ANNOUNCEMENT Fleet Carriers - Content Reveal Announcement
- Thread starter Stephen Benedetti
- Start date
Yep I feel the same.
Ha, 5B CR! My LTD mining (before the mining demand changes) have been vindicated, vindicated I tell ya!
...your wasting your time they said, they won't cost more then 2B CR they said.Pats himself on the back, washes hands with glee and soap for 20 seconds.
I could buy one now annnddd.......have 300M CR left. Just 300M.......I feel poor already. That's good!
Using Tritium as a fuel source? Nice. Even better is something I'd never thought Frontier would do - local commodity markets for a carrier, with the ability to set tariffs! Hopefully I can charge Feds 30% extra! Please Frontier, make it happen!
BGS collapse be damned!I was a bit meh about the Carriers and recently the game. Was done playing pirate and even posting much on here much, was playing and enjoying other games on Xbox while working from home, living in this depressing Outbreak/Lockdown state. Hope your all safe Commanders.
But now, now, something is happening in Elite Dangerous! I'm.....excited? Its an odd feeling, not one I've had about this game for so so long.
We're even getting console betas!
Console!
Betas!
What mirror universe is this?!? What's happening?
I need to lie down...until Thursday next week.
Just go to Beagle Point and back like 4-5 times, and you'll get 5 bl just for exploration
Yeah, see, that just does not sound like fun
I want to go to BP to enjoy the achievement at having gone to the far edge of the galaxy, to be viewed like climbing a serious mountain, not to be something to repeat like a visit to the next town and back for a visit to the pub. I like the idea that FCs wouldn't be really easy to buy, but I don't think they should verge on the unattainable for a solo player who isn't focussed on just one or two money-making activites.
Quote "You can manage your carrier's finances by setting tariffs and adjusting the buying and selling prices for commodities traded in it's market. " Quote
This gave me a good laugh.
Pilots are going to be lining up to help you support your FC.
This gave me a good laugh.
Pilots are going to be lining up to help you support your FC.
i wonder how many minutes this feature will be released before hackers use it to launder credits from a hack account to their "legit one" via the tariffs.
Has there been any news on how much to upgrade a FC to A-grade ? Do the costs scale like the other ships ? Cost to upgrade a Cutter is several times the base cost. Whoa, that's going to really raise the credit bar. Plus, what is up-gradable ?
your flight group would be those pilots. they would theoretically share in the benefit of your group having one. everyone wouldn't need one.
This is slam full of bad assumptions. Have devoted months and months of my life to this game and have nowhere near that kind of money because I don't bumrush credit mining opportunities. Just because I don't have the money already does not mean I would not make good use of all of this.
And a shudder runs through every asteroid belt in the Galaxy.
Yes. So as I said, we agree that it is possible for a player to make 100m an hour playing the game today.
I don't know if you think I'm saying something other than what I'm saying, but for clarity what I'm saying is that it's possible for a player to make 100m an hour playing the game today.
That's true actually, I was deliberately low-balling on the mining profit. Anyone can make 100m, it's certainly possible to make more with good technique, luck and a suitable selling location.
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You can spend north of four times the base cost to outfit a Cutter. But a lot of that is for armour, which shouldn't be a thing for Fleet Carriers, since they're not destructible. Hence my guess that outfitting will double the base price.
Ian Phillips
Volunteer Moderator
If you mean 'do you have to part with your hard earned cash to get access to a Fleet Carrier', then the answer to that is no.
It'll be like the Cobra Mk IV. Access in game but you still have to pay to buy it in game is my best guess.
This sounds like a hidden fee for those outlaws that sit in the station for hours while their notoriety decays back to zero.
And with this piece of information about maintainence costs on top of this, I think my time with the game is now finally over. As always with FDev, it's a shockingly bad piece of game design, even assuming it works at launch, which given past history, isn't guaranteed...
Firstly, the only real gameplay loop in ED is "Grind thing, progress bars". Even if you've not grasped the dehumanizing, time wasting effects of such design in the industry yet, it should be obvious that the issue with long term retention in ED specifically is that the repetitive grind eventually causes burn out. Very, very few players ever get to the Anaconda, let alone the 5b needed to unlock a Carrier. The reason Arena and (especially) Multi-Crew and other gameplay adjusting expansions didn't change this was because they were badly implemented, not because people outside the core Forum Dad obsessives didn't want new things to do whilst working towards bar progress.
To then add fuel costs as well as maintainence which if not met means you lose the entire investment (or even a fraction of it if you are somehow reimbursed for the "scrap") is just adding even more appalling grind to string out the same old content even further.
Those who have sunk so much of themselves into the game might no longer recognise the scale, but let's just put that 500ly range into perspective; the original design of carriers was to only update their jumps once per week, like the Gnosis. I don't think it'll be 500ly per week now, but at the very least, there's still an undefined cooldown for the jump. And it needs either mining, or purchasing the fuel to do it. No scooping it as you travel past a star you'd have to pass anyway. In my Exploraconda, I can do 500 ly in 6 or so jumps, or about 8 minutes. You're simply not going to be able to move a Carrier anywhere near as quickly across the galaxy as a normal ship, due to grind for fuel time. Sure, it may mean getting to systems that you can't reach at all for now; but what percentage players even get to the centre of the galaxy with the "faster" travel times now, much less out to where such a range has any sort of meaning?
Now let's put the cost into perspective. I have 2030 hours played, am Triple Elite, and own all the ships in game, with the Big 3 near fully engineered for their respective roles. And even I can't afford the damn Carrier, as I "only" have 1.7b. How much more am I supposed to play the same old content, now with even more bugs, just to have something "new" to do? And then do it again and again just to keep what money I've earned from disappearing into scrap?
Something which, if the suggestions of being able to set local prices are true, is going to break the game for everyone else.
Seriously, how does FDev not see this? The only "galactic" content anyone can influence is the local economy. However if players can set their own rates, they'll be entirely independent from the actions of anyone else: Price of goods goes down due to incoming/outgoing trade at Station X? Not to worry, it's a fixed player chosen tarriff at the station in that system. And if it's favourable, why bother with the galactic market? Planet is agricultural? Park an industrial themed Carrier above it to exploit it, or a cheaper Agricultural one to undercut it...
And remember, if the trade is going to the station, all the associated swings in reputation, thus influence over Local Faction & Economy disappear. Even if the same factions are on the mobile station (Does the entire population get shot out into space and replaced with press-ganged locals with each jump?) as long as you can undercut the local prices, you have far more influence over someone actively working the background sim, because you'll be taking all of the local trade from every individual arriving there. You've basically recruited anyone trading in that system into doing what you alone would like the system to become.
Community Goal active in the system? Oh wait, those have been cancelled, (Less content, more grind pleases the time rich, quality poor) but assuming they were still active, move your carrier, with the goods required into the system and short cut the entire point. Or just boost yourself to the top, if you can deny anyone landing rights but have a nice handy local store of materials for yourself...
It's no wonder so many are rubbing their hands at the thoughts of such expensive add ons; someone above is already joking about "peasants", but they do know that very few people will be able to have one, and there are obvious ways to exploit it already becoming clear. Real life may be horribly unfair, but people play games to escape from all of that. It's a spectacular misunderstanding of how to appeal to a wider player base to think of implementing Carriers in this way...
(Unless of course, the "rates" are on top of the local price only, you can't undercut them or put up goods that aren't available in that system, at which point we're back to carriers as just replacements for social status via digital e-peen, because no one is going to trade at an always higher price.)
I suspect I know why they're doing it though; as the last few years have suggested, I rather doubt the ED engine can actually have much new, decent content added, either through engine limitations, . Giving players direct influence over the numbers already in game is possibly the only "extra" content they could add for carriers, just as engineers was just tweaking your stats, and multi crew was just putting a ship inside your ship. But players shouldn't be getting direct control over the galactic stats like this, and definitely not when it will only be the most obsessive players who can afford it.
Firstly, the only real gameplay loop in ED is "Grind thing, progress bars". Even if you've not grasped the dehumanizing, time wasting effects of such design in the industry yet, it should be obvious that the issue with long term retention in ED specifically is that the repetitive grind eventually causes burn out. Very, very few players ever get to the Anaconda, let alone the 5b needed to unlock a Carrier. The reason Arena and (especially) Multi-Crew and other gameplay adjusting expansions didn't change this was because they were badly implemented, not because people outside the core Forum Dad obsessives didn't want new things to do whilst working towards bar progress.
To then add fuel costs as well as maintainence which if not met means you lose the entire investment (or even a fraction of it if you are somehow reimbursed for the "scrap") is just adding even more appalling grind to string out the same old content even further.
Those who have sunk so much of themselves into the game might no longer recognise the scale, but let's just put that 500ly range into perspective; the original design of carriers was to only update their jumps once per week, like the Gnosis. I don't think it'll be 500ly per week now, but at the very least, there's still an undefined cooldown for the jump. And it needs either mining, or purchasing the fuel to do it. No scooping it as you travel past a star you'd have to pass anyway. In my Exploraconda, I can do 500 ly in 6 or so jumps, or about 8 minutes. You're simply not going to be able to move a Carrier anywhere near as quickly across the galaxy as a normal ship, due to grind for fuel time. Sure, it may mean getting to systems that you can't reach at all for now; but what percentage players even get to the centre of the galaxy with the "faster" travel times now, much less out to where such a range has any sort of meaning?
Now let's put the cost into perspective. I have 2030 hours played, am Triple Elite, and own all the ships in game, with the Big 3 near fully engineered for their respective roles. And even I can't afford the damn Carrier, as I "only" have 1.7b. How much more am I supposed to play the same old content, now with even more bugs, just to have something "new" to do? And then do it again and again just to keep what money I've earned from disappearing into scrap?
Something which, if the suggestions of being able to set local prices are true, is going to break the game for everyone else.
Seriously, how does FDev not see this? The only "galactic" content anyone can influence is the local economy. However if players can set their own rates, they'll be entirely independent from the actions of anyone else: Price of goods goes down due to incoming/outgoing trade at Station X? Not to worry, it's a fixed player chosen tarriff at the station in that system. And if it's favourable, why bother with the galactic market? Planet is agricultural? Park an industrial themed Carrier above it to exploit it, or a cheaper Agricultural one to undercut it...
And remember, if the trade is going to the station, all the associated swings in reputation, thus influence over Local Faction & Economy disappear. Even if the same factions are on the mobile station (Does the entire population get shot out into space and replaced with press-ganged locals with each jump?) as long as you can undercut the local prices, you have far more influence over someone actively working the background sim, because you'll be taking all of the local trade from every individual arriving there. You've basically recruited anyone trading in that system into doing what you alone would like the system to become.
Community Goal active in the system? Oh wait, those have been cancelled, (Less content, more grind pleases the time rich, quality poor) but assuming they were still active, move your carrier, with the goods required into the system and short cut the entire point. Or just boost yourself to the top, if you can deny anyone landing rights but have a nice handy local store of materials for yourself...
It's no wonder so many are rubbing their hands at the thoughts of such expensive add ons; someone above is already joking about "peasants", but they do know that very few people will be able to have one, and there are obvious ways to exploit it already becoming clear. Real life may be horribly unfair, but people play games to escape from all of that. It's a spectacular misunderstanding of how to appeal to a wider player base to think of implementing Carriers in this way...
(Unless of course, the "rates" are on top of the local price only, you can't undercut them or put up goods that aren't available in that system, at which point we're back to carriers as just replacements for social status via digital e-peen, because no one is going to trade at an always higher price.)
I suspect I know why they're doing it though; as the last few years have suggested, I rather doubt the ED engine can actually have much new, decent content added, either through engine limitations, . Giving players direct influence over the numbers already in game is possibly the only "extra" content they could add for carriers, just as engineers was just tweaking your stats, and multi crew was just putting a ship inside your ship. But players shouldn't be getting direct control over the galactic stats like this, and definitely not when it will only be the most obsessive players who can afford it.
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Or the FC will have a Shipyard for the owner personal use. So you can switch ships at will
Why its all a journey, no rush Im up to 1 Billion today mostly on trade missions only 348.666 on mining and 48m from exploration innara reckons i will hit 2 b in 22 days but who cares
you can make more than 100mil in an hour.
You can also choose to do things that make far less.
You can choose to want a carrier day 1. or you can choose to get one at some time after.
You can choose to tailor your entire game play around the carrier and running it ... or you can choose to do other things. or maybe you are lucky enough to have time to do both.
blaze your own trail doesn't mean "i have the right to do what i want, with what i want, to what i want wherever I want with as much effort as I want". Some choices have consequences and compromises. Expensive items are one of them.
I would have preferred though if they had a much cheaper outpost option where you could purchase a fixed location "home base" that had far fewer landing pads, couldn't move, and limited other station services and far less upkeep.
You can also choose to do things that make far less.
You can choose to want a carrier day 1. or you can choose to get one at some time after.
You can choose to tailor your entire game play around the carrier and running it ... or you can choose to do other things. or maybe you are lucky enough to have time to do both.
blaze your own trail doesn't mean "i have the right to do what i want, with what i want, to what i want wherever I want with as much effort as I want". Some choices have consequences and compromises. Expensive items are one of them.
I would have preferred though if they had a much cheaper outpost option where you could purchase a fixed location "home base" that had far fewer landing pads, couldn't move, and limited other station services and far less upkeep.