Actually - here's an alternate thought.
The designers actually designed something that was pretty damn good, at what it was designed for. (A squadron asset, requiring multiple players to be a part of buying it, and maintaining it)
The higher ups decided they wanted to modify this design to work for single players. (more arx potential, no way to sell the arx to the entire squadron of players - just the leader....???)
The designers had to entirely re-design something that had a lot of design baked in based on the idea of a multiple player asset - resulting in something a little substandard to what it may have been.
Counter thought: The Devs actually know what they're doing and figured out that FCs as squadron assets wouldn't work with existing game mechanics.
There's no Squadron bank account to pay for the FC, so someone has to be "voluntold" to buy it for the Squadron. Second issue: you cannot transfer money directly to the poor guy who has to buy the damn thing. So someone has to do all the grind "alone". Squad members have only limited options to support with that. Third issue, maintanance. As I pointed out, there's no bank account for a squadron. So the poor guy who bought the thing now has to pay the weekly fee on top of it. That's sort of the situation we have right at the moment anyway, but when thinking about Squadron FCs, what happens to the Squadron asset if the player stops playing/doesn't have enough money or decides to leave the squadron? Who inherits it? What happens when the player leaves? He already paid for it, but isn't allowed to keep it, because it's a "squardon asset"?
The implementation of a squadron bank account would open up an entirely new can of worms when it comes to abuse and exploits. Not to mention the overhaul of how squadrons work ingame (roles and rights, payment/taxes etc). That is/was probably just too much effort when the majority of the Devs are working on Odyssey.
Last but not least, the Squadron FC would have been an asset only a select few, already powerful Squadrons could/would actually have been able to obtain. Think of the mayhem in BGS/PVP/Powerplay when the "big guys" bring out their FCs to totally stomp on any small squadron they come across. Also with the potentially limited amount of players actually buying/playing with Squadron Carriers, one has to question if that idea would have been worth the development time/effort.
Long story short, the personal FC we have now was/is probably the "best" way to implement FCs with existing game mechanics anyway. It solves all the above issues without wasting too much development time on "features" only few players could/would actually use.
