Fleet Carriers and Exploration Options?.

[Saltyseadog]

I have read a bit on the forthcoming fleet carrier upgrade and wondered. Personally I have done some long range explorations in the 5yrs or so I have been playing ED and stand at 25% Pioneer at present. The thing that puts me off going out there again is that I become bored and lonely with it after a while and miss having access to my other ships. I would also like to take my time on a really long voyage scanning everything found and mining it as well but get bored with it after 1500ly or so. I am not really interested in building a maxi jump light weight Anaconda eg and going 5000ly in a week or whatever as I fail to see what that has to do with exploration?.

After 5yrs play I have a considerable amount of credits and could possibly be able to afford a fleet carrier when they come out but would like to know if I would be able to take a fleet with me including custom mining ships, planetary landing ships, buggies etc and use the fleet carrier as an exploration rig out meaning that I could use my miners where applicable or land on far flung planets/moons and store everything on board the carrier. If it will be possible to do all this it will most certainly give a huge boost in long range exploration. It could be pretty amazing to stay out in the black for months and months mapping everything found and filling the carrier up with a huge cargo of mined minerals and metals. Leaving the bubble and making a slow route to Colonia for example. In fact it would certainly put me back to my prior 3-4hrs daily play instead of my bored with it all 3-4hrs weekly which my game has recently become. It would certainly open up the galaxy map away from the so called bubble.

 

[Nutter]

I'm looking forward to taking my FC out into the black, then find a nice spot and experiment with different ships and loadouts. Do crazy things and not have to worry about losing a ship or buggy.
I just hope that providing fuel for jumps won't be too grindy as where I want to take my FC I will need to make around 70 Jumps - depending on start point

 

[Backelaer]

Will exploration change with the new fleet carriers?

What do you think? 500 lys of jump range should be enough to reach unexplored systems, which aren't reachable nowadays...

forums.frontier.co.uk

 

[Shiro Akai]

The thing that puts me off going out there again is that I become bored and lonely with it after a while and miss having access to my other ships.

Sounds like me. I too am seeking answers to these questions.

My understanding, based on released info is that - you can customize your FC to suit your needs, be it exploration or mioning (via support ship). Tho I fear those options would be mutually exclusive, you can't have 2 kinds of support vessels at the same time. Which implies that you wouldn't be able to mine and store/sell ore as you explore or you won't be able to dump exploration data while on mining run.

Unerstandable as this would create an exploitive system where rewards (money and elite progression ranks) would come without danger, just go 12k LYs away, find VO hotspot and mine it to hearts content. Then throw few hundred millions of exploration data and you're set.

Making options a choice you must pick what you want to do... Decisions, decisions.

But still, FC has 16 landing pads, you can load it with mining Cutter/T-9 for max cargo space (in case your FC can't store cargo), some other medium/large ship for refuelling your FC and you'll have more than enough space for anything else, including ships with fighterws or SRV.

 

[Watcher]

But still, FC has 16 landing pads, you can load it with mining Cutter/T-9 for max cargo space (in case your FC can't store cargo), some other medium/large ship for refuelling your FC and you'll have more than enough space for anything else, including ships with fighterws or SRV.

That sounds like you are assuming you'd be able to store cargo on ships? I doubt FD would change that from our current docking interactions which don't let you swap ships and keep cargo in one while transferring to the other... Never know though, more info. Again.
I hope they let us have a bit of storage capacity - apart from being useful it also feels a bit silly if you have this massive carrier but can't keep a couple of tonnes of tea lying around for emergencies. We'll see.
Also, SRV restocks - maybe that why the explorer support ship is so big, plenty of spares for when you have an 'accident'

 

[Stealthie]

One thing I do like about Carriers is that they will, apparently, be persistent.

That means, presumably, that it'll be possible for a bunch of people on a Carrier to log-in whenever they want in order to deliver fuel and supplies to the Carrier.
That should avoid the faff of having to arrange for a bunch of people to all be online together or, at least, when the Carrier owner is online.

Course, it kind of raises the question of how/whether you'll KNOW everybody's aboard.
Is everybody docked, even if they're offline, or is somebody still undocked, off exploring or gathering stuff?

Be a bit of a downer to leave somebody behind accidentally.

 

[Factabulous]

Be a bit of a downer to leave somebody behind accidentally.

Good point - I guess people will soon get into the habit of only logging off on the FC - but what if you're off mining for fuel to help the FC and the captain decides to jump?

I wonder if there will be a countdown like current m/s do? Though presumably < 1 week. Though the issue there is you have to be at the m/s to see it

Really you need an 'all aboard - jumping in X hours' message to go out to related craft - that's starting to get complex .... so I bet it will be down to players to organise - oh dear...

 

[777Driver]

Course, it kind of raises the question of how/whether you'll KNOW everybody's aboard.
Is everybody docked, even if they're offline, or is somebody still undocked, off exploring or gathering stuff?

Be a bit of a downer to leave somebody behind accidentally.

I would assume we will have an interface letting us know who is docked or requesting docking clearance. They clarified that we will be able to deny docking permission, fairly safe to say we will also have the ability to remove cmdrs from the ship. Both of those will require some sort of overview of traffic using the ships facilities.

 

[Watcher]

Here's a thought, maybe we have to have a module on our ship to enable remote access to our carriers...
I think that is a fairly terrible idea but since we've got modules for enabling different types of autopilot functionality* and so many limpet controller modules** I wouldn't be at all surprised..
Oh dear.

* I feel this is a travesty.
** One controller please: Limpets as ammo, basic controller for all options at low capability, dedicated controllers (like now) add ammo and/or improved capability.

 

[Stealthie]

Really you need an 'all aboard - jumping in X hours' message to go out to related craft - that's starting to get complex .... so I bet it will be down to players to organise - oh dear...

That would be the easiest solution but it'd be nice to have more.

I mean, you might arrive somewhere, agree to spend 3 days in the system, everybody goes exploring and then some poor sucker's PC carks it.
It'd be nice if there was some kind of "passenger manifest" system, where you're listed as being aboard after docking, so the owner could choose to abort a jump if somebody wasn't aboard.

 

[Phongsalt]

One thing I do like about Carriers is that they will, apparently, be persistent.

That means, presumably, that it'll be possible for a bunch of people on a Carrier to log-in whenever they want in order to deliver fuel and supplies to the Carrier.
That should avoid the faff of having to arrange for a bunch of people to all be online together or, at least, when the Carrier owner is online.

Course, it kind of raises the question of how/whether you'll KNOW everybody's aboard.
Is everybody docked, even if they're offline, or is somebody still undocked, off exploring or gathering stuff?

Be a bit of a downer to leave somebody behind accidentally.

Well it's not like the carrier has disappeared off the face of the earth. Most ships can make up the distance relatively easily, and if the fuel to move it again is difficult to come by there should be ample time.
If you miss the bus you have to walk.

 

[NeilF]

One thing I do like about Carriers is that they will, apparently, be persistent.

I wonder how your game mode affects that?
ie: If you're playing in Solo, no one else can see it, now or after you leave? What about in a private group? Only people in that group can see it, even after you've logged off?

Guess it would have to work that way... So your carrier retains your game mode after you log off?

What if you then log back on in a different mode? What if two people in Solo then bring their FC to the same location, and then both try to log into OPEN? But only one FC in any location/instance? Hmmm...

 

[Phongsalt]

Your carrier persists across all modes.Only one carrier / system holds true.

 

[NeilF]

Your carrier persists across all modes.

Hmmm.... So as a solo player you might not be allowed to bring your FC somewhere, because someone else has their's there... And even though they're also playing solo, you'll be able to see it.

OK, I can see that working, sort of

 

[Saool]

I'm expecting the fuel to not be storable. So it will be like a ship. You fill up the tank and that's it. I then expect that tank to last about three jumps. So you get 1500Ly out easily, and then have to start working for your jumps.

I also expect this will be intentional to stop the galaxy becoming tiny.

I also expect lots of salt if this is correct. Although I hope this is correct. FCs should not be the new exploration meta. It should take more work to get it out there, that just a normal ship, but, once out there is a mobile base of operations.

 

[Deleted member 38366]

Sounds like me. I too am seeking answers to these questions.

My understanding, based on released info is that - you can customize your FC to suit your needs, be it exploration or mioning (via support ship). Tho I fear those options would be mutually exclusive, you can't have 2 kinds of support vessels at the same time. Which implies that you wouldn't be able to mine and store/sell ore as you explore or you won't be able to dump exploration data while on mining run.

Been thinking about that scenario - and in that case I'd probably still do it. Make it a Mining Support Ship for the Carrier (which IMHO must include plenty of Cargo storage to make sense) and effectively contain the Cargo on the Carrier while the Exploration Data remains on the own Ship.
Almost like old times then, except you're having thousands of tons of valuable Cargo in tow

PS.
I do wonder if a Player ends up having to fight "scenarios" depending on the Carrier Modules and contained value (i.e. Cargo).
Just imagine arriving in a new System and the 1st thing you see is 16 Pirate NPCs spawning around the Carrier with their punchline "All that tasty Cargo!" because you already got 2500tons of Void Opals in storage hehe

 

[Watcher]

Hmmm.... So as a solo player you might not be allowed to bring your FC somewhere, because someone else has their's there... And even though they're also playing solo, you'll be able to see it.

OK, I can see that working, sort of

I would imagine you can get multiple carriers and they show up as signal sources in SC, probably don't show up on the system map - though I guess they could, maybe a general FCs (some number) are here. Presumably you park an FC near a given body, star by default if unexplored.

You then get instancing on the FCs - you always see yours, you'll see some sub-set of the rest. Signal Sources when scanned perhaps give commander name.

 

[Dagwit]

The thing about taking a Fleet Carrier exploring is that while it's nice to be able to jump 500 LY, even more important is the rate of travel.

My Exploraconda can do north of 4,000 LY/hr flat out, and 2,000 LY/hr while picking up all reasonably accessible ELW, WW and AW.

I wouldn't expect to travel that quickly in an exploration Fleet Carrier but if tankage and refueling time leaves it with an effective LY/hr figure of less than, say, 1,000 LY/hr, I doubt if it will be a practical tool for exploration.

 

[Phongsalt]

Dropped off in the right place,my explorer-sidey would make a mockery of your jump range.Well at least make it redundant.And much swifter to cash the results in.
But i agree that there is limited usage as far as exploration,due to the fact that it is low investment/ high return kind of thing,whereas FC seems to be very much the opposite.

 

[NeilF]

I'm expecting the fuel to not be storable. So it will be like a ship. You fill up the tank and that's it. I then expect that tank to last about three jumps. So you get 1500Ly out easily, and then have to start working for your jumps.

I also expect this will be intentional to stop the galaxy becoming tiny.

I also expect lots of salt if this is correct. Although I hope this is correct. FCs should not be the new exploration meta. It should take more work to get it out there, that just a normal ship, but, once out there is a mobile base of operations.

The jump frequency and refueling time will be interesting...

If a FC can't move reasonably fast/easily across space, then how will it prove useful for exploration? ie: It'll simply prove an aggravation and bind to move a sluggish/slow FC along at a rate far slow than a exploration Conda/Asp could move for example, along with the fact you have to constantly stop and mine to keep it going too.