Patch Notes Fleet Carriers Update - Patch 4 Patch Notes

[Haru2020]

by the sounds of things they have 'not fulfilled leading statements' in the past, but seeing as ive been in (this)game 2 weeks what do I know.
I thought I would give an idea that would be a temporary fix that fits with lore, solves the c*ck blocking (orange sidewinder's for all) of systems by people who don't even use their carriers and actually gives needed content to the game.

 

[Kestrel71]

wasn't FDev supposed to put a cap on how many carriers can get into a system? as of this writing there are OVER 60 FC's in HIP 36601. just a hunch but I bet that's why everybody is getting orange sindwinder out there...

If you own an FC in that system, MOVE. there are commanders stuck on the planet because of the carrier lag.

I think the limit is in effect, but they didn't do anything about existing carriers in systems (i.e. by moving carriers to neighbouring systems). My understanding is that if a system has 20 carriers in it, and one of those carriers leaves, they won't be able to get back in until the total number of carriers in-system drops below 16.

 

[Kestrel71]

what we actually need is a shed load less carriers sat doing nothing. Its tempting to suggest to make them vulnerable to goids then make the goids attack any system that has over 10 of them...BRING OUT THE GOIDS

That idea has so many problems:

1. Carriers are always active even when the owner is not in-game. That means they would be sitting completely defenceless the majority of the time.
2. They are fleet carriers and hold multiple (all?) of the ships owned by multiple players; why would anyone store their ships/equipment/minerals in one place that ABSOLUTELY WOULD be destroyed within days simply by virtue of the fact that no one is in-game 24/7?

 

[D.D.Hariman]

That idea has so many problems:

1. Carriers are always active even when the owner is not in-game. That means they would be sitting completely defenceless the majority of the time.
2. They are fleet carriers and hold multiple (all?) of the ships owned by multiple players; why would anyone store their ships/equipment/minerals in one place that ABSOLUTELY WOULD be destroyed within days simply by virtue of the fact that no one is in-game 24/7?

If people decided that it was too dangerous to be in a FC, they could stop sitting in them and that would reduce the income the FC can generate sitting in a system causing the owner to move it or lose it or actually have to do something with it.
Maybe only let the TRIODS attack FC's in systems that have orbital or planetary bases?

 

[Artemis257]

I think the limit is in effect, but they didn't do anything about existing carriers in systems (i.e. by moving carriers to neighboring systems). My understanding is that if a system has 20 carriers in it, and one of those carriers leaves, they won't be able to get back in until the total number of carriers in-system drops below 16.

I wish that was the case. My squad and I just came from HIP 36601 after doing a materials run earlier this week. when we jumped out to a raw trader to reset there were 16 carriers in system I counted before setting out. we returned 2 days later to find 63 in system. We jumped into system with no issue, warning, or block for the jump. That's when the orange sidewinders started happening. I decided to hop the carrier one system over so as not to add to the issue.

TL;DR - the carrier lockout is either not enabled or not working. 16 carriers in system when I jumped out, 60+ when I came back (including mine) with no warning or block when I jumped either way.

 

[alexzk]

If people decided that it was too dangerous to be in a FC, they could stop sitting in them and that would reduce the income the FC can generate sitting in a system causing the owner to move it or lose it or actually have to do something with it.
Maybe only let the TRIODS attack FC's in systems that have orbital or planetary bases?

If you check what FDev answered on 1st stream about carriers "what should explorers do?", they said - just leave in bubble. So it is by design. Leave carrier in Deciat and go to Void for 6 months

 

[Winterdyne]

So many opportunities with FC play just missed.

There are a few fixes needed with FCs I think. Quite why this didn't get spotted in beta (or did it?) I don't know. I missed the boat a bit on a rapid grind of cash to buy a carrier. Now I've played with one for a few weeks, I'm... not overly thrilled with it. It's basically a mining warehouse, which doesn't quite float my boat - I want to play with the BGS - doing famine or outbreak exploi- er, relief, and so on. I don't want to be effectively forced into Painite mining as the best way of making cash with my 5 billion credit boat. I'd like to be encouraged to bounce around the bubble (maybe take the oppotunity to up my Imperial rank) and feel like this is more than just Space Miner.

The main issue is I think the requirement for immediate player involvement on the carriers: all this does is encourage maximising credits per hour, which boils down to spamming LTD, Painite and Tritium hotspots and selling stations. Fixing this may alleviate the need for other fixes. I know that they were not intended as 'cash making machines' that can be left unattended, but frankly not having that simply forces them to congregate where manual play is most efficient, and that's mining then jumping to a high price market and squashing it with a massive sale.

Second issue: Too many carriers per system / body. 16 is probably too many, but regardless carriers will need to be forced off mining spots OR encouraged off.

The goals are:
To remove much of the 'It's best to make money by Painite / LTD grinding' by encouraging carriers to be stationed for and to trade in other commodities.
To encourage the wider distribution of carriers within the galaxy.
To lessen the effect of market spiking by carriers.
To encourage player interaction with carriers (in a system which has high demand for a carrier's commodities, it should be mostly possible to make profit by dealing with the carrier.
To make carrier management more engaging. It should be effectively a subgame of response to BGS situations, played over days, not hours. Whilst a loss making period may not be a good idea, it should be possible that not watching what's going on with your carrier results in lesser profits than going and moving it to another market.

Proposed solution:
System local NPC trade should be mandatory (ALWAYS on). Carrier pricing defaults at galactic average and runs a narrower variation band than station pricing (for example if stations go +/- 1000%, carriers go +500% to -%500). Carrier pricing range is the balance mechanism.


Achievement of goals:

NPC trading with carriers means they make money while players are away, this reduces the requirement to make large amounts of credits in actual play time (so less carriers at the LTD/Painite grinding spots as that CAN'T be done offline).
NPC trading being mandatory prevents stockpiling of commodities in systems where there is demand and market reaction to that causes demand to drop over time. It also puts carriers in competition with each other, thus encouraging the setting of sensible, competitive pricing on commodities to make efficient profits.
The narrowed pricing range combined with mandatory NPC trading means stockpiling LTD or Painite on a carrier and parking it in a high demand system (with the intention of dumping a bulk on the market) is less of a good idea, this should (in combination with the other effects of the change) make market spiking less prevalent. This also makes local carriers making 'delivery' or 'pickup' stops in systems more attractive to other players.

 

[alexzk]

NPC trading with

NPCs are absent in system if no players there. They do not exist.

 

[Winterdyne]

NPCs are absent in system if no players there. They do not exist.

Yes, exactly. If your carrier is parked in a system with no population it cannot make money from NPCs while you're offline as there is no local demand for the commodities it holds.

Similarly to prevent disruption of existing inter-system trade mechanisms (presuming they exist) NPCs from outside the system will not interact with the carrier. It's ONLY local stations that should trade. This means you actually have to do something to complete a trading run (jump from source to destination system, reset your commodity market to make sales etc).

It therefore can become a better way to make money by not mining, but rather jumping to systems in Boom, setting a nice low buy price and letting NPCs fill your carrier, before jumping it to a system that needs those commodities.

In fluff terms you could say the carrier registers with a local Nav beacon on arrival in a system.

 

[alexzk]

Yes, exactly. If your carrier is parked in a system with no population it cannot make money from NPCs while you're offline as there is no local demand for the commodities it holds.

Similarly to prevent disruption of existing inter-system trade mechanisms (presuming they exist) NPCs from outside the system will not interact with the carrier. It's ONLY local stations that should trade. This means you actually have to do something to complete a trading run (jump from source to destination system, reset your commodity market to make sales etc).

It therefore can become a better way to make money by not mining, but rather jumping to systems in Boom, setting a nice low buy price and letting NPCs fill your carrier, before jumping it to a system that needs those commodities.

In fluff terms you could say the carrier registers with a local Nav beacon on arrival in a system.

I preffer to have tritium scoop and market be removed completely from carrier. Or at least I should be able to disable to save creds.

 

[Winterdyne]

The market is essential to 'bulk freighter' use of a carrier, and the idea is to shift people from the current mining goldrush that's been going on for nearly a year. Splatting the hotspots doesn't really do anything at this point other than annoy people - what needs to happen is other play methods need to be brought up in terms of viability. Offline trading with NPCs on a carrier is one possibility. Frankly though I think the whole economic model of the game needs reworking.

 

[alexzk]

The market is essential to 'bulk freighter' use of a carrier, and the idea is to shift people from the current mining goldrush that's been going on for nearly a year. Splatting the hotspots doesn't really do anything at this point other than annoy people - what needs to happen is other play methods need to be brought up in terms of viability. Offline trading with NPCs on a carrier is one possibility. Frankly though I think the whole economic model of the game needs reworking.

Don't really get about offline As I said if you offline, then no NPC present. So you should be online sit on carrier so they fly around. Or any other player actually. If carrier has zero online players it will be zero npc.

 

[askavir]

I think the limit is in effect, but they didn't do anything about existing carriers in systems (i.e. by moving carriers to neighbouring systems). My understanding is that if a system has 20 carriers in it, and one of those carriers leaves, they won't be able to get back in until the total number of carriers in-system drops below 16.

The limit is 16 per body, not 16 per system.

 

[Winterdyne]

Don't really get about offline As I said if you offline, then no NPC present. So you should be online sit on carrier so they fly around. Or any other player actually. If carrier has zero online players it will be zero npc.

Sorry, I don't mean individual NPC ships (other than as they are now - purely visual). Synchronising that would be next to impossible. I mean NPC stations.

What I'm getting at is integration with the economic simulation. How that would be synchronised across instancing is another question; I would suggest by setting a reserve on outgoing commodities for sales or capacity for incoming purchases on a per tick basis with the BGS (and requiring a tick completes before allowing a carrier to jump so make sure it's less than the lockdown).

 

[Kestrel71]

If people decided that it was too dangerous to be in a FC, they could stop sitting in them and that would reduce the income the FC can generate sitting in a system causing the owner to move it or lose it or actually have to do something with it.
Maybe only let the TRIODS attack FC's in systems that have orbital or planetary bases?

That doesn't address the problem. It's not "dangerous" to have an FC that absolutely WILL be destroyed while you're out of the game or even if you're in-game but not near the FC, it's SUICIDAL. It makes absolutely no sense to own one in the scenario you're describing because it's nothing more than a guaranteed way to lose everything you own every second day OVER and OVER and OVER.

FDEV need to come up with some sort of incentive for FC owners to move the carriers out of the systems they are sitting in. They could continue to nerf the ever living hell out of mining, so they don't just remain mining storage platforms, but then they create a new problem: how do people then earn the credits to buy and maintain a carrier?

FDEV's implementation of FCs was half-arsed and they created a problem for themselves. To date, they seem to be floundering trying to find a way to solve it because it actually requires they do some work on the in-game mechanics, something they've not a particularly good history of doing.

 

[Kestrel71]

The limit is 16 per body, not 16 per system.

Yes, I understand -- I mis-spoke. This is why I think the implementation is correct as I've been in systems where I was the third ship in-system and within a couple of days, there were around 20 ships, 16 around one body and 4 around another.

 

[D.D.Hariman]

That doesn't address the problem. It's not "dangerous" to have an FC that absolutely WILL be destroyed while you're out of the game or even if you're in-game but not near the FC, it's SUICIDAL. It makes absolutely no sense to own one in the scenario you're describing because it's nothing more than a guaranteed way to lose everything you own every second day OVER and OVER and OVER.

FDEV need to come up with some sort of incentive for FC owners to move the carriers out of the systems they are sitting in. They could continue to nerf the ever living hell out of mining, so they don't just remain mining storage platforms, but then they create a new problem: how do people then earn the credits to buy and maintain a carrier?

FDEV's implementation of FCs was half-arsed and they created a problem for themselves. To date, they seem to be floundering trying to find a way to solve it because it actually requires they do some work on the in-game mechanics, something they've not a particularly good history of doing.

I guess you missed the part about ONLY ALLOW THE FC TO BE DESTROYED IF IT IS IN A SYSTEM WITH SOME KIND OF PERMANENT BASE.
If it is in a system that has nothing in it, it would be safe. This would discourage parking it in a developed, desirable system and making everyone else's life miserable.
You own one.
You log into the game.
You move it someplace to do the trading.
You decide to log off, you move it into uninhabited to keep it safe.

 

[Dillon Fallon]

I guess you missed the part about ONLY ALLOW THE FC TO BE DESTROYED IF IT IS IN A SYSTEM WITH SOME KIND OF PERMANENT BASE.
If it is in a system that has nothing in it, it would be safe. This would discourage parking it in a developed, desirable system and making everyone else's life miserable.
You own one.
You log into the game.
You move it someplace to do the trading.
You decide to log off, you move it into uninhabited to keep it safe.

The idea of carriers being anything other than invulnerable was discussed around the time of the betas and just ended up with threads full of "" at the thought of having to deal with that kind of challenge. Too late now for that really.

Maybe tritium availability should just stay the same permanently so more get decommissioned.

 

[alexzk]

Carrier has 3 basic functions:
1. Carry a lot of cargo A to B
2. Carry fleet A to B
3. Be personal safe.

1 and 2 are killed by market & mining adjust. Now 1 jump costs 8kk, + market amounts are not enough for all traders.
Left 3rd option, what people do - gankers park in Deciat, etc.

 

[Tifu]

FDEV need to come up with some sort of incentive for FC owners to move the carriers out of the systems they are sitting in. They could continue to nerf the ever living hell out of mining, so they don't just remain mining storage platforms, but then they create a new problem: how do people then earn the credits to buy and maintain a carrier?

After seeing the FC bubble->Colonia & Colonia-bubble shuttle trips dry up on the FCOC (Fleet Carrier Owners Club) discord channel, I've come to the conclusion that limiting the tritium supply to carriers via mining is a bad idea

Read about some actual theoretical studies being done about how to produce large amounts of tritium. The most promising approach seems to be by bombarding lithium pellets with radiation from a fusion reactor.

There has to be a way of incorporating this idea into the game by using lithium pellets as a limiting factor in how fast an FC can generate the tritium it needs for a long journey.

I'm assuming of course that the carriers have built-in fusion reactors. If not, then maybe a fusion based refinery module can be made available to FCs.