Fleet carriers for exploration

marx

marx
The stream is still going on, but from the stream and the live Q&A: not only do fleet carriers require a weekly upkeep (by default 10 mill Cr), but you can't sell exploration data at them.

Personally, there goes most of my interest in them.

Update: carriers can jump once every two hours.
 
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Orvidius

Orvidius
We'll see if anything changes in the beta. I remember the FSS undergoing a lot of changes during its beta period; maybe they'll do the same here? I'm not holding out much hope, though.

The lack of UC will really kill it for explorers. We also don't have confirmation of whether you can jump it while docked on it. If not, then you can't use it to get to remote star clusters either.

As I see it, the only uses for explorers it will have is:

  • Repair/Rearm, probably more useful for expeditions than lone explorers
  • Bring your fleet, so you can switch off ships more easily without returning to the bubble.
  • Bring extra modules, so you can change your loadout or sell them to explorers who forgot their AFMU, for instance.

If it had UC, it would have been a game changer. But I suspect FDev doesn't want people to offload their data, buy a sidewinder from it, and suicide back to the bubble with practically no loss.

EDIT: This also raises the question-- Can they be seen on the galaxy map? Will explorers know when there is one nearby (not in the same system)?
 

Romeo India Charlie

Romeo India Charlie
I wasn't too excited with FCs because I had a lot of questions and now that those have been answered I'm less than lukewarm. I don't want to sound negative, I feel FCs are a cool feature just not for what I do. Three main reasons stand out:
1. If I can't sell the data, the FC will only slow me down and;
2. If there's a 1:1 ration between the fuel commodity and the jump range, then it will take a lot of mining in the deep to move it around and;
3. Each jump takes 2 hours. I can cover a lot more than 1000ly in 2 hours.

It sounds ok(ish) if I want to explore a sector. I can take my ships there, stick around for some days, etc. If it had UC I would absolutely consider it, maybe not for the current project I'm running but longer more specific expeditions. With these limitations, I don't find them particularly interesting, for now at least.
 

Orvidius

Orvidius
Hedy said:
Is there a longer wait time between jumps to systems?
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Yep, 1 hour spin-up, and another hour cooldown. So it has a maximum movement rate of one jump every two hours.

In terms of speed, this is of course far behind what a solo explorer can do. However, it's not that bad compared to a typical expedition pace. So it could be useful there, except that rearm/repair/shipyard/commodities aren't that big of a deal for explorers most of the time, and it's really the UC services that would make it useful.
 

Hasaf

Hasaf
I have been out in the black for over a year and was starting to steer back out of interest in the FC. However, as I look at what has been released, this just isn't what I was looking for.
 

Burke

B
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Hasaf said:
I have been out in the black for over a year and was starting to steer back out of interest in the FC. However, as I look at what has been released, this just isn't what I was looking for.
Click to expand...

They are demanding carriers have UC. Imagine you found upon your return to the bubble somebody had hoovered up all your tags cause they had it on their carrier. Ths is why the carrier cant. Best to make sure FD know your feelings on this before they cave in to demands.
 

Vayporz

Vayporz
Burke said:
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They are demanding carriers have UC. Imagine you found upon your return to the bubble somebody had hoovered up all your tags cause they had it on their carrier. Ths is why the carrier cant. Best to make sure FD know your feelings on this before they cave in to demands.
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I'd say visit my FC (or one that will let you) and sell your UC data (with a tariff) before I sell it out from under you.... welcome to capitalism.
 

Valije

Valije
After a few thousand tagged bodies the novelty wears pretty fast. Only people who "explored" up to 5 kylies are concerned about them. I've been in the black for more than a year in a single trip... do yo think I was concerned about "someone can stole my tags. Better go to a station soon"?.

Are you one of thos who think that we are running out of undiscovered systems?. Here are some news for you: Only the 0.05 % of them are discovered.
 

Sunyavadin

Sunyavadin
Burke said:
They are demanding carriers have UC. Imagine you found upon your return to the bubble somebody had hoovered up all your tags cause they had it on their carrier.
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More likely, you offload all your data at their carrier, because it's there. And everyone's going to want as many explorers dropping their data off to fund the giant space millstone they're dragging around with them. And if it's not there yet, then it'll be weeks before it does get there, by which time you've already made it back, sold it all, and headed out somewhere else.
 

Orvidius

Orvidius
Thing is, with scooping up tags, the explorer still has to travel to all of those locations, and do the scanning/mapping. It's more a race to get to these places than a race to sell the data. Tag sniping isn't as big of a problem as people think it is, because in order for someone to do that, you have to independently discover it around the same time by accident, or one person needs to be directly aware of what the other has found, such as posting the system name here on the forum.

To put this in perspective, I think we need to remember that Exploration is one of the stated goals/roles for the carriers. I'd be more OK with it being a non-exploration feature, if it weren't for that. But if they want it to support explorers, then it needs to have the correct tools. It's like saying that it's great for bounty hunting, but you won't be able to rearm on it or sell your vouchers there. So then why have it if you're a bounty hunter? As it currently stands, it doesn't offer explorers much of anything. Repairs are pretty well covered with AFMUs and repair limpets. Fuel? Nope, we have scoops. Changing ships/loadouts? Rarely need to. How do we make our money? Selling data. So unless it gives you a means to get a little more efficient with that, then it doesn't support our role.

Again, I'd be less annoyed if they just flat out said it wasn't for explorers. I'd be disappointed, sure. But right now there's a mixed message here.
 

Sunyavadin

Sunyavadin
The problem is, fundamentally, that all mechanics around exploration are designed by people who don't actually engage in exploration, based on a nebulous concept they have in their heads about what they imagine exploration to be, and based on criticisms from other people who likewise don't participate in this aspect of the game, and whose concepts of it are equally not based in experience.
 

Sunyavadin

Sunyavadin
Orvidius said:
Thing is, with scooping up tags, the explorer still has to travel to all of those locations, and do the scanning/mapping. It's more a race to get to these places than a race to sell the data. Tag sniping isn't as big of a problem as people think it is, because in order for someone to do that, you have to independently discover it around the same time by accident, or one person needs to be directly aware of what the other has found, such as posting the system name here on the forum.
Click to expand...
It's part of the problem people have with concepts of money and orders of magnitude, above a certain number, outside of people who deal with this kind of thing in any practical way, the ability to conceptualise such orders of magnitude breaks down.
Someone "hoovering up" the same systems you passed through previously would require them to coincidentally pull off something the likes of each of you rummaging in a jar of salt, picking out a single grain, and then after you had picked a few, putting them all back and seeing if the other pulled out the exact same grain you'd already picked. Many, many times in a row. Even if they spent days doing this, at one grain a minute, trying to pick out every grain you'd previously picked out, it would take ages, far less than the time during which you'd have either made it back home, or gone through a dozen other jars along the way, picking out far more than you ever did in that one first jar..
 

Hedy

H
Well, with the time between jumps and no UC currently my enthusiasm has wained quite a bit as I probably did not have any other use for one. Being a Fleet Carrier account doesn't appeal much either.
I'll try the beta and wait for final outcome as these things are not always set in stone. I feel a little led on but maybe that was my own expectations?
 

Vayporz

Vayporz
Sunyavadin said:
something the likes of each of you rummaging in a jar of salt, picking out a single grain, and then after you had picked a few, putting them all back and seeing if the other pulled out the exact same grain you'd already picked. Many, many times in a row.
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Agreed. I would venture a guess that few at FDEV have sat through selling 20-30 pages of Cartography Data when they returned from an exploration trip...and even as the guy turning it in, I am unaware which "grains of salt" were "sniped," per se. After the 3rd or 4th "Congratulations! CMDR" screen I just want to get this batch of data sold, where I could move on to something a bit more meaningful in the game. Alas this is really a rant for a different thread, other than to say I don't know if I've ever lost a first discovery tag before to another cmdr, but after my 2,400+ first discovered systems -- which is small potatoes for most explorers -- it's more a product of the fact that I wouldn't know if had or not.
 
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Mengy

Mengy
Sunyavadin said:
The problem is, fundamentally, that all mechanics around exploration are designed by people who don't actually engage in exploration, based on a nebulous concept they have in their heads about what they imagine exploration to be, and based on criticisms from other people who likewise don't participate in this aspect of the game, and whose concepts of it are equally not based in experience.
Click to expand...

I feel this is correct. Frontier simply does not get exploration in their own game. I'm not sure they ever really did.
 
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