ANNOUNCEMENT Fleet Carriers - Content Reveal Recap

[The Chairmaker]

On the subject of the shipyard and module storage, i noted that the wholesale purchase price for the advanced trader pack amounted to the same base cost of buying those ships at a station on an individual basis. I hope this is reviewd and altered to give fleet carrier commanders the ability to bulk buy shipyard and module stock at a discounted price. That would allow us to build in a profit margin and make us competitive against stations for commanders.

It would also be good if purchasing shipyard ship packs in LYR space would give us the wholeale discount on top of the LYR 15% discount. That would help carrier admirals to sell goods near shinrata dezra at say 12% discount and entice commanders to purchase there rather than at Jameson with its 10% discount.

To stop an exploit you would need to prevent people selling to themselves or other commanders at a greater discount than the LYR 15%

 

[Calteru]

Appreciate that and thinking about it now, like the megaships, multi platform jumps would only work every "tick" rather than multiple jumps per day. Thanks for the response though

Hello, Thank very much.. But... I don't understand... Can other players landing on the FC buy (or sell) consumer goods?

Yes! If I were to land on your FC with a load of Painite and you have a good sale price for me, I would sell you the Painite, and your FC Bank would pay me for the purchase at the Sell price you would have listed. Then I would likely refuel and probably restock limpets, and maybe if I saw a good deal on a commodity you have listed for sale, buy some of that and take off again!

I do hope a lot of players set up their own stations. It's my intention to completely ignore NPC stations once FCs are live.

 

[yves21haut]

Yes! If I were to land on your FC with a load of Painite and you have a good sale price for me, I would sell you the Painite, and your FC Bank would pay me for the purchase at the Sell price you would have listed. Then I would likely refuel and probably restock limpets, and maybe if I saw a good deal on a commodity you have listed for sale, buy some of that and take off again!

I do hope a lot of players set up their own stations. It's my intention to completely ignore NPC stations once FCs are live.

Ok, now I understand Thank very much... It's good

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Let's say theres 10000 doing DW3, that's 2 units of fuel per commander every 40 jumps. Oh my lord, the horrow. Even if it's 1000 people, that's 20 units every 40 jumps. You really think all they will do is mine. Be sensible.

Umm.... not if the point of DW3 is everyone brings their own FC, which means 500t per jump.

Same as before, who is going to mine just to fuel my (or others' FCs) if they haven't brought their own. They are better off spending that time exploring, because they will be in exploration ships, not mining ships, and on the expedition to mine.

Look, said it before, and i'll say it again. If you are fine with the 500t per jump when exploring, that's cool. Just don't expect to convince me its something i should be ok with.

 

[Brrokk]

All platforms currently have their own separate galaxies. At present, they are only persistent across game modes on a particular platform.

Is that right? I thought we all had one galaxy. So if Thargoids burn a station in one platform it burns in the others. It a system goes into unrest in one platform it's the same on the others. I think it's reasonable to guess that if a carrier jumps on one platform it will do so on all too. In fact, that's probably why there's an hour of preparation and then cooldown, to enable the servers to pass data around.

 

[Calteru]

Is that right? I thought we all had one galaxy. So if Thargoids burn a station in one platform it burns in the others. It a system goes into unrest in one platform it's the same on the others. I think it's reasonable to guess that if a carrier jumps on one platform it will do so on all too. In fact, that's probably why there's an hour of preparation and then cooldown, to enable the servers to pass data around.

Sorry, we don't have crossplay across platforms. Unless there's some magic brewing behind the scenes that's going to be a part of this that they haven't discussed, player assets are unique to the platform. If that weren't the case, then we'd be able to see each other regardless of platform and wing up and stuff. We just can't do that at present.

 

[Calteru]

Ok, now I understand Thank very much... It's good

Let me know where you end up and I promise I will be there day 1 to sell and buy things!

 

[sgto_york]

FD... change the preparation to 10 seconds and zero for the cooldown ... and at least 5000 Ly without refueling ..... save the game ... I don't need fanboy opinions

 

[VEnZ0ja]

Why Capital class ships can jump out of a battle at any moment? I mean why fleet carrier need 1-hour preparing to jump? 1-hour cooldown after jump is ok, It may be that. But 1-hour preparing is unnecessary, even that crew is very slow to preparing, I think. 1 jump per 2 hours is very slow. Crew may preparing for jump for 5 or 10 minutes, but not whole hour. I think.

yes yes

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

Umm.... not if the point of DW3 is everyone brings their own FC, which means 500t per jump.

Same as before, who is going to mine just to fuel my (or others' FCs) if they haven't brought their own. They are better off spending that time exploring, because they will be in exploration ships, not mining ships, and on the expedition to mine.

Look, said it before, and i'll say it again. If you are fine with the 500t per jump when exploring, that's cool. Just don't expect to convince me its something i should be ok with.

Why on earth would everyone bring their own fleet carriers. That's just stupid. It wouldn't happen as I doubt everyone would need one. There would be 2 or 3 support carriers and that's all that would be needed. You don't need one carrier per commander. Why would you think that?

As to convincing you, I'm not trying to do anything of the sort. I don't think I will get one myself. I just want to point out that your thought process is wrong about refuelling. Whether you want one or not is not my concern.

 

[Arsen Cross]

I was planning on writing a big mega post but I'm going to try to keep it short instead.


Assumptions Based on Screenshots/Stream Content

• Carrier outfitting appears to be based on a "unit" consumption for each module/service/item stored or fitted to the ship and not based on the Optional/Internal slot system we are used to with our ships. As such it appears that the carriers have a slot for everything and limits will be based on the size those components consume within the 25K unit cap of the carrier. (See refuel station capacity requirement of 500 units in screenshots)
• We might have the ability to increase or decrease storage allocated to a service. Hopefully this applies to our tritium storage. (See bridge crew "Capacity Allocated: 0 units" in screenshots)

Questions, Concerns & Other Items:

• The 2 hour combined wait per jump is ridiculous.
  • I would prefer the cool down to be removed entirely, especially as it is inconsistent with the drives used by the fed & imp capital ships which can jump immediately when at risk of death even when downed within minutes of arriving from a jump.
  • If a cool down must be enforced it should be no longer than a combined 20 minutes for both cool down and charge.
  • As it stands the 2 hour jump timer hampers impromptu single session use of the carrier for a huge majority of the player base. Log in, want to go somewhere? Well wait an hour after login to jump your carrier. This isn't fun.
  • Fuel and the restocking of it alone should dictate the frequency in which we can jump a carrier.
    
• Universal Cartographics needs to be added.
  • Explorers frankly deserve this as a quality of life update.
  • If explorers can't cash in their primary income source when out in the black, how are they supposed to contribute to a carriers upkeep? This is very short sighted
    
• Will claims turned in at a carrier affect influence of the factions if the carrier is in the same system as those factions?
• Tariffs should be able to be configured on a per-service basis, as of current this appears to be a single setting for all services. More granular control is needed.
• The exclusion of Universal Cartographics on the carriers is a huge slap in the face to the exploration community. Without it carriers will only be marginally useful for regional exploration expeditions meant to fully map regions as the whole point of bringing a carrier on something like this is to not have to go back.
• I'm sad that there isn't a mission board on the ship. I'd like to see this added but when doing so make it so the carrier owner chooses the local factions they want to support and mission turn ins go to a local port. This would act as a way for players to see "Ah, these are the factions we should support when working the BGS right now."
• I hope full support for all the data the CMDR's log and API give us on stations is also available for the carriers so their markets can be fully supported with the various tools.
• I was really hoping that if carriers went this far we'd get the ability to manufacture goods from commodities and raw materials. Hopefully the base building rumor is true and we'll get this ability then.

Spoiler: Obligatory Carrier UI Screenshots from the Stream

 

[Fake Newts]

Sadly, here you somewhat took the decision to divert the way of the game towards a more mmorpg style.

I generally liked your post but I think there's a misconception... I play with a big squadron, support a player BGS faction, and I PvP - all 'MMO' stuff you're talking about but, honestly, carriers as pitched aren't offering much for us either.

No BGS ties, no local faction contacts, no mission board, interstellar factors-style bond cashing? All-but useless for my squadron. Best case scenario it means shaving some time off restocks around remote CZs, but still necessitates stops at regular stations to pick up massacres and cash bonds. So RIP that plan.

As for selling stuff to other players? Nobody in the squad is dumb enough to buy vanilla ships from carriers at a marked up price when they're 3 jumps from a Yongmart.

PvP? Everyone just hangs out in Shinrarta, San Tu etc. The former is permit locked so carriers can't go there. The cost of carriers is out of the reach of most PvP players I know and brings literally nothing to the table gameplay wise because ship transfers in-bubble are already faster and cheaper based on the numbers we've seen. So RIP that plan.

I'm not disagreeing with the body of your post but I feel like often PvE vs PvP, or Open vs Solo mini-rifts open up in threads like this. Honestly, Frontier very rarely cater to any subset of players. They're off doing their own thang, man, I have no idea what that is right now. As far as I can see carriers might benefit... AX people? And... maybe the fuel rats or something. There's no reason multi players and solo players can't live in peace - I don't want you to think we're getting served while you're not; believe me... we aren't.

 

[sedilbur]

Hello Frontier,

Q. Why are Fleet Carriers such a large investment?
A. Fleet Carriers are massive vessels, which have crew and services with the ability to impact the owner's experience, but also the experience of other commanders from across the galaxy. It's a huge responsibility aimed at experienced commanders with the time and credits to maintain and manage these mammoth vessels, offering potential services to many different players.

From the casual player perspective, who played a lot in the past, I am quite disappointing by the cost. 5 Milliards or billions, that's quite a lot. If that's mean having to hard try or farm like a pork i am quite used already.

I really quite don't understand why the initial cost must be more than 1 billion. Is there not any other way to reduce the time for player that just want to play the game and enjoy your latest update ?

Maybe I am a poor player after all, but this is time to give my opinion and that's what I want to do now. I don't expect any feedback or agreement of cause. I waited this update for a long time to get returned to play.

To ease the access from smaller player that maybe not part of any Squadron, is it possible to reduce the initial costs tot 1 billion credits for a lightweight Fleet Carrier ? (for example, 2 landing pads of each) then, and "core/basic" services only.

Then, any addition pads or services can be buyable from the owner IF he needed it and have the fund (of course). Like a mod house with locked room that you need to unlock with credit. (here the rooms are functions or pads or additional services)

That way, the maintenance (daily/weekly) costs can be probably smaller and can help small player to manage their Fleet carrier ?

It would let quite a lot of players to get access to your fleet carrier, and despite some player saying that grinding 5 billion will not take so much time with the right technique, it can be a wall that the player will just see and don't even try to get the fund. That's the same problem with engineer ... the wall can be so big and grindy that probably a lot of players just don't even start with them. 1 billion seems fair. Players who did reach that amount one time just need to collect any initial fund for the bank to run few weeks or months without being at risk of bankrupt and loosing all.

Thanks for reading. The feature looks cool like company manager game, but what's the point if this is just entertaining a niche players groups ?

Fly save.

 

[Arsen Cross]

I would like a full jump scheduling system for these as well. Think repeating to infinity calendar alert style. My thought here is that you could have a group of carriers teamed up to create a ferry network and by scheduling the carriers involved you enable people to contribute their carrier to the ferry network without actually having to log in to initiate every jump.

 

[A D]

Do I buy a fleet carrier? Haven't made up my mind at this point. Initial reaction is that the holding costs are terrible. Use it or loose it is not really my idea of fun. However, perhaps oddly what disappoints me more is that I can't fly this ship, just jump and sit. One of the things I like most about ED is flying ships in space. If I can't do that then the Fleet Carrier is a glorified footlocker.

 

[Thorian Baalnorn]

"Q. How might an explorer fund their Fleet Carrier's upkeep costs?
A. Whilst Elite Dangerous' top traders might want to turn their Fleet Carrier into a trading post that turns a profit, we expect most Fleet Carriers to be fitted in ways that help players do what they enjoy in the game. For example, explorers who have accrued large sums of cash, they'll be able to take a Fleet Carrier and ferry it out to the remote regions of the galaxy and explore never-before seen locations. Equally, explorers could set their Fleet Carrier up as a trading post in a convenient location to turn a profit while they engage in other activities. "

So you spent all that time developing gameplay that is going to be primarily used by "no lifers" instead of a majority of your player base? Brilliant, just brilliant! If you think the rest of us casuals are going to dock at and use these things, its probably not going to happen very often. The owner is going to want to turn a profit to at least pay for upkeep in which case we will just use NPC ports in the bubble and if we are outside the bubble we will probably be equipped to be self sufficient anyway.

Less than 1% of the player base will use this thing like you think they will.

 

[BDelacroix]

Is it a true statement that in order to actually be used as a carrier, one must buy the extra shipyard module or is the ability to park all of the owner's ships on board just inherent to the base?

My guess is the former, but I might be wrong.

 

[aRJay]

Is it a true statement that in order to actually be used as a carrier, one must buy the extra shipyard module or is the ability to park all of the owner's ships on board just inherent to the base?

My guess is the former, but I might be wrong.

Without a shipyard you can't swap ships so how do you bring more than one ship on board.

 

[BDelacroix]

Without a shipyard you can't swap ships so how do you bring more than one ship on board.

I don't know. Under current UI elements you can't. That isn't to say there isn't an option in the owner UI that lets you.

 

[jeanlun]

Hahahaha.... Absolutely brilliant Fdev !!! I have to truly congratulate you for pushing the "How to everything" concept to that far limit.
I'm absolutely speechless have to say, yet another G&F mega stuff (Grind & Frustrate), no idea of what's goin on with your choices, maybe you just wanna filter the player base to keep it up with only the masochist ones. Well, I'm not.