I'd rather use a resource I can obtain in more engaging and diverse manner. I don't care about 'grind' as long as it's fun...
Please reconsider fleet carriers for solo players.
- Thread starter CMDR Karrde Sun
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I'd rather use a resource I can obtain in more engaging and diverse manner. I don't care about 'grind' as long as it's fun...
Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
Fuel scooping is pretty dependable, unlike material hunting, in my opinion. Placing Carrier movement behind a material gathering "grind" would, in my opinion, be tedious.
Dependable? Sure. But I couldn't imagine a better textbook example of tedious grind than 'scoop 1000x'. It literally is just waiting...
Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
I can - "find 250 of [insert specific material here] plus 100 of [insert other specific material here]", YMMV.
Wouldn't that depend on HOW you obtain that? Or do you really mean that you prefer doing nothing over literally anything else?
Great posts here!
FDEV's likely got Fleet Carriers very much planned out. We'll see what it ends up being, you know? However, in the end figuring it out with what you've got not what you wish you had is always better.
One of the greatest shows! Too bad it got cancelled...
Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
It would entirely depend on "how" one would obtain specific materials - probably raw, in my opinion (as manufactured and encoded are of limited availability throughout the galaxy).
Feasible for a 1000 LY jump. Not for 50LY. It depends if FDEV develops these fleet carriers for the bubble Powerplay or if they keep in mind that there are a lot of explorers too.
Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
I strongly suspect that there are significantly more explorers than Powerplayers.
Yes, I want a fleet carrier. Just for myself.
I want to put several ships on it and head off into the black. To blaze my own trail. To establish my own semi-permament exploration base at one of the ELWs I discovered tens of thousands of lightyears away.
But I don't really see this coming...
I want to put several ships on it and head off into the black. To blaze my own trail. To establish my own semi-permament exploration base at one of the ELWs I discovered tens of thousands of lightyears away.
But I don't really see this coming...
Deleted member 38366
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IMHO both Fleet Carriers (and if correct) Planetary Bases should be end-game content for anyone .
Optional, for sure. But possible.
Big Squadron? Everyone tosses in and everything is up&running within an hour or so. Maxxed out.
Lone Player long operating a huge fleet of Ships? Make a sound plan what you need and work out the Carrier. Likely not done in an hour nor maxxed out. But it should be doable.
Carrier movement would likely involve planning as well, as it'll probably require effort.
IMHO it'd be a huge waste of something that can be purchased, upgraded (endgame Credit & Time purpose) and customized (Frontier Store sales) was to be limited to a niche function and target audience.
Optional, for sure. But possible.
Big Squadron? Everyone tosses in and everything is up&running within an hour or so. Maxxed out.
Lone Player long operating a huge fleet of Ships? Make a sound plan what you need and work out the Carrier. Likely not done in an hour nor maxxed out. But it should be doable.
Carrier movement would likely involve planning as well, as it'll probably require effort.
IMHO it'd be a huge waste of something that can be purchased, upgraded (endgame Credit & Time purpose) and customized (Frontier Store sales) was to be limited to a niche function and target audience.
I imagine you will need a squadron to get a carrier. But since you can make a squadron for one person, it’s a non issue
Exploration? Don't need no stinking exploration features. Elite isn't for exploration. It's really only for pew-pew in the bubble...
wink wink
I do agree though. Fleet carrier could and should be made to provide more stuff than just squadron pew-pew.
Given that anyone can create their own one-player squadron, I'm not too concerned about them being limited to squadrons. I already have one, with 3 members: my main CMDR and two alts (my "assistants"). Nor am I concerned about them being excluded from Solo mode, as I have my own Private Group (and surely they'd have to cater for PG's).
There has been some mention of a minimum number of squadron members to get a Carrier, but that's easily fudged by players temporarily joining each other's squadrons to get the numbers up (we've already been told that you only need one person to keep the Carrier). I will join those offering to do this. Hopefully Frontier will see that this restriction is unworkable.
There was also some talk of a minimum crew required to operate a Carrier. I hope we can use our NPC copilots to meet this requirement (we're allowed 3 per CMDR, after all: with my 3 accounts, I could muster 12 crewmembers). It would also be daft not to include multicrew in this. I can't honestly see any justification for needing more than about 4 (Command, Helm, Navigation, Engineering).
Which leaves refuelling. I'm hoping they either run on hydrogen fuel, or on something that can be synthesised onboard from hydrogen fuel: a T9 or Cutter with an 8A fuelscoop and a lot of extra tanks could gather a heck of a lot of hydrogen. Using mats will run into a credibility problem. If vast quantities of materials are required for every jump, demand will be such that commercial mining of such material will become economically viable in any semblance of a sane economy, it will become impossible to explain why you can't buy fuel with credits.
There has been some mention of a minimum number of squadron members to get a Carrier, but that's easily fudged by players temporarily joining each other's squadrons to get the numbers up (we've already been told that you only need one person to keep the Carrier). I will join those offering to do this. Hopefully Frontier will see that this restriction is unworkable.
There was also some talk of a minimum crew required to operate a Carrier. I hope we can use our NPC copilots to meet this requirement (we're allowed 3 per CMDR, after all: with my 3 accounts, I could muster 12 crewmembers). It would also be daft not to include multicrew in this. I can't honestly see any justification for needing more than about 4 (Command, Helm, Navigation, Engineering).
Which leaves refuelling. I'm hoping they either run on hydrogen fuel, or on something that can be synthesised onboard from hydrogen fuel: a T9 or Cutter with an 8A fuelscoop and a lot of extra tanks could gather a heck of a lot of hydrogen. Using mats will run into a credibility problem. If vast quantities of materials are required for every jump, demand will be such that commercial mining of such material will become economically viable in any semblance of a sane economy, it will become impossible to explain why you can't buy fuel with credits.
Fleet Carriers are basically a Guild home, people wanting one for themselves will likely be disappointed as I suspect that they will be designed from the ground up to work with multiple people, not one.
I will wait for the base building we may get at the end of next year if I want all my ships together in one place.
I will wait for the base building we may get at the end of next year if I want all my ships together in one place.
It would make sense for this new feature to be usable by many players for many purposes, or it will largely be a waste of development effort. I hope FDev have the sense to see that.
There have been concerns relating to instancing and suchlike, but they should be avoidable by ensuring that the Carrier only appears in instances where members of the owning squadron are present, rather than being persistent and visible to all. This would make many small Carriers less problematic than a few big ones would be.
There have been concerns relating to instancing and suchlike, but they should be avoidable by ensuring that the Carrier only appears in instances where members of the owning squadron are present, rather than being persistent and visible to all. This would make many small Carriers less problematic than a few big ones would be.
Absolutely.
I bring this up a lot whenever base ownership is mentioned, but Hardwar had a really simple system in which a player with enough cash could buy one of several hangars dotted throughout the game world. By default all that this provided was a name change on the HUD (from "Hangar #xxx" to "{player_name}'s hangar") and a place to dock up for free repairs and a bit of storage space. (If you wanted to you could open up the hangar's workshop to NPC ships, who would come and go randomly and increase your cash balance in exchange for repairs, but I'd understand if FD choked at the thought of the game "playing itself" or rewarding players for doing nothing).
The point is, even in a 20 year old videogame the feeling of having a place called "home" was far more rewarding than the basic mechanics might suggest. And ED has thousands of stations and cities in which FD could do something similar, even without going the whole hog with wilderness bases on planet surfaces.
I really hope that the only reason we haven't seen anything like this yet is because FD are holding it back for when we get space legs and full-on NMS-style base building. If we never get player-owned or at least player-rented facilities, I'll be quite disappointed.
Now I suddenly feel the need for a game of Hardwar.
While I suspect you are correct in your presumption that these will be designed for group play (FD so want us to play together nicely), base building as an alternative is not necessarily going to do the trick. If I want all my ships together in one place, I'll stick them in storage at a station (where at least I'll have missions, refuel, repair, restock, remote workshop facilities), few or none of which I would imagine will be available to a player base.
I think the potential for a solo player to have a carrier that can accommodate a limited number of ships is that it can be used as a mobile base. We often already get tied to a specific location / area because that's where our ships are, but being able to transport a mission runner, a combat vessel, a surface specific ship and perhaps a Thargoid hunter frees me up to go play the game wherever I feel like it and not rely on ship transfer. If there's actual gameplay involved in moving the carrier from place to place, so much the better.
FD provided an almost infinite game world, give players the option to up roots and explore it with a bunch of useful tools (with exploration not meaning exploration in the traditional sense).
I'd be content with a Carrier with 2 or 3 Large hangars (enough for a dedicated "refuelling tanker" and 1 or 2 other Large ships), and maybe 3 Medium and 3 Small. Not enough for my entire fleet, but enough to carry a varied selection of ships.
I well remember running sorties with various ships during the Gnosis Incident, operating from the nearest shipyard, 700ly away...
I well remember running sorties with various ships during the Gnosis Incident, operating from the nearest shipyard, 700ly away...
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