For many, carriers are one of the highlights of the year so again care needs to be taken in their implementation. However right off the bat carriers have a few problems
The need to offer more than a space station, otherwise there is no point to them being there. As a mobile carrier of a players ships they also have pitfalls.
The biggest enemy of the carrier isn't if they can be brought by a single player it's discord.
What is the point in having a whole load of players running around, collecting grind-o-nium when all that needs to happen is someone to post up a message saying "Hey lets' all do the CG tonight" in discord. Basically, carriers are a game feature looking for a point.
What happens if a player wants to go to one place, another somewhere else and the leader somewhere totally different. The benefit to the individual squadron member is therefore limited and they would be better off using a station for their fleet and travelling to wherever the squadron wants to go.
Carrier pricing and acquisition.
Elite currently has a money problem, many, many players have more than they know what to do with and this contributes to a feeling of general dissatisfaction
There has been much debate over should carriers be able to be purchased by individuals not.
I am going to come down on the “yes they should” side for the following reasons
• It gives wealthy players something to save for and use the billions they have laying around. In short it gives an aspirational goal and reduces the effects of too many liquid assets
• If you set a minimum player number to acquire one, then all that will happen is a bunch of friends will join the squadron, the leader then buys the carrier and their friends then leave. In short it makes any numeric restriction pointless
• If you are starting a new clan, you are competing for members with every other clan in the game. If they have a carrier and you do not then it is making a hard job even harder. Simply speaking it puts new squadrons at a huge disadvantage.
• If you limit their use to only the largest clan, or even only existing player groups in game it has the potential to lock players out of content, so rather than be a tool for inclusion, they become a mechanism for exclusion.
Pricing
Carriers should be expensive but also attainable, So I would suggest a fairly cheap basic price (say 2bn for a basic carrier) but it is able to be upgraded by modules and add ons.
This would allow even the smallest squadron to have carrier, and then give the squadron a corporate goal of extra modules to work for over time(just like for example we start in a sidewinder and work towards other ships from there).
Having a set total cost of say 20bn all in puts a carrier out of reach for the many and provides little incentive to carry on improving it. Much better to start at a basic level and allow squadrons to expand and grow into it.
Sort of like how you can buy a basic Anaconda for 120 ish Million but spend many times that on upgrades
Destructibility of carriers
Carrier should not be able to be destroyed by player action, or indeed damaged.
Otherwise this becomes a griefiers paradise, with squadrons being bled dry of funds due to constant damaging, destruction or inconvenienced by making them flee.
Regardless of size of squadron it is impossible to defend anything 24X7X365. This is especially true if the carrier is able to be encountered in open or in private group.
Simply use a private group where there are no squadron members in and it’s open season on the target carrier.
It has also been shown that regardless of a ships defences a concentrated effort by a few players will always defeat the NPC
There are of course some down sides to indestructible carriers and that is their potential impact on the BGS and of cluttering the navigation/contacts panel up.
While having an “enemy base” in system is indeed a factor to consider, it should also be remembered that camping a system a jump away or staying in solo/PG will have a greater effect and that currently blockading a system is impossible. So the reality is, is that because of these other factors an enemy carrier in system is unlikely to be the deciding factor.