One thing that comes to mind to sell is resources needed for upkeep and jumps. Player groups will station themselves in the systems where materials are more prevalent for whatever materials people might want/need. Or at least I hope so. It would be kind'a cool if you can go and buy some of the materials or components, maybe even modules that other players are providing. The player-based trading might be the absolute best part of the carriers... if true.
ANNOUNCEMENT Fleet Carriers - Content Reveal Announcement
- Thread starter Stephen Benedetti
- Start date
I sound like a total idiot but will it be like you can only sell what you buy (i.e. 1:1 trades). I think I'll need a big cup of tea for the stream next week.
No need to debate anything, just trying to quantify statements.Earning "300m in a week" or "60m in a weekend." doesn't tell me much. It is all about hours. You paint a picture that you engage in a wide variety of activities, and imply each of them is a viable path towards a carrier. I suspect that when you look at how much you earned with each activity, and how much hours you invest in each, you'll find a different pattern. I'm going out on a limb and dare to guess your smuggling income, which you said you enjoy, does not come close to earning you a spare exhaust pipe of a FC.
As for me, as I said: I am elite in all three branches, I've participated in dozens upon dozens of CGs, was among the first to run into a Thargoid (literally two hours after the first discovery), have scoured endless surfaces looking for barnacles when they were discovered, took part in numerous Canonn experiments way back in the day, smuggled weapons into local factions fighting the Empire, I've adopted anarchy factions and helped them spread, and currenly reside in Colonia. I've done, for all intents and purposes, almost everything this game has to offer. And when I look at my stats I notice the following:
1) I have spend less than 1% of my time mining.
2) I have earned >30% of my total assets from mining.
3) Mining is among the easiest, most risk-free things you can do.
That, to me, signals something is fundamentally borked. And I find it a bit puzzling why people insist on defending this reality. You said you earned 60M in thargoid bonds in a weekend. That is the equivalent of 30 minutes of risk-free mining. Does that make sense to you? So far I have seen nobody actually come up with any arguments explaining why this situation is a good thing beyond some "got mine, don't care!" sentiment.
Have some stats. 9 billion and only about 1% from mining. ONE percent. And I wasn't around for Robigo, and I have done some of the new mining but not a large amount (mostly been collecting engineering materials.) I made my money before mining was the big money maker, and a huge chunk of my money is from CGs, doing the "Decoding the Ruins" mission when it was new, and collecting the alien fiddly bits to bring to Obsidian Orbital (and was surprised to learn I could have made more with that last because people were stocking up with more than they needed and doing multiple mission turn-ins per round trip. Could have saved a lot of time. Ah, well...).
Source: https://i.imgur.com/mR34TS8.png
Point is, like any economy, there's always going to be something that earns more than the rest, and that's always going to change. First it was missions, then passengers, then mining...having a perfectly even income across all trades at all times is unrealistic, and boring. Having things fluctuate makes it feel like a living economy. And before you talk about economies needing to "make sense," show me any RL economy administered by humans that doesn't have something silly either currently or in its past history. Go ahead, I'll wait.
I've only been playing for 3.5 years, I don't play every day, and I don't play 8 hours a day. I even took a hiatus for a bit, not because it was "boring" or "grindy," but because sometimes you just want to do other stuff. And doing other stuff, I do. I'm still playing Elite, and I learned to get better at all aspects of the game (even combat, my least favorite part.)
I assume that the main path for carriers to make profit is by giving them the right loadout in the right place and take small fees from other players. Add a material trader to your FC and park it in a system with an engineer. Add a guardian tech broker to your FC, park it in a worthwile guardian system and even sell the modules. Allow players to sell their LTDs for a reasonable price right in Borann. The only problem with this is that there are just so many highly frequented systems. I suspect the most valuable of them will be heavily contested.
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Curious how that'll work for exploration FC. I suspect that the core design might still be aimed at squadrons and multiplayer expeditions. Gonna be an interesting stream for a change!
Oh, I was thinking you could sell things you mine. It would be cool if you could also sell materials or allow trading of them somehow with your own rates.
Curious how that'll work for exploration FC. I suspect that the core design might still be aimed at squadrons and multiplayer expeditions. Gonna be an interesting stream for a change!
That's the thing. I suspect you can add universal cartographics to your carrier and sell exploration data. Depending on how high the weekly cost is this may be a painful way to maintain the FC in the long run, though. I really hope they find a way to keep the upkeep minimal for explorers.
I`m pretty sure FD checked and rechecked average fortune of players before sticking the 5 big ones price on those. Still kind of shame many others wont even taste those carriers. I consider myself rich but ugh.... still not even close
If fleet carriers exist as a permanent feature within the game world even when the owner is offline, then it makes sense for these objects to degrade over time should the owner suddenly stop playing Elite Dangerous. If the time it takes for that to happen is fair and ballanced, then i have no issue with the fact that these ships require upkeep. It makes sense.
For what its worth with the limited amount of information i have on the subject so far im with Frontier on this design choice.
According to Inara stats, 5 billion is in the top 10%?I`m pretty sure FD checked and rechecked average fortune of players before sticking the 5 big ones price on those. Still kind of shame many others wont even taste those carriers. I consider myself rich but ugh.... still not even close
Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
The top 3% from the data provided by Artie in February.
And obviously the average player is not on forums or Inara.
Yeh but money is cheap in ED. speaking for myself personally, i could also be in that top 10% but i chose not to because money for moneys sake didnt appeal to me.
Now that i have a reason to earn that wedge... i might make an effort.
I could be wrong, but Inara doesn’t have the vast majority of console players
The most interesting thing about this is going to be creating bubbles of human habitation out wherever players want. A group could park their carriers way out in the barnard nebula or so if they want. Or maybe across the galaxy opposite of colonia. Or at the center of the galaxy.
Players have a chance to become their own version of Jaques the cyborg bartender.
I've never played this game for the money, in fact despite playing since 2014 I only owned some free ships given by FD, and my Asp which was what I religiously used. On and off I was with the game for a long time, and when I left for DW2 January last year I had just over 100 million in my account. I played quite a bit during DW2, then after June took some time off before coming back in November where I went on a bit of a mad post DW2 exploration jaunt around the galaxy.
Landed in February this year with close to 7 billion in my pocket. Vast majority of which was made post DW2 as I think I made (iirc) about 500m on that trip.
So for sure, if time isn't the barometer in which your basing getting the cash for a carrier on, other (none - mining) activities are doable. I'd say just play however you like, and if you get the cash, great.
Landed in February this year with close to 7 billion in my pocket. Vast majority of which was made post DW2 as I think I made (iirc) about 500m on that trip.
So for sure, if time isn't the barometer in which your basing getting the cash for a carrier on, other (none - mining) activities are doable. I'd say just play however you like, and if you get the cash, great.
Great news here !
A little sunshine in this period of global greyness.
+1 Frontier !
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A little sunshine in this period of global greyness.
+1 Frontier !
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Only if they role play. Parking a Carrier half way around the rear end of the galaxy won't really get you any kind of "civilization." Just a dockable megaship.
Im sure if a group setup a location that become popular for some reason. Frontier might see an opportunity to expand the game lore around player activity. Maybe introduce some surrounding game colonies.
But what you forget... Q4 2020.... Base building. (Maybe).
Carriers could be the seed for player initiated bubbles.
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