Better get my A into gear and do some crazy flying to get back to the bubble before this goes live on test server then. On my way to Colonia from Sag A.
Too late, the test server image is from 4/30, don't ruin your trip
Maybe not the way YOU make it.
Unless you want to test the carrier availablity on Colonia (I think Jaques had them), no need to. When the Beta comes up, log in, buy a Sidey and fly into a planet, then choose the starter Sidey on the rebuy screen.
I may need to revise my technique....
If you want to call criticism and discussion "children having a tantrum" then may i suggest it is you who is the one unwilling to hold a serious discussion.
The point is i'm fine with working for assets. I'm fine with those assets requiring effort. What i'm not fine with is losing assets due to not playing the game, whether it intentionally taking a break or due to real life issues which could prevent me from playing the game.
Devs should never use sticks on players to get them to play. Carrots are best.
All carrots are sticks for what isn't rewarded.
Every buff is a nerf to all unbuffed things.
So claiming sticks should never be used is just flat silly. It's an impossible ideal designed to short circuit rational consideration of the merits and flaws of any system.
That, though, is the opposition to upkeep in a nutshell. Not a reasoned response to necessities of a game, and long term health of a game environment.
Just a visceral emotional reaction to the perception of loss.
Every buff is a nerf to all unbuffed things.
So claiming sticks should never be used is just flat silly. It's an impossible ideal designed to short circuit rational consideration of the merits and flaws of any system.
That, though, is the opposition to upkeep in a nutshell. Not a reasoned response to necessities of a game, and long term health of a game environment.
Just a visceral emotional reaction to the perception of loss.
I haven't read through the posts from the beginning, too many to get through, so if I'm repeating what someone has already covered I apologise.
I see nothing in the intro about them allowing the AI to trade on the fleet carriers? I realise that would not make any difference to someone taking it out into the black, to god knows where, but it would certainly help on the upkeep if parked somewhere in the bubble.
I see nothing in the intro about them allowing the AI to trade on the fleet carriers? I realise that would not make any difference to someone taking it out into the black, to god knows where, but it would certainly help on the upkeep if parked somewhere in the bubble.
When I first started playing in 2015 I thought I could never save enough to afford a Conda.
It took me a whole year of grind but I did it.
Now you can earn enough for a fleet carrier by grinding for a week. You can earn enough to upkeep it by playing normally in one evening.
And people are still complaining. Why? Because there is an "I want it and I want it now!" attitude amongst the community.
It's a cancer and it needs to be stamped out. You want something you work for it.
FWIW I'd bump the cost of a carrier up to 20B just to watch the salty tears flow.
That's the big question isn't it? At least for me it is.
How much gameplay will it add to the game besides some managment menus, a portable mining station and new stuff to grind for.
How much will be added that couldn't be done without them, and at what pricetag?
These are all very welcome changes to Fleet Carriers -- thanks!
I have three additional "quality of life" requests for the final production launch of fleet carriers (too late for Beta 2, obvs!) -- ranked in order of (presumed) implementation difficulty, from easiest to hardest:
I have three additional "quality of life" requests for the final production launch of fleet carriers (too late for Beta 2, obvs!) -- ranked in order of (presumed) implementation difficulty, from easiest to hardest:
- Fleet carrier ATC verbal messaging should be more welcoming, possibly even a bit deferential, to carrier owners --carrier owners are technically their boss, after all! Even something as simple as "welcome home, commander" would make it feel a bit more special than a regular station landing approach.
- I want to be able to set a buy AND sell price for a commodity at different levels -- buy low, sell high!
- It should be possible to "board" the carrier, or at least see the view from either the carrier flight deck or a luxurious commander's apartment, both in normal space and during hyperspace jumps. Going into a "big ship" hyperspace jump while sitting blind in another ship buried deep in the belly of the carrier just feels wrong!
The actual mechanism for doing that is really difficult, though.
Use of services (some automatically, some only if a tariff is set) adds money to the carrier budget. Some services (e.g. sell to market) can take money out of the budget as well. If you cap the maximum amount of money storable on a carrier, then what happens if it's at the cap and someone sells lots of exploration data to it, or buys an expensive module from it, or purchases the pile of LTDs it has on board? Does the owner then get penalised for not withdrawing the money back to their own uncapped funds in some micromanagement game?
If you cap it lower than a billion, it's not even possible for a carrier to stick up a buy order for a full Tritium load at "reasonable hauling expenses" (without constantly checking and adding more funding) because the carrier can't cover the cost on its account. But even a billion will fund a basic carrier for four years or a full service carrier for most of a year before it even starts facing debt, even if no-one uses its services at all.
Giving the carrier a separate maintenance account that will not automatically draw money from the primary carrier account unless instructed by the owner, and has a low cap of maybe 50 million would "solve" that "problem" at the cost of becoming Fleet Carriers: Utterly Pointless Bureaucracy Edition, and leading to the bizarre situation where a carrier could be raking in tens of millions daily (say a carrier in a popular but not yet contested exploration spot) but nevertheless decommissions itself (or at least shuts all its services down to conserve funds) any time its owner goes on holiday for a couple of weeks.
I'm always surprised how many people - who have a strong record of being sceptical about Frontier's other marketing statements like "this expansion will be exciting", and who were taught enough of the English language to know that words and phrases can have multiple meanings - take this at absolute face value as the only meaning "Elite: Dangerous" could possibly have ... even after six years after release the piece of lore that "Elite: Dangerous" allegedly refers to has absolutely zero in-game implementation (Lori Jameson doesn't count, though is probably the closest we'll get), and what previous mechanics did resemble it (rank-locking of missions) were actually removed.
Very clearly it's just a name they thought sounded better for marketing purposes than Elite IV because it conveys danger and excitement, and then scrambled to come up with a lore justification for when people inevitably asked to avoid saying "we thought it sounded cool", and are now stuck with despite there being no sensible way to add it to the game. And also there's no practical way for them to add danger to the game either, so it was a doubly bad choice. Next time they'll go with a trade-rank subtitle and avoid the hassle.
This is another step in the right direction, and the value is now certainly there for most owners I think. I'd really like to see some of the suggestions about Squadron interactions (not a whole separate Squad Carrier variant) with Carriers, with the owner's permission. I think moving Tritium from storage to the fuel tank is essential if I wanted to pay Squadron members for fueling my Carrier, instead of just relying on their good will 
.
.Hey, now we are very similar there. I never grinded for the conda like many. I said to myself, after a year, i might have enough for a conda. And you know what, after a year, i had enough for a conda... base conda, no upgrades.
And yes, you can earn enough for a FC with a bit of grinding. And i'm fine with that. Most people who have issues with it are not complaining because of the requirements to earn a FC, its because some people do not like the idea of losing assets while not playing.
If you think that is a "cancer" and "needs stamping out" then hell, in a way i hope FD increase offline costs. Make it a billion a week. Let's see how much you are supporting it then.
I wouldn't be amused by carriers requiring 20 billion, but if that was the goal, then so be it. As long as once i got one, i've got one, and can take a break from the game as long as i want and not have to worry about it being gone when i return.
When I were a lad words were still occasionally thought to mean something. If Frontier didn't want their shiny new toy to function as a carrier they should have called it something else.
And incidentally, butterscotch does have butter in it. Though not, as a rule scotch - though I'd be willing to bet that someone, somewhere....
Words do have meanings. However the language constantly evolves and so do situations. Limiting your vision to a strict interpretation of a words definition is a recipie for error.
Outside of math and science words have broad meaning and context is key. Hence I park on my drive way and drive on the park way and I don't lose any sleep over either.
Bull. Maintaining a separate SQL table for 'mothballed carriers that are inactive and should not appear in-game' is a trivial database operation. You may be able to pull the wool over the eyes of players who have no technical knowhow or no gamedev/database/IT/CS background by saying "but we have to delete them!" however you can't fool those of us who do have that professional experience.
You've already written a module to spawn a new carrier out of the aether (including code that sanity checks the number of carriers already around a body or in a system), you've already written a module to remove a carrier and transfer stored ships/modules to nearby stations, the only module missing is the part that tracks mothballed carriers and then links the two together to "re-spawn" it back into the game (once the player pays a fee) using the spawn module you already have.
The existing spawn module spawns one kind of carrier, the default one.
Take a little personal responsibility and plan your own maintenance and absence needs, have a month or so of maintenance backed up in your carrier in case of emergency. That will provide 14 weeks to recover from any event before the carrier despawns.
If you really can't manage, have google or siri set a reminder for you.
Take a little personal responsibility and plan your own maintenance and absence needs, have a month or so of maintenance backed up in your carrier in case of emergency. That will provide 14 weeks to recover from any event before the carrier despawns.
If you really can't manage, have google or siri set a reminder for you.
Definitely some great, positive changes. Decom still needs to be removed. There are a million and one reasonable IRL reasons to be unable to log in for 10+ weeks, suddenly, and without warning. It's not how much/little it costs, it's the principle of the mechanic. Removing decom also means there's less code added to the game.
If the decom is an issue of inactive carriers cluttering navigation, then either mothball them after 1 week of no login or make them non-persistent. If these were still squadron-owned then persistence would be a must, but as a player-owned ship there really isn't a need for persistence, especially for those not playing in open/PG. Persistent carriers will cause endless problems for the non-owner player who wants to interact with it.
If the decom is an issue of inactive carriers cluttering navigation, then either mothball them after 1 week of no login or make them non-persistent. If these were still squadron-owned then persistence would be a must, but as a player-owned ship there really isn't a need for persistence, especially for those not playing in open/PG. Persistent carriers will cause endless problems for the non-owner player who wants to interact with it.