I totally agree that a way to refuel without the painful mining would be lovely, but you do need to do quite a bit of roaming to use up a full carrier load of tritium (not to mention the DSSA possibilities of finding some while out there) - almost enough to get you all the way from Sol to Beagle Point and back.
Fleet Carriers: A question on maximum (round-trip) range.
- Thread starter A10A
- Start date
Using the Colonia Bridge to refuel as you go you can arrive at Colonia with a fully fueled carrier, once there you can get anywhere in the galaxy and back without running short of Tritium so yeah there's no danger anymore of spending weeks mining to refuel your carrier.
I'd imagine that it's a non issue for a "real" explorer...
Fill up the carrier, go out exploring, once you've gone around 500ly, jump your carrier to catch up, every once in a while mine 100u of tritium. Don't see how this could possibly be a problem (except for maybe on the forum)...
If you keep your carrier light (no un-needed services or cargo) you will use just over half the tritium you would need for a fully loaded carrier, you then do a mining run every few jumps, you only need to mine half as much.
It all depends on everyone's own definition of what "exploring" is. Some just want to visit a particular place or places and then come back, others can spend months or even years checking out everything else along the way.
Sorry to resurrect a dead thing. I came here for the fuel calculations as well, to estimate my needs to move my fleet to Colonia, and as to whether your ships and modules factor in to fuel usage or if I my commodities do. In the event any updates were made since I last owned a carrier. I think I got enough of what I needed here, but thought I’d mention that I was in the same position as the OP, back when carriers released. Back then? I don’t believe there was a such thing as getting the full 5 billion back, subsequent decom. I think FDev had a depreciation system in place at the time and I believe I only received 3.5 billion back for my first carrier decommissioning. I think you now get a solid 5 billion back.
That said? I learned, early on, that having a carrier, for exploration purposes was more of a crux. Carriers aren’t dynamic like they are in something like NMS…or even from what I’ve learned of X4. They are meant to act as more of a stationary thing, an in-place for reliable trading. The more players supporting a carrier the more mobile they become. There is still something of a “winged players only” vibe to them. For example, one of the reasons I decommed mine, in late 2021, around the Tritium shortage, was because I worked out that it took me something like 11 hours to solo mine 1000t and that was not how I wanted to be spending my time. I like mining for short bit, on my own terms, but mining for hours just to go somewhere? Not my thing.
So how should the solo player play the modern day carrier mechanic now? Well? Since FDev are able to offer you full refunds? That means they can recognize a sore situation when they see one. It’s not fun…owning a carrier. Leave the game for 6 months? And you’ll find that even with all services disabled, somehow the carrier has still gone through its funding reserves and into the nearly -200 million+ deficit…and if you were largely doing something like exploring? Prior to that? Well? Let’s just say “you’re not exactly made of money.”
So? I say, pick a good home system, just as Elite always has been, even before mobile stations (we’ll call them), keep most all your ships there, and/ or in systems related to your favorite activities, such as keeping AX ships in your favorite Pleiades home system, as I used to, before the Thargoid war, and keep bounty hunting ships in my favorite bounty hunting system, which is Lambda-1 Tucanae for me and Qi Yomisi for my buddy, and then just use your big jump ship to ferry to and from places.
But, say one day you want to feel out Colonia again? And take a couple fighters and and an explorer with you? Just buy a throwaway carrier. This is now a legitimized practice thanks to full refunds and FDevs horrible carrier implementation. They’d rather see people decomming them and buying them again, as needed, for one-off use than keeping the same one for all time.
As for exploring? Not necessary…
It ‘was’ a thing when carriers released and Tritium was cheap, at like 29,000cr and easy to come by. You could then have a sense of home nearby, within something like a 1-5K LY radius at all times, but these days? There are always DSSA carriers, plus others posting their locations on Discord. There’s always a safe haven nearby now, regardless of sector.
Buy a carrier and get your fleet where it needs to go and throw its away. Or at least be sure to move all your fleet off of the carrier and into a nearby station and mark the carrier for decom for long breaks away.
That said? I learned, early on, that having a carrier, for exploration purposes was more of a crux. Carriers aren’t dynamic like they are in something like NMS…or even from what I’ve learned of X4. They are meant to act as more of a stationary thing, an in-place for reliable trading. The more players supporting a carrier the more mobile they become. There is still something of a “winged players only” vibe to them. For example, one of the reasons I decommed mine, in late 2021, around the Tritium shortage, was because I worked out that it took me something like 11 hours to solo mine 1000t and that was not how I wanted to be spending my time. I like mining for short bit, on my own terms, but mining for hours just to go somewhere? Not my thing.
So how should the solo player play the modern day carrier mechanic now? Well? Since FDev are able to offer you full refunds? That means they can recognize a sore situation when they see one. It’s not fun…owning a carrier. Leave the game for 6 months? And you’ll find that even with all services disabled, somehow the carrier has still gone through its funding reserves and into the nearly -200 million+ deficit…and if you were largely doing something like exploring? Prior to that? Well? Let’s just say “you’re not exactly made of money.”
So? I say, pick a good home system, just as Elite always has been, even before mobile stations (we’ll call them), keep most all your ships there, and/ or in systems related to your favorite activities, such as keeping AX ships in your favorite Pleiades home system, as I used to, before the Thargoid war, and keep bounty hunting ships in my favorite bounty hunting system, which is Lambda-1 Tucanae for me and Qi Yomisi for my buddy, and then just use your big jump ship to ferry to and from places.
But, say one day you want to feel out Colonia again? And take a couple fighters and and an explorer with you? Just buy a throwaway carrier. This is now a legitimized practice thanks to full refunds and FDevs horrible carrier implementation. They’d rather see people decomming them and buying them again, as needed, for one-off use than keeping the same one for all time.
As for exploring? Not necessary…
It ‘was’ a thing when carriers released and Tritium was cheap, at like 29,000cr and easy to come by. You could then have a sense of home nearby, within something like a 1-5K LY radius at all times, but these days? There are always DSSA carriers, plus others posting their locations on Discord. There’s always a safe haven nearby now, regardless of sector.
Buy a carrier and get your fleet where it needs to go and throw its away. Or at least be sure to move all your fleet off of the carrier and into a nearby station and mark the carrier for decom for long breaks away.
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Fleet Carrier Benefits for Deep Space Exploration:
#1 Save point for respawning.
#2 Cash in UC, exobio, codex and first discovery tags regularly reducing risk of major loss.
#3 Easy convenient repair, rearm & refuel of exploration ship.
Additional benefits:
Ability to bring ships designed for specific activities, more optimal or fun than a specialized min/max exploration ship. (bring a specialized min/max exploration ship too!).
Ability to bring alternate ships for variety on very long trips. Breaking up boredom or tedium.
Ability to bring rarely used optional modules. Sometimes very handy for certain circumstances.
Ability to change ship outfitting. Swap ship modules around. And engineering (with blueprints).
Restoration of lost SRVs. Unlimited SRVs.
No need for AFMU or repair limpets in ship freeing up ship slots for other modules.
Install single SRV hangar on ship. Can store additional hangars with both scorpion & scarab on carrier. Switch as desired.
A wider variety of ships become available for exploration activities. Jump range not important, can focus on other features.
Storage for items you find in deep space. Organic tissue samples, relics, keys, etc.
Small risk of exploration ship being stranded. Out of fuel? Call your carrier.
500Ly jump range: Ability to cross sparse galactic regions. Major time & distance savings crossing galactic arms.
500Ly jump range: Ability to jump to otherwise unreachable remote systems. Example: galactic edge.
500Ly jump range: 500Ly jump range: Ability to quickly skip across the 4K Ly region surrounding the bubble when leaving or returning.
Rarely use raw mats for synthesis anymore. SRV refuel and repair and restock limpets on carrier. Much less use for jumponium. Less need to collect raw mats.
For change of pace cmdr can switch to mining. Carrier has lots of storage for metals & minerals. Sell later.
Ability to make 500Ly jumps while AFK. A player can choose to travel vast distances without having to stare at computer screen for hours.
Nice natural place to park your ship and end a play session. And then start a new play station a few days or weeks later. Repaired, fueled, all data checked in, ready for new activities. Nice point where ship can be switched or modules swapped for activities of choice.
- Credits flow like water now. Earning a few extra billion is pretty easy.
- Exobiology now pays a silly amount. This makes getting credits super easy when in deep space.
- Bank a couple years of carrier maint. Then you don't need to worry about it.
- There isn't much other uses for credits, so occasionally throw a couple more billion in the FC bank. Get 5-10 years banked.
- Tritium mining is very tedious. Its much better to buy it. Get credits any method you like and then fill up. Its readily available.
- Spend the money on tritium before heading out in deep space. Even though your carrier gets heavy and a jump costs more... if you are going on a long journey who cares. Bring what you need. Unless you really like spending hours and hours and hours mining tritium.
- There is no cost or penalty to storing ships & spare modules on your carrier. Fill it up. Bring whatever you need. Bring extras. Bring fun ships. Specialty ships. Utility ships. And all the special use modules you never use because they take up ship slots. Ha ha! bring them along.
- Absolutely bring a fantastic mining ship with you... just in case. And bring some spare types of mining equipment... just in case mining mechanics or rewards change. Equip your carrier so you are capable of doing all the various types of mining.
- Bring a really good exobiology ship. Good for zipping around, quick landings, good cockpit view, etc.
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Last week, after a week of exploring, I banked an extra 1 billion in my Fleet Carrier, I think I earned just over 2 billion in total that week, a good week, but not an extraordinary week. My carrier fees for that week were 13m. I find it extraordinary in these days of money flowing like water from exploration that anyone is unable to bank 5b or 6b on their FC after a month or so of exploring. It's not like I am spending 6 to 8 hours hours a day exploring either, in fact I have cut down quite a bit of play time recently to maybe an hour or two a day. I can't see my carrier going through it's reserves in 10 years or more.
Unfortunately it all looks good on paper, but with everyone having a carrier in the various sectors you’re never far from help anymore, and you don’t have to risk hemorrhaging to do it this way…especially with DSSA carriers still anchored out there. Agreed, money flows like water in the bubble. Clearing a single AX conflict zone you’ve already got over 200 million, then and there…and that’s minus any missions (purely off of combat bonds). True, I haven’t given exo-biology a chance, since inception…so wouldn’t know there. In speaking purely from an exploration standpoint? I’ve been out in the black for a month and have only managed to amass 550 million thereabouts… basically what you can make in literally any other profession in a couple of hours…or less. So factor in any time away from the game and you’re barely keeping up with carrier upkeep.
Exploration has always been this way. I don’t believe it’s been buffed since the FSS release update, which made exploration credits a bit more bearable, but by today’s standards is waiting once again, again, considering you can even make much more bounty hunting these days and in a small windows of time. So? Yes…if you’re regularly coming back to the Bubble, or at least Colonia, you can make that billion in a weekend, running passengers/ evac missions for a couple hours, or mining. Again, exo-biology? Not sure there, but that’s good to hear it’s profitable now.
Nice they must have buffed exploration again. I’ve been out in the black for nearly a month and banked 500 million. The last time I’ve done that extent of exploring was probably early to mid 2019 and we were still riding on the FSS update which buffed exploration data value. Either that or everyone who explores is aligned with Li Yong-Rui and that’s just what the bonus looks like. I’ve never done the wait game and handed in my data at the end of a cycle to know what that value would look like. I’ve always been too afraid to grind that whole Powerplay with all that data in the bank.
This is from one system, they didn't just buff it, they made it ludicrously overpaid;
That's a very lucky system though! I scanned all the bio on all the planets in about 30 systems over the last two days and made about 160m. Not too bad but most of the systems I checked had nothing or just bacteria. I've turned in hundreds of first-discovery systems and never made more than a few hundred million from a single system.This is from one system, they didn't just buff it, they made it ludicrously overpaid;
A good FC for exploration costs 15.5 million per week, roughly 1 billion per year.
Before the massive exobiology payout boost a good strategy was bank 1-2 billion (equals 1-2 years maint fee) while in human space doing whatever activity a cmdr likes., and then simply top it up with 15 million per week while exploring in deep space. Which is pretty easy during normal exploration. A cmdr could now stay in deep space and not worry about maint fee. If a couple months get missed no big deal. Playing very casually in deep space I increased my FC bank to 4 years (without turning off any services). Then the change to exobiology happened and the credit flow is enormous.
In your own experience you acumulated enough in 1 month in deep space to add 6 months of maint fee to your bank (with no exobiology).
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The actual drain with an exploration fleet carrier is the drain on engineering mats. Because the fleet carrier creates a desire to outfit a good set of specialized exploration ships. And there is no method to gather mfg and encoded mats in deep space.
Desirable exploration ships
- Plus any ships you want for human space activities.
Desirable exploration ships
- Traditional min/maxed paper thin super long jump distance exploration ship.
- Long range comfy robust exploration ship.
- Medium range general purpose exploration ship with specialty modules.
- Dedicated amazing mining ship.
- Dedicated amazing exobiology ship. Maybe a couple until you find the perfect ship.
- Plus any ships you want for human space activities.
Not really a 'lucky' system, but a fairly rare one. That looks to have been a rocky body with a water atmosphere, not common but very lucrative. To be fair though, a few hundred million from a single system mounts up, after all, 10 such systems would get you around 2 billion.
As to being able to maintain a carrier from exploration, even without exobiology it's really not a challenge. My carrier upkeep is 11.5 million a week, the last lot of exploration data was about 150 million, took me a few weeks since I can't do much at a time (it's got a bit dull so about an hour when I actually do it), so that's a little over ten weeks of upkeep. And I got just over 100 million for one exobiology scan, a stratum tectonicas. Again, I now bypass most exobiology, the gameplay just isn't compelling enough but once you know what to look for the stuff you do scan will be very lucrative.
I have my legacy CMDR back in the bubble for when I want to log in and shoot something, also with my carrier. Due to the services installed, less than on my exploration carrier, it actually costs me more to run by a couple of million a week and I don't earn anything like the same amount from bubble shooting activities than I earn from exploration!