Low Cost Fleet Carrier Alternative

[Rct_Tsoul]

Having a fleet carrier is almost essential to progressing and having fun in game, as a Fleet Carrier it is has the potential to be better than Any Space Station aside from offering missions.
I think a lower cost more affordable version should be available that would basically be smaller, have less landing pads, and mainly function as a mobile base to store your ships and gear and make repairs, not having a commodities market or ability to sell ships and modules. Basically allowing players to undertake long range mining missions and exploration including a stellar cartographic for a way to earn money in deep space to pay for services..... I think a fair obtainable price for a Science/Survey mini carrier should be price around 1.5 Billion.... this will make it a much more obtainable alternative to these Super Carriers that is really not needed at first. Later on when desired you can then trade in your Science/Survey vessel for the big daddy 5 Billion $ carrier.

Mini Carrier=
1. Stellar Cartographics (necessary to pay weekly operating costs in deep space)
2. Ship and modual storage
3. Repair (player providing necessary materials)
4. New SRV synthesis (player providing necessary materials) {needed for when you get stuck and self destruct}
5. Refuel (player providing scooped Solar fuel) {this will promote fuel scooping tanker builds}
With only the option to DONATE scooped fuel on Science/Survey ship
6. mass Limpet synthesis (player providing necessary materials)
7. Crew Lounge
8. Last station respawn

Does NOT have
1. Ship sales
2. Modual sales
3. Paint touch up
4. Commodities market
5. Ship Lauch Figher synthesis (if you fail to recover your fighters then they are gone and need to be replaced with fighters you have in storage or elsewhere)
6. Heavy Station Weapons (YES...other players can loiter around your mini carrier and GANK YOU if your ill prepared for conflict)

All cargo items can only be donated
Materials for repair and Limpet synthesis can only be donated
Scooped fuel can only be donated
cargo capacity to be determined by devs

 

[Dommarraa]

Having a fleet carrier is almost essential to progressing and having fun in game, as a Fleet Carrier it is has the potential to be better than Any Space Station aside from offering missions.

... and Station News and IF and Mat Traders and Tech Brokers and Markets that give you someone elses money instead of your own...
but APART from that, what have the Romans ever done for us ?

 

[kalniel]

Having a fleet carrier is almost essential to progressing and having fun in game

To think we played a game for 5 years with no progression or fun...

 

[Stigbob]

The budget fleet carrier is the Keelback.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Having a fleet carrier is almost essential to progressing and having fun in game,

Umm... not its not. We were having fun and progressing before Fleet Carriers.

However, what you described is more or less what i was hoping for fleet carriers, not these mobile space stations we have.

But they are what they are, and i'll just have to live with the annoying offline costs. At the end of the day, its quite nice to have a mobile base that i can call my own. I just don't need that damn commodity market and wish i could disable it.

 

[[PS4] Lorenzo Waringos]

Yes, I would have preferred a smaller option, I don't want and don't use the commodities market for example, because I'm not a capitalist pig. I would be happy that no other player or NPC could land on my mini-carrier meaning the smaller carriers would not then have to be persistent across all modes and platforms, that might have saved a bit of heartache. But as @Agony_Aunt says, we got what we got.

 

[Bottom Hat]

Essential lol!

Now I shall be more polite and say that you probably should have chosen a different word, or put not in front of it.

There's not much I can add that isn't above by Agony or Lou though so I won't. But I suspect you're newer to the game mate, they've never been essential. They are a luxury.

 

[Ydiss]

Yes. Not a bad idea but I think very few will read to that part and will just pick you up on the slightly wild assertion you make in the first sentence.

 

[Nadreck]

...sigh. Nobody reads "Suggestions".

 

[pnellesen]

While disagreeing with the bit about FC's being "essential", I would definitely like to see a smaller version that simply carries your fleet, without all the other stuff. But given that FCs are not much more than reskinned Outposts that happen to be able to move, I doubt that's going to happen.

 

[sidereal6]

Yes, I would have preferred a smaller option, I don't want and don't use the commodities market for example

Same here. I'd also like to ditch system map visibility (or at least make that a paid option for FCs that have commodities markets). As implemented, FCs make the system map way too crowded.

 

[[PS4] Lorenzo Waringos]

Same here. I'd also like to ditch system map visibility (or at least make that a paid option for FCs that have commodities markets). As implemented, FCs make the system map way too crowded.

True enough, though that is only an issue in populated areas, still a nuisance if that's where you mainly do your thang.

 

[Red Anders]

Having a fleet carrier is almost essential to progressing and having fun in game

Sorry stopped reading there to mop coffee up.

 

[VR Jay Le Chardon]

Having a fleet carrier is almost essential to progressing and having fun in game, as a Fleet Carrier it is has the potential to be better than Any Space Station aside from offering missions.
I think a lower cost more affordable version should be available that would basically be smaller, have less landing pads, and mainly function as a mobile base to store your ships and gear and make repairs, not having a commodities market or ability to sell ships and modules. Basically allowing players to undertake long range mining missions and exploration including a stellar cartographic for a way to earn money in deep space to pay for services..... I think a fair obtainable price for a Science/Survey mini carrier should be price around 1.5 Billion.... this will make it a much more obtainable alternative to these Super Carriers that is really not needed at first. Later on when desired you can then trade in your Science/Survey vessel for the big daddy 5 Billion $ carrier.

 

[Rct_Tsoul]

Actually I think it could happen, a smaller mini Science/Survey mini Carrier that does only the following:
1. Stellar Cartographics (necessary to pay weekly operating costs in deep space)
2. Ship and modual storage
3. Repair (player providing necessary materials)
4. New SRV synthesis (player providing necessary materials) {needed for when you get stuck and self destruct}
5. Refuel (player providing scooped Solar fuel) {this will promote fuel scooping tanker builds}
With only the option to DONATE scooped fuel on Science/Survey ship
6. mass Limpet synthesis (player providing necessary materials)
7. Crew Lounge
8. Last station respawn

Does NOT have
1. Ship sales
2. Modual sales
3. Paint touch up
4. Commodities market
5. Ship Lauch Figher synthesis (if you fail to recover your fighters then they are gone and need to be replaced with fighters you have in storage or elsewhere)
6. Heavy Station Weapons (YES...other players can loiter around your mini carrier and GANK YOU if your ill prepared for conflict)

All cargo items can only be donated
Materials for repair and Limpet synthesis can only be donated
Scooped fuel can only be donated
cargo capacity to be determined by devs

This is essential as most people have a life outside the game, as it allows you to put the GAME down having your near by mini carrier.
If my son asks me to cook breakfast lunch or dinner i can quickly stop what im doing and park my ship.

Without a carrier you must choose the following:
1. Put the game down and risk getting killed and loosing ALL your cargo
2. Tell your son to wait until you make the necessary jumps to properly dock at a station

 

[Red Anders]

Without a carrier you must choose the following:
1. Put the game down and risk getting killed and loosing ALL your cargo
2. Tell your son to wait until you make the necessary jumps to properly dock at a station

3. Log out.

By the way I know this will be an amazing revelation but in a game which has a sizeable cohort of players who played the original Elite, which was released in 1984, it's not uncommon for people to have things that occupy their time other than playing computer games. You are not facing rare and unique circumstances.

Note - I don't have any principled objection to 'pocket carriers' at all but the justifications you are providing for them here are largely nonsensical.

 

[Rct_Tsoul]

yea you log back in you have NPC's pounding your A** on the PS4

 

[Ydiss]

I actually thought FCs would be way out of reach for me when I came back to play a few weeks ago. But I've found that may not be true.

I did some searching for an appropriate system to bounty hunt in and managed to find one that is a massacre pirate target system for a nearby system that features no other massacre targets. This means I can stack up to 5 concurrent massacre missions quite quickly and trivially. I spent a short time maxing these five factions to allied and can now get almost 40m massacre missions (81 kills) x5 (or near enough). And the target system has a compromised nav and hazres, with an outpost for repairs and interstellar factors for those occasional mishaps.

I made over 1bn in the last week doing combat exclusively. Nice to see combat actually does pay really well now (I stand corrected on comments I made shortly after my return).

Plus, just did a delivery mission for 31m credits, one jump and only 180t (tritium). I've gone from 381m to over 1.5bn since I returned. Which is way higher than I ever achieved before.



So maybe 5bn isn't as far out of reach as I'd thought.

Still, I think cheaper variations is a good idea.

 

[babelfisch]

I don't really care for the purchase price, but I would like to get rid of the upkeep. If that means the FC has less services / capability, that's fine for me.
I regularly stop playing the game for months (because of real life, boredom, other games, family, etc.) and when I come back I don't want to see my assets gone.

 

[Red Anders]

yea you log back in you have NPC's pounding your A** on the PS4

Really? If you're flying somewhere in supercruise and you log out, when you log back in you have npcs attacking you? Not even just appearing in the instance that you're in (for example like when you log back into the game when you're in a ring mining and an npc will approach and scan you) but actually actively attacking you the second the game spawns your ship?

If true, fair enough I'm on pc and wasn't aware of that. It sure as hell doesn't happen on PC, or if it does I've somehow avoided it for five years.