General The mining sim turns into a carrier trader sim

[Whiskey Galore]

This is what players said of Elite Dangerous recently when most people made their money to earn carriers through mining: they turned elite into a mining simulator.
It's happening again. Now carrier players can make 1 billion in profit selling booze at the top of the galaxy, ... on one run.
Well done, Frontier. Well done. You brought balance to the game.

Edit: Please give the very small group of players who still enjoy the other aspects of this game a small carrier with no cargo storage or module and ship selling a single landing pad where two ships, small or medium, can be docked, so that we can engineer small and medium fighters and transport them to war zones. Make it only available to the account holder to dock and no one else. Make sure it has a jump range no greater than a asp explorer. If these small carriers could be stored in their own private instance only available to the player it will remove the nightmare of carrier spread. It may also help with open.

 

[Treya]

It takes 12 h minimum per round trip in jump time alone and burns 4000t tritium. While it is a trip well worth taking, a money making exploit it is not.

 

[GroG79]

You realise these are Rares? You can only buy a limited amount every 10 minutes... If you actually emptied the rares from your ship.

 

[Whiskey Galore]

It takes 12 h minimum per round trip in jump time alone and burns 4000t tritium. While it is a trip well worth taking, a money making exploit it is not.

And how much does this tritium cost to mine? I think you should think about it again. I think you are trying to protect your new money making exploit.

 

[Llandrenel]

And how much does this tritium cost to mine? I think you should think about it again. I think you are trying to protect your new money making exploit.

Cost to mine? Very little, (101c/limpet used)X limpets. But do *you have any idea how long it takes to mine that much tritium? It's not a common material, so you get very little when your off mining. So no mate, go gripe all you want, there are much faster ways of making cash that what I assume is you talking about taking a fleet carrier to hutton to buy booze and sell it far away. And before you say I'm with them ahem "trying to protect my money making exploit" no, I don't even have a carrier, never mind bother doing that just to make credits. Cause yea, the carrier can do that, but the amount of time you would spend just sitting there waiting for the FC to spin up it's fsd and move to the next target alone is ridiculous, never mind doing the actual jumps. When you could easily just jump to say, a triple hotspot for void opals, wait for the npc the naff off then get a load of those and sell them for max profit elsewhere.

 

[Treya]

And how much does this tritium cost to mine? I think you should think about it again. I think you are trying to protect your new money making exploit.

Nothing to protect here - in fact I just went there and sold exactly 0 t of anything. Mining takes time so it comes at a cost a well. But let's leave out the fuel for a moment and assume it's just there already: 23000t of cargo is about the maximum one could transport to that location. And that cargo doesn't magically appear in a carriers hold. Even with a max cargo Cutter it takes a minimum of 29 round trips for the loading process. Rackham's Peak is an outpost so for the offloading you only get to use a Python so now you are looking at 79 round trips - minimum. Even under ideal circumstances you will be spending 5-6 h on loading/offloading alone. On top of that comes the 12 hours minimum it takes to jump that carrier from the bubble to Rackham's and back again. Let's gloss over a bit and assume 1 billion flat for 18 hours we come out at around 55 mil per hour - certainly not bad but nowhere competitive, let alone an exploit.

 

[Nadreck]

Yes, I looked into it. I'll probably do it, but it's a very long way from being an "exploit".

I get the impression that many non-Carrier-owners don't appreciate just how much TIME it can take for tasks that take seconds in a normal ship. Loading, unloading, fuelling... stuff like that takes HOURS. Unless maybe you hire other players to help out, but they want a cut of your profits.

And as for suggesting mining for "free" fuel: well, how many weeks do you want to set aside for this trip?

 

[Nadreck]

IIRC, my estimate was that unloading liquor in a Python at Rackham's Peak might get me 13 million per run (assuming the market doesn't crash).

A typical Robigo sightseeing run gets 20 million per trip. Each trip will take a little longer, but without the massive setup hassle/timesink beforehand in getting the cargo loaded and transported.

 

[Llandrenel]

A typical Robigo sightseeing run gets 20 million per trip. Each trip will take a little longer, but without the massive setup hassle/timesink beforehand in getting the cargo loaded and transported.

What this person said.
There's also the Sothis <---> Ceos passenger run. Can get a single round trip in about 10 minutes (ish) and that can net around 5mil per run in just a dolphin.

 

[gorankar]

What this person said.
There's also the Sothis <---> Ceos passenger run. Can get a single round trip in about 10 minutes (ish) and that can net around 5mil per run in just a dolphin.

20-30M every 12 minutes in a Python for me. If I am not taking the mats. That is a rather nice place to get 3 G5 mats/data (Biotech Conductors, Exquisite Focus Crystals, and Modified Embedded Firmware), as well as several different G4 mats/data as mission rewards.

I considered a rare run. I would have spent forever in SC between the station and my FC. Only nice thing would have been that I could do it in a rather fast Viper or I Courier. The payday would have been nice, but I would have spent around 30 hours round trip doing it. The whole time hoping there would be a slot available to jump into the system, and that the prices did not crash. No thanks.

OP is way off base calling this an exploit. Too much work to call it that.

 

[Whiskey Galore]

Strange that we all hoped for the Panther Clipper ship to be released, only to discover that it was indeed released into the game through stealth.
Panther Clipper range : 500 LY.
Panther Clipper cargo capacity: 25,000 tonnes.
Panther Clipper shuttle : Cutter, with 760 tonne cargo capacity to shuttle goods from station to panther clipper.

What are the implications for CG now, if you want to get into the top 75%, if you don't own a Panther Clipper? None?

 

[varonica]

Never traded in my FC, never intend to. An FC is useful for many things, focusing on one and then claiming that's what everyone is doing with their FC seems a bit strange!

 

[Edwyndham]

Strange that we all hoped for the Panther Clipper ship to be released, only to discover that it was indeed released into the game through stealth.
Panther Clipper range : 500 LY.
Panther Clipper cargo capacity: 25,000 tonnes.
Panther Clipper shuttle : Cutter, with 760 tonne cargo capacity to shuttle goods from station to panther clipper.

What are the implications for CG now, if you want to get into the top 75%, if you don't own a Panther Clipper? None?

I got into the top 75% of the most recent trade CG and all I did was pirate other players in my fed dropship. Maybe 1,200t in total delivered. shrug

EDIT: And while I was at said CG, I saw a few FC owners bring their FCs stocked to the brim with CG goods and go 'HAY EVERYBODY IT'S TIME TO UNLOAD'. It benefited far more than just the FC owners themselves.

 

[gorankar]

Strange that we all hoped for the Panther Clipper ship to be released, only to discover that it was indeed released into the game through stealth.
Panther Clipper range : 500 LY.
Panther Clipper cargo capacity: 25,000 tonnes.
Panther Clipper shuttle : Cutter, with 760 tonne cargo capacity to shuttle goods from station to panther clipper.

What are the implications for CG now, if you want to get into the top 75%, if you don't own a Panther Clipper? None?

That is a rather sour grapes argument.
If you want to be in/above the 75th percentile, you need to obtain the in game means to be in/above the 75th percentile. If we are talking about a cargo delivery CG, then yes, that means you may, at least sometimes, need an FC to compete. Other times, you will be able to make it with just a Type9/10/Cutter/Vette/Annie/whatever ship.

 

[Screemonster]

Strange that we all hoped for the Panther Clipper ship to be released, only to discover that it was indeed released into the game through stealth.
Panther Clipper range : 500 LY.
Panther Clipper cargo capacity: 25,000 tonnes.
Panther Clipper shuttle : Cutter, with 760 tonne cargo capacity to shuttle goods from station to panther clipper.

What are the implications for CG now, if you want to get into the top 75%, if you don't own a Panther Clipper? None?

you know you still have to load it and unload it at each end right

Without a carrier: Buy at A, jump to B to sell, then fly back to A and repeat. Supercruise from star to station each time.

With a carrier: park at A. Supercruise back and forth between carrier and station, in the planet's gravity well the whole time. Jump to B. Hope you get a slot around the same body as the CG station. If you do, you still have to fly through the planet's gravity well. If you don't and end up around the main star, you have to cruise from star to station (so no better off than just jumping in from outside the system) then cruise back to the star, escaping the planet's gravity well. If you end up around a different body, you have to escape a gravity well at both ends.

If your CG system doesn't have free slots to park near the station and it's a long cruise, you may end up being better off parking outside the system so you only have to do the cruise on the way in instead of cruising all the way back to the star.

The only time carriers really save you any time is if the CG is far enough away from the bubble to make repeated round trips onerous without them. Otherwise, they don't so much save you time as just change the order in which you perform tasks.

 

[Whiskey Galore]

And I suppose none of the carrier owners will ever min-max their carrier and use them for anything else other than the original purpose intended for by Frontier. (Yeah, right!)
Can anyone tell me what that purpose is, or was? I knew it was going to be a squadron thing and I'd have preferred it to stay that way with a minimum requirement of how many commanders would be needed to maintain a squadron, say twenty five for argument sake. Whatever made them change their minds?
To me, a CG no longer means a Community Goal. To me it means a Carrier Goal now.

Stop fooling yourselves. The Panther Clipper is here, right now. It's called a personal fleet carrier but a rose by any other name, is still a rose.

 

[Nadreck]

U

And I suppose none of the carrier owners will ever min-max their carrier and use them for anything else other than the original purpose intended for by Frontier. (Yeah, right!)
Can anyone tell me what that purpose is, or was? I knew it was going to be a squadron thing and I'd have preferred it to stay that way with a minimum requirement of how many commanders would be needed to maintain a squadron, say twenty five for argument sake. Whatever made them change their minds?
To me, a CG no longer means a Community Goal. To me it means a Carrier Goal now.

Stop fooling yourselves. The Panther Clipper is here, right now. It's called a personal fleet carrier but a rose by any other name, is still a rose.

...Uh, dude, are you familiar with the phrase "if you're at the bottom of a hole, stop digging"? You've been wrong about pretty much everything so far on this thread. Maybe take a little time to read the responses you're getting?

 

[Nadreck]

BTW, this doesn't make a lot of sense:

I knew it was going to be a squadron thing and I'd have preferred it to stay that way with a minimum requirement of how many commanders would be needed to maintain a squadron, say twenty five for argument sake. Whatever made them change their minds?
To me, a CG no longer means a Community Goal. To me it means a Carrier Goal now.

If this was implemented, a Community Goal would become a "squadron of 25 or more" goal. If Carriers gave the massive advantage you're implying (they don't), then anyone not in a squadron of 25 or more might as well not bother. And this would be better... how?

To reiterate Screenmonster's point, here is how you do a delivery CG between stations A and C, WITHOUT a Carrier:

A => C

Here's how you do it WITH a Carrier:

A => B => C (where station B is the Carrier)

Usually this will be worse, unless A and C are unusually far apart.

 

[Dragsham]

I think he is trying to point out the obvious, that fc are a blessing.
Yes.
8 bill to get one up and running.
Park at a cg load up your fc with 20000 tons of wotever cg asks for and head off to place where its wanted.. and use a type 9 or cutter to offload it 500+ at a time back n forth very close to where its wanted.
.... So what?
A fc player paid for it! And can use it however they please

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Strange that we all hoped for the Panther Clipper ship to be released, only to discover that it was indeed released into the game through stealth.
Panther Clipper range : 500 LY.
Panther Clipper cargo capacity: 25,000 tonnes.
Panther Clipper shuttle : Cutter, with 760 tonne cargo capacity to shuttle goods from station to panther clipper.

What are the implications for CG now, if you want to get into the top 75%, if you don't own a Panther Clipper? None?

None at all for the top 75%, not even slightly relevant - the last four trade CGs the Inara estimate for the minimum required to get top 75% was around 500-1000t - possible with one trip a day in a cheap T-6, or a single trip in a T-9 or Cutter.

Even top 10% was only 15000-17500 tonnes, which is only about 20 trips in a T-9 or Cutter ... and doable even in a Python if you really go all out. It's a bit up on the pre-carrier days but it's certainly not "requires a carrier" levels of hauling - I've moved more than that in a weekend without one occasionally.

Top-10, yeah, top-10 probably requires a carrier for trade CGs.

(The total weekly tonnage from the CGs is about 40 million tonnes - which is a lot, but there were plenty of pre-carrier CGs which hauled similar amounts)

use them for anything else other than the original purpose intended for by Frontier.

...which from Frontier's statements was "we don't know what these are for, maybe you can figure it out"

I'm currently using mine to stockpile certain commodities on a wild guess about where the storyline might go next, in such a way that even if I'm right I won't be making money from it.