The presumed goal of upkeep is to keep the universe from becoming clogged with Fleet Carriers, right?
I would like to propose an alternative solution; the basic upkeep for a Fleet Carrier should be based on both the population of the system, and number of other Fleet Carriers in the system.
This would serve two purposes.
Mothballing
First of all, it would allow players who want to intentionally mothball their Fleet Carriers to simply park them in an uninhabited system outside the bubble, where the upkeep would drop to nearly zero.
From a lore perspective, the upkeep costs would be caused by visits from AI travelers using the services, plus payments to local populations for using their airspace. Other services like Universal Cartographics would require an entirely different upkeep, to maintain the hyperlink connection to the Bubble for example, and would still cost you even in completely empty systems, but the base fleet carrier, in an empty system would be functionally free.
Mothballing would still require some effort, but still, if you just sell your extraneous modules and move to an empty system, your upkeep will drop to the thousands and you can safely leave it there indefinitely. There are more than enough systems to hold every fleet carrier that could ever be purchased and still have room to spare.
Outfitting
On the other end of the spectrum, in extremely populated systems it's currently very hard to get in; for example, to outfit your Carrier. With this change, when that happens the upkeep costs would skyrocket. If someone wants to go there, they'll need a very good reason, and they'll only want to stay for as short a time as possible. You could get a 24 hour grace period to move your carrier for the first time, but after that, you'll need to get it out of the way ASAP. Otherwise you'll quickly find yourself paying 100x the normal upkeep just to exist.
This solves both problems we've been seeing lately; first of all, it means players don't have to worry about losing their huge investment if they quit for a year, secondly it means that the places where you buy your fleet carrier won't always be filled to the brim. Players will be heavily incentivized to move their Fleet Carriers out of the system promptly.
I would like to propose an alternative solution; the basic upkeep for a Fleet Carrier should be based on both the population of the system, and number of other Fleet Carriers in the system.
This would serve two purposes.
Mothballing
First of all, it would allow players who want to intentionally mothball their Fleet Carriers to simply park them in an uninhabited system outside the bubble, where the upkeep would drop to nearly zero.
From a lore perspective, the upkeep costs would be caused by visits from AI travelers using the services, plus payments to local populations for using their airspace. Other services like Universal Cartographics would require an entirely different upkeep, to maintain the hyperlink connection to the Bubble for example, and would still cost you even in completely empty systems, but the base fleet carrier, in an empty system would be functionally free.
Mothballing would still require some effort, but still, if you just sell your extraneous modules and move to an empty system, your upkeep will drop to the thousands and you can safely leave it there indefinitely. There are more than enough systems to hold every fleet carrier that could ever be purchased and still have room to spare.
Outfitting
On the other end of the spectrum, in extremely populated systems it's currently very hard to get in; for example, to outfit your Carrier. With this change, when that happens the upkeep costs would skyrocket. If someone wants to go there, they'll need a very good reason, and they'll only want to stay for as short a time as possible. You could get a 24 hour grace period to move your carrier for the first time, but after that, you'll need to get it out of the way ASAP. Otherwise you'll quickly find yourself paying 100x the normal upkeep just to exist.
This solves both problems we've been seeing lately; first of all, it means players don't have to worry about losing their huge investment if they quit for a year, secondly it means that the places where you buy your fleet carrier won't always be filled to the brim. Players will be heavily incentivized to move their Fleet Carriers out of the system promptly.
Last edited: