You're not paying for the services. you're paying the thousands of NPC's who operate and maintain those services. If they aren't paid, they leave, and the carrier ceases to function. Non-functioning carriers are de-commissioned in order to prevent an eventual mess.
So, I paid for the service then. I use a service, I pay, service paid for lol.
I pay my crew directly every week, I also pay for maintenance aka keeping the ship running. I then pay to use the services performed by the crew I've just paid. Look, anyone can think of "lore" reasons why things are, that's easy. Bottom line is, while they have their uses, FC's are pretty limited mobile Hangars / Store houses. We can't even trade dynamically (buy AND sell at the same time) which is a real shame. We may have "bought" various things, but it still costs us more, over and above crew wages and ship maintenance, to use them.
The FC has been nice to have to longer mining sessions - I used to really like mining - where I can load up the Carrier with LOTS of a given resource, then fly back to the bubble to sell it. I
could have just offered to buy what others a mining for a fair price, then jump back to the bubble to sell for a slight mark-up, allowing others to make the bulk of the profit, but I'd rather keep all the profits to myself lol.
One fun thing I have done, to help a buddy, was as follows. He was a little behind on unlocking engineers, so I secured the various unlock wares he'd need, going through them in turn. This was relatively easy for me, as I was equipped to do it. Then he could come buy from me as needed. His game time was a bit more limited than mine at that moment, so it both gave me something to do, and allowed him to focus on the gameplay he wanted, not have to spend time shopping for wares.
I still hope what we can do with a Fleet Carrier will be expanded upon. Could a Fleet Carrier perhaps become a prerequisit for
actually managing a fleet? I.e. I hire
additional crew to pilot
other ships of mine and be my Wingmate. I'd like that. I'd love to be able to order a ship of mine to do a trade run and assign
other ships of mine to guard that ship for example. Waaay out of scope of ED though, I'm sure. Shame though, we have all these assets yet can just fly one at a time...