If Frontier had made Fleet Carriers Squadron-Only, everyone would have ditched their squadrons to create their own so that they could get a carrier of their own. We'd end up with way fewer large population squadrons, and a bajillion one-person squads.
I hear you saying, "But Goooost, if they limited the carriers to squadrons of 10+ people, people would actually start banding together more, not less!" Well... Sort of. I had already talked to my own friends about starting the "Carrier Pigeons" in the same vein as the Fuel Rats and the Hull Seals to temporarily join squadrons to get them to the required size before leaving. (I had already started sketching out the design, a silhouette of saluting pigeons on the deck of a modern aircraft carrier.) If I didn't do it, someone else would. This is a proven concept from back when facebook had the game 'Mafia Wars' and users would group up with temporary friend requests (which would stay in the mafia even after removing the actual friend).
What frontier did instead was genius. They let everyone have their own carrier, BUT they have to pick a role. So now if you want a support ship of every type, you have to join a squadron and have other players choose those roles. This is also a proven strategy for encouraging squads in FPS games like battlefield; Sure you can go solo as a medic, but if you have a support in your squad you will never run out of ammo, and if you have a scout you can spot your enemies, etc etc. It creates a culture of reliance where you're better off in a group. Your squadrons will now have the benefit of having multiple carriers, with different roles and functions, in different systems you're invested in. If you have a really large squadron you get more carriers in it! How is this not obvious to the naysayers? You will have more reason to communicate with each other to get these various roles filled, and you wont have to rely on a potentially absent squadron leader to move the bloody things around. Everyone will have an opportunity to experience the ownership aspect other than the most popular veteran players, and there wont be any reason to ditch your current squads to do it. In fact, going forward I would suggest Frontier never create any gameplay aspect that's primarily reserved for squadron leaders, as this will inevitably dissolve the groups.
Also, we have to consider the games that Elite is competing with now and in the future. EVE, Star Citizen, No Man's Sky, and soon even Kerbal Space Program 2, all offer the private ownership of truly massive ships in a multiplayer environment. Do you think someone is going to come over to Elite Dangerous from one of those games if the only way to get the biggest ship is to not only have lots of friends, but also be the alpha of the group? It's Elite, not Elitist.
But that's what you're all begging for- Nerfed Carriers. You don't want to own one yourself, you just want everyone in your squad to squabble over them only for the leader to just do his own thing with it anyway. He says they're really fun and that you should build your own squadron and try one. If ya'll keep yelling about it before we even hear the details, we might end up with another ship transfer times fiasco. Did you know Frontier was going to give us instant transfer before people complained about it? 3 years later, how do you guys like waiting over an hour for your ships? Do you, like me, shut off the game after transferring? Because that's the reason Frontier was going to make it instant at first, admitting that it was gamey but that uninterrupted gameplay was more important to the health of the server population. So please, stop asking for things to be worse, start asking for things to be better. Because unfortunately, sometimes Frontier actually listens to you schmucks.
In summary, Solo Carriers mostly benefit Open Play. Solo players will be limited to single roles and wont have anyone to share it with. This was strategic, just as the extra pip encourages players to open their ships to multicrew, the specific roles and limit one carrier per player encourage squadding up. Frontier put a lot of thought into this feature and I'm confident that if you give it a chance you will love it.
