Will we have the same max limit on how many ships can store as a station? or would be only be able to have fewer ships on our Fleet Carrier?

 

[Rat Catcher]

Just about everything we know about Fleet Carriers was in the announcement:

ANNOUNCEMENT - Gamescom Reveals - Fleet Carrier Details

Hello everyone, In a similar fashion to our Lavecon 2019 reveals, we wanted to give all of you who couldn't join us at our Gamescom Frontier Community Meet a rundown of all the details that just dropped... or should we say hauled in here by the aid of... a Fleet Carrier! December Update - The...

forums.frontier.co.uk

Anything else is speculation... (Not that I have a problem with speculation - very little meat on the bone cast in our direction!)

But as for piloting - From that announcement: Schedule jumps from the Galaxy Map when you want and from wherever you are in the galaxy. Sounds like no-one is actually in the Pilot's seat, sadly.

The evil voice in the back of my head doesn't sneer too loudly about FC engineers, I wish I knew why

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

....

The evil voice in the back of my head doesn't sneer too loudly about FC engineers, I wish I knew why

Wishing more engineer stuff onto others really isn't very nice.

 

[Rat Catcher]

Wishing more engineer stuff onto others really isn't very nice.

I'd never do that!
Just my 'spidey sense' tingling....

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

I'd never do that!
Just my 'spidey sense' tingling....

eek Spiders!

 

[Exterminatus93]

That's the part I was referring to. The word "Schedule" strongly suggests there will be no direct, immediate control.

It depends on the interpretation you give it, it sounds like what we do now with the ships, but another way of saying it and it makes no sense to have to wait for a schedule to jump, it will be immediate

 

[Cpt Shadow Wolfe]

It depends on the interpretation you give it, it sounds like what we do now with the ships, but another way of saying it and it makes no sense to have to wait for a schedule to jump, it will be immediate

Yep, it would have to be immediate, otherwise it would be pointless to park my ships on the carrier and then wait a week or so for the "Scheduled" jump, because then I could not do anything else on that account until the "Scheduled" jump. And I suppose I would have to be on the Carrier at the time of the jump because if I was out...lets say mining or something, and missed my window to get back to the Carrier, would it jump without me? Then I would have to travel to the system that it jumped to in a ship that might not have much jump range. That would be tedious.

 

[Rat Catcher]

It depends on the interpretation you give it, it sounds like what we do now with the ships, but another way of saying it and it makes no sense to have to wait for a schedule to jump, it will be immediate

The intimation of scheduling a jump from anywhere in the galaxy suggests it is a straight remote control jump - by that wording alone it would appear that a destination is picked and the option to jump there in FC is given, nice if one has explored / mined ahead and wishes to bring it to the current system.

ETA: or if combat FC to bring the squadron members into a 'furball'

 

[Misty_Dark]

Good possible that they don't have a cockpit at all and thus you'll never be able to directly control them from their own cockpit seat. I don't think they are treated like 'ships' at all, rather like movable stations that you can order to certain places. Something in the line of Jaques Station, just with a different type of (unknown to date) fuel. By means of the description I envision that they're exclusively controlled via GalMap interface. In this case that next question would be obsolete.

Sorry if that bursts some dreams, but I can hardly imagine that fleet carriers will be anything else than pretty mundane (while the underlying netcode will be the tricky part)...

This also my understanding how they will most likely work... just like Gnosis, a player group "operated" mega ship, except that instead of having to contact FDev to move the Fleet Carrier, we will most likely get some sort of ingame UI instead.... as I doubt FDev want their support to manage hundreds if not thousands of request to move Fleet Carriers around... not very cost effective...

 

[sandkid]

Personally, I have no qualms with having to 'build' a Fleet Carrier rather than just outright purchase one. What's sad is that FDev would look at that and think "Oh, material and commodities grind!"

No, I really wish Fleet Carriers (and numerous other aspects of the game) had single-player-esque campaigns of a handful of missions. For a Fleet Carrier, it could look like so:

• Fly to Jameson Memorial to receive authorization to begin construction of Fleet Carrier (requires Elite rank or Founder, ya?)
• Visit Farseer to discuss designs for capital FSD.
• Palin asks you to return to her a rare commodity (x1 of it).
• Palin says the design is approved, now you just need to find a shipyard to build it. A shipyard is available in all capital systems (Sol, Achenar, and Alioth).
• Viist a capital (requires a permit) and dock at Capital Shipyard.
• Pay credit cost (500,000,000 credits for example) to begin Fleet Carrier construction.
• Fleet Carrier needs navigation data for deployment. Go to your system of choice for deployment.
• At system of choice, ask allied faction to build nav beacon (must be allied with a faction in that system). Faction sends you on planetary scan mission (non-illegal) to upload data to one of their planetary outposts to help route Fleet Carrier.
• Complete the mission, Fleet Carrier arrives at your system and is ready to be boarded.

Nevermind you can add some cinematics in this to emphasize the coolness of the achievement. All in all, a basic progresss map like above isn't all that difficult or time consuming. You could mimic it for folks in Colonia, too, though you don't have to - part of living in Colonia is being far away from the 'major' civilization.

Anyhow, I wish Elite used more opportunities to tell a story about my commander.

 

[Misty_Dark]

The intimation of scheduling a jump from anywhere in the galaxy suggests it is a straight remote control jump - by that wording alone it would appear that a destination is picked and the option to jump there in FC is given, nice if one has explored / mined ahead and wishes to bring it to the current system.

ETA: or if combat FC to bring the squadron members into a 'furball'

Fleet Carriers are most likely a development from how the mega ship Gnosis works... So instead of contacting FDev hey, we want to move ship to here on X date and then move to this system on Y date, etc....
In the beginning of Gnosis, there was a limit that ship could only move on Thursdays resets, but this is most likely solved now....


So this suggest some new ingame UI for the owners of Fleet Carriers to schedule a jump... and due to some background stuff and limitations etc, like only one Fleet Carrier in any given location/system etc...they could add a 1-2 hours prepare time before the ship actually jumps, an ingame reason could be that that is the time it takes to prepare the Fleet Carrier for a jump... So then it makes some sense to be able to plan a jump ahead of time with a scheduler... so that if you plan ahead, you can have your fleet carrier at specific location at your choosen time.

 

[Misty_Dark]

[...]
Anyhow, I wish Elite used more opportunities to tell a story about my commander.

You are not alone in believing that FDev have missed alot of opportunities to tell a story... we have lots of interesting lore in Elite universe. I know the blaze your own path and all that... but what if the empire and federation ranks was replaced with stories telling us how empire and federation came to be and their conflicts, have us visit important places. etc. etc. and as we progress the story, we receive the ranks...

 

[Good Whiskey]

Anyhow, I wish Elite used more opportunities to tell a story about my commander.

When I was new and clueless, I did dubious things for the Mob of Hollatja. After that, I traveled further out into the bubble and found myself in the service of the Marquis du Basi during a war with the Social Mombilar Revolutionary Party. This is where I learned how to fight. When that war ended, I made my way wearily to Procyon, where my focus became gaining access to Sol and Sirius. I got waylaid by the promise of riches from mining void opals, so after acquiring my permits, I purchased a beat up old Kellback and went out to make my fortune. I did that for a spell, and when I had enough money to purchase the ships I was most interested in, I set about gaining access to them by moving to Cubeo and working my way up through the Imperial ranks. Along the way I made friends and learned about all the amazing deep space destinations that people are journeying to every day, and it became clear to me that my ultimate goal was to leave the bubble and its fractious conflicts, and possibly never return.

This is the story of me in Elite. I don't really see how it would benefit from more text or lore. It's a great story. Just enough of a story to serve as a backdrop for the gameplay I indulge in daily. But perhaps that's just me.

 

[Misty_Dark]

If fleet carriers will be what I imagine, I wouldn't pay 1 billion, maybe 500 million at best. I'm looking forward to all the drama queens currently complaining about the mining nerf, cause most of them seem to be so sure they will cost several billions. All that 'hard work' for nothing, delicious...

It is not the cost of the Fleet Carrier that I fear, just like the price of an Anaconda is not just 147 million... that is just the ship, then comes the upgraded modules, etc... and all of a sudden you might be looking at something like 617 million... or 831 million if you all out on the most expensive Hull....


So if the Fleet Carrier was only 500 million, then a fully uppgraded Fleet Carrier could add some 1 500-2 000 millions..

 

[babelfisch]

Seriously? Have they not read your posts? You're pretty balanced in your praise and criticism of the game. I'd probably put you on the more critical side of the fence, but not by much.

Old Duck doesn't disagree with every design decision. That's pretty much the definition of white knight on this forum.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Yep, it would have to be immediate, otherwise it would be pointless to park my ships on the carrier and then wait a week or so for the "Scheduled" jump, because then I could not do anything else on that account until the "Scheduled" jump. And I suppose I would have to be on the Carrier at the time of the jump because if I was out...lets say mining or something, and missed my window to get back to the Carrier, would it jump without me? Then I would have to travel to the system that it jumped to in a ship that might not have much jump range. That would be tedious.

It could be both. You set a schedule and it will jump regardless of whether you're in game or not. Or you jump when you see fit. Either way, as you say one problem is what happens to the people in your squadron who aren't on board when it jumps? Or they release an ED phone and desktop app allowing you to remote control your carrier, permissions pending. #unlikely

One solution would be to have all Cmdrs not online have their ships automatically (and instantly) return to the carrier before the jump. Ungainly but it cuts out issues.

I suspect carriers will be upgradeable and possibly by engineering them or buying expensive addons. Maybe both depending on what you're wanting to do. Indeed why wouldn't there by elements of upgrading? There's seemingly little extra playability in buying a fully furnished carrier from the off.

It shows though that a seemingly simple (from the outside) idea can have various really tricky design issues which in turn cause more serious programming and networking problems.