Newcomer / Intro Understanding The Fleet Carrier Budget

Greasetrap42

Greasetrap42
I feel kinda dumb.

When looking at the FC budget I expected:

Carrier Balance: Total credits currently on the FC.
Weekly Upkeep Allocation: Allocated credits for paying for the weekly costs of having a carrier.
Available: Credits allocated for other stuff, like buying services, whatever.

But I noticed that the week's money grab did not come out of "Weekly Upkeep Allocation". It came out of "Available".
Last week I thought I just got my numbers mixed up. This week I am certain.

Is this normal?
I'm assuming I am misunderstanding some basic concept.

Weekly upkeep cost.png
 

Teiri

Teiri
Well it could be like you thought it'd be, but instead weekly upkeep allocation is kind of a stash, a number below which carriers' treasury can not fall. I. e. trading and such, wherever carrier is spending money, this upkeep allocation is safe from that. I assume only if your balance is zero this sum is used for upkeep.

It's indeed seeming to be kind of not logical that upkeep is not being paid from there first hand, but on the other hand it should save the day if all your trade orders are fullfilled, treasury got dry, and you're on holidays or something. I only started using it since i saw an annoying red 0 at Inara, since then was just putting there something like 10%.
 
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Greasetrap42

Greasetrap42
Yes, I think you are correct. What I thought was a lump of credits allocated for "Weekly Upkeep" is actually a fixed budget* allotment for weekly upkeep which gets pulled from the "Available" Funds.

*A budget based on a percent of total funds. Not an actual fixed amount. So the budget is going to automatically change based on total credits. Even though weekly costs are mostly fixed costs. Weird. At the moment the slider bar was touched. After that the amount is fixed unless the slider bar is touched again. So if I adjust the slider bar to 10% today it will allocate 48 mil Cr, and it will remain at the fixed 48 mil regardless of changes to the ship balance unless I touch the slider bar again.

Maybe I shouldn't think too hard about it.
 
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Teiri

Teiri
Greasetrap42 said:
*A budget based on a percent of total funds. Not an actual fixed amount. So the budget is going to automatically change based on total credits. Even though weekly costs are mostly fixed costs. Weird. At the moment the slider bar was touched. After that the amount is fixed unless the slider bar is touched again. So if I adjust the slider bar to 10% today it will allocate 48 mil Cr, and it will remain at the fixed 48 mil regardless of changes to the ship balance unless I touch the slider bar again.
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Now when you've written this, it was always looking suspicious for me, had a feeling that this number remains the same, if you're not touching the slider, even if your whole budget changes. We now have a way to put there a shiny 100m cr instead of these 100 003 541.
 

Greasetrap42

Greasetrap42
Yes. To set your carrier budget to nice round numbers:

1. Withdraw all funds from the carrier. You can't directly withdraw funds allocated to Weekly Upkeep, so you must set the slidebar to 0%.
2. Deposit to the the carrier your desired upkeep allocation as a nice round number. In my example 50,000,000.
3. Set the slide bar to 100%, which moves that 50,000,000 into carrier Weekly Upkeep.
4. Don't ever touch the slide bar again.
5. Deposit whatever huge quantities of credits into the carrier. In my example 500,000,000.

If I understand correctly the weekly credit grab will come directly from the Weekly Upkeep Allocation which will be automatically refilled from the Available. So if your carrier has lots of funds: every week you will observe a decrease in the Available.


Weekly upkeep cost b.png
 

Teiri

Teiri
Aha, actually, guess you right, it's not actually upkeep being taken from available, it's taken from allocation, which is then refilled, if any funds in available. Like this it all makes sense.
 

Codger

Codger
The reserve allocation is just a limiter, to prevent you from doing buy orders and such that will leave less than that in the carrier. It's like a failsafe. I don't do buy orders so I never set the reserve higher than 0%. My entire carrier balance is only used for upkeep, so that works fine.

I agree it's very un-intuitive, but that's how it works.
 

KuutioX

KuutioX
I bought a Carrier on Sunday, June 5, 2022, in the late afternoon. Yesterday, Thursday 9.6, it had gone for the first weekly fee. It’s not a full week, it’s just four days. I don't know what logic the frontier has here.
 

Codger

Codger
KuutioX said:
I bought a Carrier on Sunday, June 5, 2022, in the late afternoon. Yesterday, Thursday 9.6, it had gone for the first weekly fee. It’s not a full week, it’s just four days. I don't know what logic the frontier has here.
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You always pay on Thursday. If it's not a full week, you pay a smaller amount depending on how many days.
 

Teiri

Teiri
Yep, it just charged you for 4 days as you kept it for 4 days. If you care to play with turning services on and off, even that is taken into account, like disabling your refuel for a day or two will lower your upkeep. Not worth doing, but you can if you want to.
 

aRJay

aRJay
KuutioX said:
I bought a Carrier on Sunday, June 5, 2022, in the late afternoon. Yesterday, Thursday 9.6, it had gone for the first weekly fee. It’s not a full week, it’s just four days. I don't know what logic the frontier has here.
Click to expand...
Most things in the game that have weekly time scale happen on Thursday morning when the server tick happens things such as BGS states, a ferry service between two star systems, the stock is refreshed in the Pioneer stores and many others
 

Diziet Sma

Diziet Sma
KuutioX said:
I bought a Carrier on Sunday, June 5, 2022, in the late afternoon. Yesterday, Thursday 9.6, it had gone for the first weekly fee. It’s not a full week, it’s just four days. I don't know what logic the frontier has here.
Click to expand...
Firstly, it's not a "weekly fee". It's your carrier's operating costs. That sucker ain't exactly cheap to run. There's maintenance and upkeep costs, for starters. And salaries & wages for all the staff it takes to run it. You don't think they work for free, do you?

Secondly, you're upset about the possibility (incorrect, as others have pointed out) of paying for a mere 3 days that you didn't get to use? Seriously?

Like the old saying goes, about buying, big, really expensive items, "If you have to ask the price, you can't afford it". If the idea of paying for just 3 days you didn't use, is upsetting to you, I'd submit that you can't afford the carrier in the first place. The definition of a yacht is "a boat-shaped hole in the water, into which one tosses buckets of money." A carrier is a small black-hole in space, into which one tosses dump-truck sized loads of money. I've owned a carrier since the first day they hit the market, and have probably tossed a couple of billion into that 'operating costs' black hole since then, and I don't even make much use of it, other than as a mobile garage for all my ships.

Throwing hundreds of thousands into a black hole? Get used to it, is my advice.
 
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aRJay

aRJay
Diziet Sma said:
…

Like the old saying goes, about buying, big, really expensive items, "If you have to ask the price, you can't afford it". If the idea of paying for just 3 days you didn't use, is upsetting to you, I'd submit that you can't afford the carrier in the first place. The definition of a yacht is "a boat-shaped hole in the water, into which one tosses buckets of money." A carrier is a small black-hole in space, into which one tosses dump-truck sized loads of money...
Click to expand...
Another truism that fits.
How do you get a small fortune in power boat racing? Start with a large one.
 
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