Please reconsider fleet carriers for solo players.

[CMDR Big Mike]

Okay, lets say the mimimum requirement is 10 members. could be more, doubt it will be less. Say it takes roughly one hour for each member to get the resources required, that is 10 hours. From my understanding people play on average 2 hours a day, so that makes it 5 days for a single person on average. Now lets say its 20 people, an hour for each member, that is 20 hours, that on average is 10 days. If you want to jump you would have to grind it out for days to get it jump, if you don't grind and get the resources in bits and pieces, that could take weeks or even over a month.

Of course this is all speculation. It could take 2 minutes per commander, if that is the case, they might as well remove it entirely.

It takes minutes to refuel ships as they exist now, or they are fueled instantly at a port. Does this make the feature useless? No

I think carriers need to be balanced because if they take too long to gas up, they might as well just tie it to the server tick. I think it would be minutes not hours

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

It takes minutes to refuel ships as they exist now, or they are fueled instantly at a port. Does this make the feature useless? No

FDev said it will take a resourse to get, if it is instant or trivial or costs nothing, they may as not bother with that mechanic, remember this is designed around group play and doing things in a group.

It required a CG to get Jaques to jump. I don't expect that though for a Fleet Carrier though, but it could be something similar, it promotes group play.

Your personal ships are a different thing as they are pesonal that you do for yourself.

I think carriers need to be balanced because if they take too long to gas up, they might as well just tie it to the server tick. I think it would be minutes not hours

I expect them to be balanaced around the minumum members that are needed, not for a single commander who has loads of alts.

 

[CMDR Karrde Sun]

I expect them to be balanaced around the minumum members that are needed, not for a single commander who has loads of alts.

Whats the difference? 1 day instead of 2 hours? I can live with that.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

Whats the difference? 1 day instead of 2 hours? I can live with that.

We will have to wait and see won't we. Most people play 2 hours a day. Sure you may have all day to play, but most will not.

 

[dxm55]

Whats the difference? 1 day instead of 2 hours? I can live with that.

24 hours of game time based on my 2 hours of play makes 12 days of play.
Imagine that....
That's what we call a grind, my friend....

 

[CMDR Karrde Sun]

We will have to wait and see won't we. Most people play 2 hours a day. Sure you may have all day to play, but most will not.

Theres always tomorrow Max. Now we can truly see the impact of the fss, spoiling players creating expectations of i win and a zoom animation.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

Theres always tomorrow Max. Now we can truly see the impact of the fss, spoiling players creating expectations of i win and a zoom animation.

Not sure what the FSS has anything to do with it. Both the FSS and ADS can be considered i win depending on what you find important.

 

[CMDR Big Mike]

FDev said it will take a resourse to get, if it is instant or trivial or costs nothing, they may as not bother with that mechanic, remember this is designed around group play and doing things in a group.

It required a CG to get Jaques to jump. I don't expect that though for a Fleet Carrier though, but it could be something similar, it promotes group play.

Your personal ships are a different thing as they are pesonal that you do for yourself.


I expect them to be balanaced around the minumum members that are needed, not for a single commander who has loads of alts.

Right I’m just pointing to the current fuel mechanics because it is a limiting factor to ships and important part of gameplay, but filling up isn’t a time sink.

Taking a long time to fuel a carrier isn’t necessarily needed for balance. It can be implemented in such a way that it is meaningful but not a grind, such as fueling the normal ships.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

Right I’m just pointing to the current fuel mechanics because it is a limiting factor to ships and important part of gameplay, but filling up isn’t a time sink.

Taking a long time to fuel a carrier isn’t necessarily needed for balance. It can be implemented in such a way that it is meaningful but not a grind, such as fueling the normal ships.

Possibly. We shall find out after September. Just want to keep expectations down. Personally I think the main reason why they will be kept for squadrons only will be technical reasons.

If these fleet carriers acted like our own ships, then I can't see an issue with having a personal carrier of some kind, but my understanding is that they will be persistant and I can see having these could be problematic. If they are persistant I could also see limits on the amount per system, you don't want 1000's turning up in one system.

But I all up for a personal carrier that holds a few ships of small/Medium size (not 100s), low jump range, may take a while to fuel and will need to be flown yourself. But saying that I am not sure about how docking would work, if they can dock at all.

 

[Dziondziak]

If it cant be owned solo and out jump my conda, it is worthless to me.

 

[Vasco Sapien]

If fleet carriers can be customised using microtransactions then for the sake of ARX, i have no doubt that they will be easy to aquire and everyone can own one regardless of how stupid and game breaking the idea might be.

 

[Old Duck]

Having watched the teaser video a few times now, if these are affordable for single players who aren't ludicrous rich, it'll break my immersion. And I want one! But these things are HUGE if I'm seeing correctly. The difference between a Carrier and a Cutter is like the difference between a Cutter and a Sidewinder, and then some!

How many Sidewinders can you buy for the cost a single Cutter? Scale upwards accordingly.

 

[CMDR Big Mike]

Having watched the teaser video a few times now, if these are affordable for single players who aren't ludicrous rich, it'll break my immersion. And I want one! But these things are HUGE if I'm seeing correctly. The difference between a Carrier and a Cutter is like the difference between a Cutter and a Sidewinder, and then some!

How many Sidewinders can you buy for the cost a single Cutter? Scale upwards accordingly.

You can buy about 6709 sidewinders for the cost of a cutter. 6709 Cutters is worth 1,408,639,132,110.... 1.4 trillion credits. Seems a little steep lol. But I understand your point!

 

[Faded Glory]

Possibly. We shall find out after September. Just want to keep expectations down. Personally I think the main reason why they will be kept for squadrons only will be technical reasons.

If these fleet carriers acted like our own ships, then I can't see an issue with having a personal carrier of some kind, but my understanding is that they will be persistant and I can see having these could be problematic. If they are persistant I could also see limits on the amount per system, you don't want 1000's turning up in one system.

But I all up for a personal carrier that holds a few ships of small/Medium size (not 100s), low jump range, may take a while to fuel and will need to be flown yourself. But saying that I am not sure about how docking would work, if they can dock at all.

That's pretty much what I would be interested in. A 'small' carrier with space for perhaps four ships, medium or small. Happy for it to take time to refuel as long as refuelling requires gameplay and not just grind - frankly, if it doesn't then I suspect carriers will end up like so much else in this game, an underused development.

Regarding docking, well they certainly wouldn't, perhaps shouldn't be able to dock at any station. Perhaps planetary bases could be given a 'huge' platform, and we use ship transfer to get the ships we want on board. Can't really see any other reason why they'd need to dock, other than for doing repairs, assuming they can be damaged.

But I agree that it is likely that they will be limited for technical reasons. It was clear that there were technical issues when they were first discussed, it seemed to be something to do with server load, so I would guess those limitations still exist.

 

[zimms]

You can buy about 6709 sidewinders for the cost of a cutter. 6709 Cutters is worth 1,408,639,132,110.... 1.4 trillion credits. Seems a little steep lol. But I understand your point!

In that case, just wait for a year and there will be activities that let you make 100 billions per hour.

 

[BirdWisdom]

So far we can rent three crew members in the crew lounge but only one can be active, I believe we can have three active NPC with the fleet carrier in the future o7

 

[SkyB]

Okay I’ll be that person

Given the delay, is there any chance the design team could reconsider making some form of fleet carrier available for solo players (ie, not tied to being in a squadron?). Solo players have long run out of progression systems, and the idea of building and maintaining a small mobile station... would at least make the only new content for this year not be invisible to at least the 2.8 percent of us that play solo.

Thanks for reading at least.

Ps. The rest of the new changes sound great, but I’m not a new player and already have all the cosmetics I need for 3 accounts. Something new that I can actually use would be great.

I have one of those alread - it's my football stadium sized Anaconda. What's the benefit of a tiny station for a single player? I don't see any.

 

[Wrecked]

Leaving aside the question of whether FCs are designed for communities or solo players, let's take a look at the math:

Regardless of how many alts you have in your squadron, you can still only fly one ship at a time, so given that the maximum squadron size is 500, which means that it'll take a single player 8 HOURS to do what the full squadron does in a MINUTE.

Now the Gnosis jumps 500 LY, so taking that as a benchmark, if refueling the FC takes a full squadron a minute, they would be able to get their FC to Beagle Point in a little over 2 hours. I think we can therefore assume that FDev intend it to take more than a minute to move a carrier 500 LY. So how fast should carriers move? Well the Gnosis only jumps once a week, so I'll again take that as a benchmark. I think 5 hours per week is a reasonable estimate for play time for an average player, and I'll also assume that FDev are happy for a mid-sized (250 member) squadron to move their FC 500 LY per week. So that's 1,250 man hours to move a carrier 500 LY.

Those of you wanting your own, personal, fleet carriers to take out into the black to explore, you're looking at 2,500 hours just to get far enough out to start getting first discoveries.

Now it may be that FDev set the limits lower, so that a 25 member squadron can move 500 LY per week - but you solo players are still looking at 6 months to move that far, and a full size squadron would be able to move 10,000 LY per week which basically means they can teleport around the Bubble at will, which I can't see FDev wanting to happen.

So everyone may be able to get your own personal carriers, but I'm pretty sure they're not going to be able move it far.

I highly doubt your speculation is correct. They delayed the feature for a year, likely because they realized that it is stupid to release this feature for the insignificant amount of squadron leaders of large squadrons. They probably spent the last year reworking the feature so that it is accessible by individuals because that is the majority of their player base.

If I’m wrong, there will be an schat storm of posts and reviews from ed off player's and this whole system will fall apart. I WILL NOT grind for credits and resources to benefit someone else’s carrier.

1 carrier captain/owner and 499 idiots who pay for and grind for it all? Yea that’s just not going to work.

 

[Ralph Vargr]

I've advanced my one player squadron rankings from below 3500, to about 1500-2000 in a few days of play.

My score in Trade (1883rd), for instance, is about 89 million points. The top group is over four billion points. In Exploration, I'm 1394th, with about four million in points. The top group is over 800 million. Those are steep curves in distribution. My Combat score is laughable (3204th, 375 points).

I suspect there are a lot of inactive, low player/single player squadrons out there, and few hundred or so very active groups. Such active groups might be involved with Power Play, or BGS gaming. Not much of a chance for a single player to compete.

Carriers might bring in more active players to smaller groups., possibly. But, the time commitment involved might be disproportionate to the rewards.

Not worth it for me. I would rather have my planet-based convenience store.

 

[Spacecat]

I really don't see what these really add to the game, other than to let player fleets totally dominate a system.