General Why I think Fleet carrier upkeep should be removed.

[Greasetrap42]

Players have a choice of approaching FC upkeep costs in 1 of 2 ways:

1) Paying continuous weekly upkeep cost for several years.

2) Paying a single upfront amount of a couple billion Cr. to cover the costs for several years.

If FDev gets rid of the weekly cost option should they increase the cost of the carrier by a few billion? Or is this topic all about making carriers less expensive?

 

[Rafal]

Jumping a fleet carrier costs 100,000 credits regardless of distance. What if you increase the amount to 500,000 credits and write off relative to the distance, the maximum jump is 500.

 

[xzanfr]

I feel the opposite and upkeep should be extended to all ships via the hiring of crew, to include crew management as part of the game.

 

[Rat Catcher]

Or is this topic all about making carriers less expensive?

Sounds, to me, that it is about 'keeping my credits' because, despite not wishing to pay for upkeep, some players will still buy a FC then complain for ever on the forum because it has upkeep, it isn't as if the upkeep cost is a hidden one, is it?

If one feels that they are not going to be playing for a while, decommissioning the FC and storing all of their assets in a port or station is a practical solution. There is only a minor loss from the original purchase price.

It is quite simple to play for a few hours and put sufficient credits in the FC 'bank' to pay for upkeep for a year or so...

 

[Ian Skippy]

I don't think you can afford it 'just by playing'. I 'just played' 3000 hours since Dec 2014 and got nowhere close to a carrier. I did massacre missions for two weeks and now have the FC plus over a year in funding. You need to do some very specific things or you wont get it. Smuggling, powerplay, EDO missions, S&R, exobiology: none of them will get you close and if you did upkeep will be a problem of sorts.

And as some said, the upkeep is odd as well. Pioneer supplies is vastly overpriced and I have no clue why I can't have a shipyard terminal in the concourse without paying 250m plus 5 or so s week.

Still, bigger issue for me is inability to sell rares and inability to really set sale/buy price for EDO mats. Selling opinion polls for 5k cr is daft.

 

[Rat Catcher]

You need to do some very specific things or you wont get it.

True enough - I bought my 1st FC with the majority of the credits earned from wing play in space CZs, with 4 of us sharing massacre missions over a couple of wars. It is simpler to raise larger amounts of credit quickly if a few friends work together, which is an issue for those who prefer to play alone, granted.

 

[Fake Newts]

There should be a solid difference between skint plebs and the haves

Can you explain how this manifests/should manifest itself in the gameworld, for what purpose? Are your multiplayer interactions in elite often enhanced by wallet imbalance?

I'm unsure as to whether you're being satirical or not.

Edit: I'm reminded of a time pre-carriers when I was reverb mining in a DBS, a player in a Cutter flew up to me at a CG and genuinely typed the following sentence into chat: 'Hey little buddy, if you try hard maybe you'll get a ship like this one day'. I remember it vividly first for the extremely focused conservative energy coming through the screen, and for the fact that I a) already owned a Cutter b) proceeded to knock their shield off with mines and chase them out of the instance.

The relative credit balance of other players in Elite has precious little effect on any interaction. Lording assets over others would be more viable in a game with genuine skillchecks.

 

[Riverside]

I don't have a business model for my carrier, and I didn't buy one until I had a use for it. I had plenty of Credits from just playing the game (rarely with a focus on earning cash) so I am happy enough to slowly haemorrhage cash and occasionally buff up the coffers helping out with a war or even just gathering exploration data.

I don't see the maintenance cost as an issue & broadly agree it's a bit pointless, because as the OP says it doesn't really achieve anything other than to be a mild irritant for some.

The issue with carriers seems to me to be when there are lots parked seemingly long term in engineers systems or other places where lots of Cmdrs want to be able to park their carrier. People are understandably reluctant to give up their parking spot because they may not be able to get their carrier back into that system.

So independent of the weekly maintenance cost I'd like to see a parking fee that is significant, and related to the number of carriers that were already in that system at the time the new carrier enters and how many parking slots are available in that system. If there are no other carriers in the system there is no parking fee, if there are lots already there the cost is high. If other carriers leave the parking fee could reduce.

That way players are financially motivated to think about where they park, and those (like me) that are currently unconcerned about the cost will be more likely to start to consider it, and for those that don't play for long periods they have options to park somewhere quiet & not incur longer term parking fees (or not so high).

That there are so many carriers isn't a problem (imo), that so many choose to park in one of only a few systems is.

 

[Darkfyre99]

The issue with carriers seems to me to be when there are lots parked seemingly long term in engineers systems or other places where lots of Cmdrs want to be able to park their carrier. People are understandably reluctant to give up their parking spot because they may not be able to get their carrier back into that system.

My issue with these mobile monuments to Ozymandias is, and has always been from the moment it was announced that they would become personal ship storage, is that like every MMO I’ve played where it was possible to build personal and persistent structures in public game space, is that they swiftly became a nuisance in many systems, and their sheer number drowns any potential to serve as the foundation of a player-augmented economy.

About the only place where they achieved their potential in that regard is the DSSA, and even then you have to go out of the game to know about them. In inhabited space, they generate unwanted noise when visually searching for opportunities, and make an already unwieldy system map worse by several orders of magnitude.

If you’re going to inconvenience others, you should pay a price for doing so. One of these things in a rarely visited system isn’t an inconvenience. Hundreds in a popular system is a huge one. Personally, I’d add an additional fee to your idea… along side a credit based on unique visits that use it’s services. That way, the carriers that actually benefit the community would see a benefit in return.

 

[Dillon Fallon]

Given the huge credit making opportunities I've found that owning a fleet carrier has given me I see no problem with that coming at a cost.

 

[Greasetrap42]

Fleet carrier upkeep is trivial. As anyone who owns a fleet carrier will tell you, just by playing the game, you will rapidly get enough money to support your carrier for years, if not decades.

So just get rid of it. There's no advantage in intentionally annoying your player base.

The premise of this suggestion is that weekly upkeep is trivial and just an annoyance.

- If a cmdr makes a one-time payment to their carrier's budget it will not be an annoyance for several years. Weekly payments avoided.

- If a cmdr can not afford to put a one-time payment to cover the costs for several years then it must not be trivial. Not enough credits.

In either case the upkeep payment is identical. Affording the cost of a FC is the requirement of having one.

 

[Misty_Dark]

Fleet carrier upkeep is trivial. As anyone who owns a fleet carrier will tell you, just by playing the game, you will rapidly get enough money to support your carrier for years, if not decades. I myself have 12+ years, and that's without even trying. It's basically background noise.

But the more I thought about that, the more I realized it was an apt analogy. Fleet Carrier upkeep doesn't have any real detrimental gameplay effect; its only real effect is being annoying.

So imagine if, instead of upkeep, whenever you got near your Fleet carrier, it would play a high-pitched squeal. Not loud enough to be overtly inconvenient, just enough to be faintly annoying.

That's what Fleet carrier upkeep is. Faintly annoying.

Now, you could make justifications about how it's the life support system, or the FSD, or any number of other things, but when you get right down to it, it's an annoying feature with no benefit, existing for no reason.

So just get rid of it. There's no advantage in intentionally annoying your player base.

If Fleet carriers must have a persistent cost, I would much prefer to be based on something that actually matters, like how many Fleet carriers there are in the system, to force High Traffic Systems to clear out regularly. At least then, players can see the benefit of it existing.

I still think that we should have two kind of Fleet Carrier, and that players can switch between the two...

So we have the Fleet Carriers that have a weekly upkeep, and for that, the Fleet Carrier is visible in all instances and platforms, basically how Fleet Carrier works now. And this only applies to Fleet Carriers that are set to allow anyone to dock.
Now we can start to mess around with the weekly upkeep, making it much more expensive.

As this is a privately owned Fleet Carrier, I can see that an option to add a docking fee, that a player has to pay when docking could help cover the expenses of the weekly upkeep fees, especially if we increase it. These Fleet Carriers should be marked as having docking fees and how much it is, also when a player ask to dock, they should be alerted about the docking fee, and have to pay it before being allowed to dock. Fee have two payment options, either pay in Tritium (to help those who ferry people around) or Credits, to help with those weekly upkeep fees. To limit the amount of shady tactics from Fleet Carrier owners, there needs to be some upper limits on these. And the the docking permit should last for a set amount of time, so that you have unlimited docking rights during that set time. Time frame should can be selected from 1-7 days.



When you do not allow anyone to dock, there will be no upkeep, and the Fleet Carrier is no longer visible to all players.
You can also change to allow friends and/or squadron members to dock on your Fleet Carrier, and your Fleet Carrier will be visible to those players aswell.



This would remove all of those Fleet Carrier, that are only for solo/friends/Squadron use from the globally visible Fleet Carriers, and should free up quite alot slots in popular systems and reduce alot of the Fleet Carrier clutter in some very popular systems. So this would allow anyone to be able to move their Fleet Carrier to these popular systems, but not everyone is guaranteed to have a publicly visible Fleet Carrier in any system. We also gain the option to tune the weekly upkeep to be a money sink, as this now is a player option to run a Fleet Carrier that open to the public.

And we can also add a couple of filter actions so that you can filter which Fleet Carriers you want to see.
Own Fleet Carrier - always visible.
Friends Fleet Carriers - toggle
Squadron Fleet Carriers - toggle
Public Fleet Carriers - toggle


What happens if you cannot afford the upkeep?
The Fleet Carrier will be changed to owner only access, so you will never loose it. and it will be removed from the game world for everyone else. It this happens, you can login and change it to allow friends and/or squadron to dock at your Fleet Carrier.

 

[Gut]

If i could just pay the 5 Billion , and then i owned it , i would put my two ships on it and travel the Galaxy forever happy . At the moment all you do it ' rent 'it out and pay billions more in to the money black hole. So no thanks.

 

[Greasetrap42]

If i could just pay the 5 Billion , and then i owned it , i would put my two ships on it and travel the Galaxy forever happy . At the moment all you do it ' rent 'it out and pay billions more in to the money black hole. So no thanks.

If all you want is the base model FC then just pay 5+2 billion and you can travel in the black hassle free for over 7 years.

 

[Dillon Fallon]

If all you want is the base model FC then just pay 5+2 billion and you can travel in the black hassle free for over 7 years.

Or even fit a universal cartographics. Upkeep sorted and also means you don't have to worry about slipping up and losing millions in data.

 

[Northpin]

I still think that we should have two kind of Fleet Carrier, and that players can switch between the two...

So we have the Fleet Carriers that have a weekly upkeep, and for that, the Fleet Carrier is visible in all instances and platforms, basically how Fleet Carrier works now. And this only applies to Fleet Carriers that are set to allow anyone to dock.
Now we can start to mess around with the weekly upkeep, making it much more expensive.

It doesnt work like that.
The game has 2 type of assets - bases and ships
Bases (orbital outposts/starports/asteroids, planetary outposts/starports, megaships, carriers) are persistent and visible in all instances/platforms
Ships are platform specific, are transient and each commander can have only one active at a time and, being transient, they disappear from the galaxy once the commander logs off

And, once again, carriers are not ship.

 

[DemiserofD]

It doesnt work like that.
The game has 2 type of assets - bases and ships
Bases (orbital outposts/starports/asteroids, planetary outposts/starports, megaships, carriers) are persistent and visible in all instances/platforms
Ships are platform specific, are transient and each commander can have only one active at a time and, being transient, they disappear from the galaxy once the commander logs off

And, once again, carriers are not ship.

What about Signal Sources? They're transient and only visible by one player, but persistent if the player logs out and back in, and other players can drop in at them if they have a wing nav lock.

 

[DemiserofD]

Sounds, to me, that it is about 'keeping my credits' because, despite not wishing to pay for upkeep, some players will still buy a FC then complain for ever on the forum because it has upkeep, it isn't as if the upkeep cost is a hidden one, is it?

If one feels that they are not going to be playing for a while, decommissioning the FC and storing all of their assets in a port or station is a practical solution. There is only a minor loss from the original purchase price.

It is quite simple to play for a few hours and put sufficient credits in the FC 'bank' to pay for upkeep for a year or so...

Imagine your favorite ship had a constant high-pitched squeal whenever you flew it. No negative gameplay effect, just a constant, loud squeal, kinda like this:

You cannot turn this noise off without muting the game entirely.

You knew about this noise when you bought the ship. It's easy enough to just mute the game whenever you fly that ship. Despite this, is it reasonable to complain on the forums that this squeal exists?

 

[Screemonster]

My issue with these mobile monuments to Ozymandias is, and has always been from the moment it was announced that they would become personal ship storage, is that like every MMO I’ve played where it was possible to build personal and persistent structures in public game space, is that they swiftly became a nuisance in many systems, and their sheer number drowns any potential to serve as the foundation of a player-augmented economy.

I love how Kingdom of Loathing does it.
Everyone has a player base.
There's even a clan base.
It's listed as "the campground" and clicking on it takes you to your campsite.
On one of the silly challenge paths where you take on the role of the ancient mummy Ed the Undying, seeking revenge against your usual player character, it even lampshades it when you attempt to visit the campground by saying that there are so many campsites there it'd take literally forever to find the one you're looking for.
Everyone can have a store in the mall as well, but again, it doesn't matter because the game just has a commodities market where you just search things by price.

I don't think I've ever visited another player's carrier without knowing in advance what services I'm wanting to use on them, and yet my navigation bar is clogged with them.

 

[Rat Catcher]

Imagine your favorite ship had a constant high-pitched squeal whenever you flew it. No negative gameplay effect, just a constant, loud squeal, kinda like this:

You cannot turn this noise off without muting the game entirely.

You knew about this noise when you bought the ship. It's easy enough to just mute the game whenever you fly that ship. Despite this, is it reasonable to complain on the forums that this squeal exists?

Well, true, it is a good example of self-inflicted discomfort.

"Duh! I bought this thing that I know makes a squeal, and it squeals and annoys me..."

A pretty poor example, but top marks for trying.