Newcomer / Intro Got a spanking new FC . . .

[alexzk]

Just hauling 10000t from planetary port to station does easy hundreds of millions. Yday did 11 runs down to load, carrier juimp, 11 runs to unload. -> 250 mils.
Planetary <--> station loops may have 25000+ margins. If you run through 3-4 hops like extaction-refinery-industial-high tech that can be even better total.

 

[tolm]

Never Fleet Carry without Upkeep! Or something ...

 

[Heavy Johnson]

I must be doing something wrong then

Give an example of a money making scheme that uses a carrier which produces more credits/hour than regular mining in the bubble, once you account for 1) weekly upkeep on the carrier and 2) the initial outlay of 5b for a carrier. Assume you can amortize your weekly 5b carrier purchase over 2 years. (~50 m/week). Be sure to include either the cost of purchasing trit fuel, or the time used to mine fuel for trit, which you must count as hours which you are not making money. Also include the time you are using the carrier to jump, which must be included as hours in which you are not making money.

If you can't produce this scenario, the carrier is a net loss.

 

[K Olley]

@Heavy Johnson

Explo-miner, lets just say that my credit balance and assets has increased substantially since purchase, that is doing a combination of mining, exploration and logistical work that would not have been achievable in the same locations without a carrier.

Credit balance has gone from less than 1b after carrier purchase to around 15b now, other assets - new ships and fittings have also increased.

As for mining in the bubble, you would not make much profit out of that selling it in Colonia

I play for fun and relaxation, not just to clock up credits.

 

[Heavy Johnson]

@Heavy Johnson

Explo-miner, lets just say that my credit balance and assets has increased substantially since purchase, that is doing a combination of mining, exploration and logistical work that would not have been achievable in the same locations without a carrier.

Credit balance has gone from less than 1b after carrier purchase to around 15b now, other assets - new ships and fittings have also increased.

As for mining in the bubble, you would not make much profit out of that selling it in Colonia

I play for fun and relaxation, not just to clock up credits.

Oh, that's completely fine; I have a DSSA Carrier that sits in the middle of nowhere entirely for the fun it provides. But I'm under no illusion that it is able to make me more money.

An optimized mining ship will cost you at least 4b less (and that's an expensive outfitting!), have no upkeep, make more credits/hour (or week, or month), and require no mining or buying of tritium fuel. Carriers have interesting uses, but they will never make more credits than other solutions. Unless FDev does something wild, but I'm not holding my breath.

 

[K Olley]

The way that I use the carrier allows me to make more money easier than without one, it also allows me to get highly optimised ships to places that they would not be able to go without reducing their optimisation to allow them to get there and back, I also carry on it extra equipment that may be of use at a later date.

Coming back to one of the subjects of the thread, the carrier allows you to alter the way that some things may be done by acting as a mobile station - storehouse allowing both long term storage facilities, the ability to switch between optimised ships, the easy ability to optimise ships, I am in the process of trying to optimise a couple of new miners - getting the right mining tools in the right slots for optimum performance.

Using miners from a carrier allows you to switch between ships for different styles of mining and the ability to mine for commodities that may not be otherwise worthwhile, some commodities are worth a lot more on the mission boards than in regular trading and some as can be seen in my hold are worth saving until I make a trip back to the bubble, Tritium is one that I very rarely specifically mine for, most of it is picked up while I am looking or mining for other things - LTD's, Bromellite or Cores, the same goes for some of the metals.

 

[Heavy Johnson]

The way that I use the carrier allows me to make more money easier than without one,

Which is what?

it also allows me to get highly optimised ships to places that they would not be able to go without reducing their optimisation to allow them to get there and back, I also carry on it extra equipment that may be of use at a later date.

I agree those are nice conveniences, but you can still mine with optimized ships in the bubble at the right locations.

Coming back to one of the subjects of the thread, the carrier allows you to alter the way that some things may be done by acting as a mobile station - storehouse allowing both long term storage facilities, the ability to switch between optimised ships, the easy ability to optimise ships, I am in the process of trying to optimise a couple of new miners - getting the right mining tools in the right slots for optimum performance.

Using miners from a carrier allows you to switch between ships for different styles of mining and the ability to mine for commodities that may not be otherwise worthwhile, some commodities are worth a lot more on the mission boards than in regular trading and some as can be seen in my hold are worth saving until I make a trip back to the bubble, Tritium is one that I very rarely specifically mine for, most of it is picked up while I am looking or mining for other things - LTD's, Bromellite or Cores, the same goes for some of the metals.

I again completely agree with you that the carrier is highly convenient. It has some niche uses where it can do things that can’t otherwise be done: jumping to systems outside regular jump range, ferrying many people over large distances, transporting large numbers of ships simultaneously.

A carrier isn’t a more efficient way to make credits. If you’re just looking to build up a huge pile of credits and buy a ton of things - say to get every ship in the game fully A rated, or a Cutter for every paintjob - then the carrier is going to be less effective. You have to sink a 5b cost up front and usually 10-20m/week depending on services. Over two years, at the lower end, that’s over 15b 6b credits.

At a reasonable 100m/hr, that’s an extra 60 hours of mining just to break even. If you need to take a break from the game for life reasons you’re also going to continue to accumulate loss while not playing, which is not true for regular ships.

So yeah, carriers are nifty for some things, but for pumping out stacks of credits, you might as well just go mine some more. You can use the carrier to make some credits because you like having one, but never fool yourself into thinking it is a credit-creator.

Edit: Bad math. Fixed.

 

[Cohen the Worrior]

Having a fleet carrier will change the way the game is played. Therefore I recommend you get one as soon as you can afford it. Don't worry, it will pay for itself. Just park it in a suitable system and use it as your base for mining, you'll be making money hand over fist.

With a bit of extra cash, you can adapt your FC for other jobs. This is how Hr. Ms. Karel Doorman is used for deep space exploration, showing of the flag missions and delivery of supplies to far out bases.

• She's equipped with a refuel station, repair crews and an armoury.
• A deep exploration vessel like a DBX or Krait Phantom is used to jump about 500 ly in the desired direction.
• Then back track to the FC making eco jumps, to search for a suitable landing system for your FC. A suitable system would be any system containing planets with icy rings, for mining tritium. Other hotspots are a bonus, you can still mine tritium as a by product. Metallic rings can also be mined, but won't give any tritium. Metal rich or rocky rings are not worth the effort.
• Bring in the FC, board a mining ship rigged for core and laser mining. A Python is often recommended, but a Krait Mk II has the same hard points and with a lower cargo capacity will fill up faster. The Krait is also more maneuverable and it's cockpit allows a better view at your surroundings. Very useful when mining.

Anyway, that's how I'm doing it.
Comments and suggestions welcome as usual.

o7 cmdrs,

 

[CMDR D Noize]

lol, you don't make money with a carrier. you just lose it.

Incorrect sir.

Combat Pilot here My FC has been a godsend in terms of money making and convenience.
All my combat ships are in one place as well as all my spare modules incase I need to alter a load out on the fly and no more slots wasted on unnecessary fuel scoops.

This has allowed me to make INSANE amounts of money from combat to the point where I've now got about 9 Billion in cash and over 20 ships and at least half of them are fully engineered now.

 

[d8veh]

Give an example of a money making scheme that uses a carrier which produces more credits/hour than regular mining in the bubble, once you account for 1) weekly upkeep on the carrier and 2) the initial outlay of 5b for a carrier. Assume you can amortize your weekly 5b carrier purchase over 2 years. (~50 m/week). Be sure to include either the cost of purchasing trit fuel, or the time used to mine fuel for trit, which you must count as hours which you are not making money. Also include the time you are using the carrier to jump, which must be included as hours in which you are not making money.

If you can't produce this scenario, the carrier is a net loss.

That's false. You can decommission the carrier at any time and get most of your money back for it. Your argument is based on it having zero value after 2 years, which is wrong, so you don't amortise the cost. You only do that when you have depreciation, but there isn't any.

Using a carrier for platinum mining, you gain about 20 mil/hour from the time saved not travelling back and forth over many jumps to the station. The cost of having the carrier, is 20 mil/week. 90 minutes platinum mining gets you 512T of platinum worth 138 mil. All you have to do is offer to buy tritium at 75K and people will bring it to you, so it's no effort and no time (10 secs to add the demand to your market). That means that 1 hour of mining platinum will get you 138 x 2/3 = 92 mil, which gets you 1227T of tritium. That will last you a month when mining. In other words any mining you do after 2 hours gains you 20 mil per hour at least.

After 10 days of mining platinum at three trips per night from the carrier, I sold it for around 4 billion. That was one jump of about 150ly and back - maybe 300T of Tritium. I do this type of mining when I want a break from the game, as it takes no concentration, so you do it while you watch the TV, Netflix or while you talk to your wife/girlfriend/partner/cat, which keeps them happy.

In summary, if you play for 4.5 hours each night for 25 days in the month, you would gain 2.15 bil = [4.5 x 25 - 1 (tritium) - 4 (carrier cost)] x 20 mil

 

[Nadreck]

If you can afford a Carrier, then you've probably already bought (and engineered) pretty much every ship you're ever going to need. If you haven't done that yet, it's probably a bit too soon to get a Carrier.

When you've reached that point... what else are you going to spend your money on? Only frivolous stuff, like a Cutter for each day of the week or whatever. Or buying one of every ship in the game "just because". Even then, a Carrier could move the bulk of your collection around with you.

I have three of them (one main account and two alts). They are all currently parked in uninhabited systems (in the Bubble and Colonia), and two haven't moved for weeks. But there's still no good reason for those accounts to not have Carriers, so I always have a group of ships and a substantial tritium reserve ready to deploy anywhere.

More useful than just sitting on billions of unspent credits.

 

[Tyres O'Flaherty]

My carrier and all 37 ships (yes, I do have one of each except the Cobra IV ) is a base for me to return to for rearm when I'm fighting, data hand-in when I'n exploring and commodity storage when I'm mining.

When they were introduced, I wasn't a fan. I couldn't see their point. My mind has been changed since then and I don't know what I'd do without one. It gives me the freedom I want and returning to it is almost like a save game slot - there's a lot less risk (not that it was that risky in the first place), for example, of losing data when you get boiled up.

Only two things let the carrier down:

• No hyperspace visual - you are forced to look at a bulkhead as you jump
• Your crew don't recognise you as their commander. They think you're a visitor.

The one thing I would change is upkeep: you've already paid 5,000,000,000 credits for the privelege but you have to pay rental costs on top. That's like having Amazon Prime but you still have to pay for season 8 of Game of Thrones.

 

[Sunyavadin]

That's like having Amazon Prime but you still have to pay for season 8 of Game of Thrones.

Uhm, you do realise that after the first free month, you do have to pay every month for Amazon Prime, right? Probably not the best comparison to use when criticising, rather than justifying, carrier upkeep

 

[Para Handy]

.......... That's like having Amazon Prime but you still have to pay for season 8 of Game of Thrones.

GOT is not on Amazon Video (in the UK anyway).

 

[Tyres O'Flaherty]

Uhm, you do realise that after the first free month, you do have to pay every month for Amazon Prime, right? Probably not the best comparison to use when criticising, rather than justifying, carrier upkeep

No, I paid an annual fee - £79? - and if I wanted to watch series (or The Walking Dead's latest), I'd have to buy it on top of the fee I've already shelled out.

 

[Tyres O'Flaherty]

GOT is not on Amazon Video (in the UK anyway).

Sorry. Bad example. Walking Dead then