General Why I think Fleet carrier upkeep should be removed.

[DemiserofD]

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.

 

[Lyamecron]

I would gladly pay a higher sum per jump as some sort of extended maintenance cost, than to pay constantly for it being static and waiting for orders. I would also love the change of the system to "you pay what you use". No base upkeep and no suspended module upkeep. When modules are active they should drain money, but only then. I would even pay more for that tbh.

 

[Nadreck]

I assume upkeep is for paying the crew, so I'm OK with it for RP reasons. Though I was surprised that they didn't use the existing percentage system that they already had in place for our SLF copilots, at least that scales automatically with how much you play and how much cash you're making.

As a means of controlling Carrier numbers, it was a terrible idea. If you have it high enough to "price out" casual players, you submit the rest to a neverending grind just to keep the Carrier. At present levels, it's OK. They've also dealt with the ludicrous depreciation issue (which was even worse than the initial high upkeep: punish players for keeping a Carrier AND punish them again for getting rid of it?)

I'm wary of the high upkeep cost for Pioneer (a near-useless service) when not suspended. Not because I can't afford it, but because it's silly, and heading in the wrong direction again.

 

[Miklos Atreides]

Well, owning a ship of any kind sould have some kind of upkeeping cost. Normal ships have cost of repair,rearm,(refuel). Fleet Carriers don't. The upkeeping is the easy way to implement the cost for an undistroyable player asset. A more constructive way could be to charge Fleet Carrier owners for a kind of harbour due when entering a system and for the time you stay. You could also try to take control of Carrier traffic by adjusted fees. The more intresting the system to the player is the more this fee will raise per day. But it would be some effort to implement this and therefore it isn't likely to be consideratet by developers and the fact that every time you should pay something it is felt as too expesive.

Regards,
Miklos

 

[Dillon Fallon]

I'm not sure you could call it trivial and annoying at the same time as that suggests it is both a significant and insignificant issue at the same time.

However, if it were to be reduced and parking fees in populated systems added to make up the difference I could see how that would work. Although really I strongly suspect that with zero changes beyond the reduction of upkeep from its beta amount that this sort of request is just another unlock the Cobra mk4 for everyone discussion. FDev's focus is likely elsewhere and probably should stay there if we want to see anything new.

 

[JohnRoberts]

I would gladly pay a higher sum per jump as some sort of extended maintenance cost

That would just discourage people moving the already often static Fleet Carriers. It would be better to significantly lower the cost of jumping, and replace it with a mooring fee that increase each week you remain in place. Only to be applied in inhabited systems, of course.

 

[DemiserofD]

I'm not sure you could call it trivial and annoying at the same time as that suggests it is both a significant and insignificant issue at the same time.

However, if it were to be reduced and parking fees in populated systems added to make up the difference I could see how that would work. Although really I strongly suspect that with zero changes beyond the reduction of upkeep from its beta amount that this sort of request is just another unlock the Cobra mk4 for everyone discussion. FDev's focus is likely elsewhere and probably should stay there if we want to see anything new.

Well, consider the example of a high pitched noise. By any reasonable definition, that's a trivial problem. If it really bugs you, you can just mute the game while you're nearby. But even so, it would be annoying enough that I would have a tendency to avoid carriers.

 

[Northpin]

Nah
If anything, Upkeep should be higher.

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

 

[DemiserofD]

Nah
If anything, Upkeep should be higher.

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

I'd be more fine with it if it served some functional purpose. The trouble is, right now, it really doesn't. It's too low to do anything meaningful to the lifespan of the carrier, but high enough that you can't just disregard it entirely, the way you do with fuel on your ship. It's it's in the awkward Middle Ground of being annoying but not functionally annoying.

At the very least, I want it to be something that meaningfully changes the way you play the game. For example, what if the cost was instead expressed in tritium? It's got to take some fuel to keep that thing going.

Then, have it so that some larger Stars can be scooped off by Fleet carriers. Not very much; just enough to counteract the cost, and maybe a little bit more.

If Fleet carriers needed to find O-class stars to park around, that would be an interesting and meaningful change in how you play the game.

Unfortunately, a change like that is more difficult than just removing upkeep, and while meaningful and good change is better than just removing the negatives, both are better than doing nothing.

 

[Northpin]

I'd be more fine with it if it served some functional purpose. The trouble is, right now, it really doesn't. It's too low to do anything meaningful to the lifespan of the carrier, but high enough that you can't just disregard it entirely, the way you do with fuel on your ship. It's it's in the awkward Middle Ground of being annoying but not functionally annoying.

It has a purpose.

You either accumulated quite an important amount of cash - and that gives you the ability to hold on your carrier.
Or - the case of my Epic account alt - you have only a couple of billions and you kinda have to play and have credits in mind when you play, else your carrier gets decommissioned

As is it now i'd say it's quite well balanced and i'm not saying this from the perspective of the rich commander (my other 2 accounts have more than 60 billions combined), but from the perspective of the rather poor commander with not so much free time to spare in game

As i said in the previous post, i would increase the upkeep a bit, but it would not be quite fair to the poor guy with limited time i mentioned above.

 

[DemiserofD]

It has a purpose.

You either accumulated quite an important amount of cash - and that gives you the ability to hold on your carrier.
Or - the case of my Epic account alt - you have only a couple of billions and you kinda have to play and have credits in mind when you play, else your carrier gets decommissioned

As is it now i'd say it's quite well balanced and i'm not saying this from the perspective of the rich commander (my other 2 accounts have more than 60 billions combined), but from the perspective of the rather poor commander with not so much free time to spare in game

As i said in the previous post, i would increase the upkeep a bit, but it would not be quite fair to the poor guy with limited time i mentioned above.

I don't think it's quite reasonable to call any player who can afford a 5 billion credit Fleet carrier "limited on time".

Being a limiting factor exclusively on "little-used alts who nonetheless inexplicably own Fleet carriers" is not a good enough justification for annoying the other 99% of accounts.

 

[Northpin]

I don't think it's quite reasonable to call any player who can afford a 5 billion credit Fleet carrier "limited on time".

Ofc it is not if someone is making 5 billions in one month.
But that's rather rare.

There are only 30k carriers for a population that reached 500,000 monthly players - as FD mentioned in one of their official papers.

Which means there are 15 times more players that cannot afford one. 15 times.

If it weren't for that relogging data cg at the beginning of May 2021 that netted me exactly 4 billions, i would have never afforded a carrier on my Epic account by regular play
And even with that CG, i got the carrier only when it got discounted during the Colonia Bridge CG

So, to conclude, Carriers are not exactly easy to get, and while they're not exactly hard to maintain they're not exactly easy either - hence me saying that i do think the upkeep is rather well balanced

 

[Krieger]

<snip>...

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

The reason for upkeep lies outside the game. Upkeep is a marketing trick to keep people playing regularly. Subconsciously players feel pressure to recoup those 20 - 30 million credits every week. Even when they have billions in their carrier account. It works... I know.

PS: It also shows how detached Frontier's management is from their audience. Instead of having a permanent conversation with the players on all things Elite, they lock themselves up in offices and indulge in marketing tricks as if players are pawns. It's how they run their other games too. Except those games are not multiplayer games.

 

[Frankymole]

Instead, make it that the Carrier consumes tritium to keep its power plants running. So you have to mine or buy tritium constantly, not just for jumping but also when stationary in a system. That would be more "meaningful" than just money. Jumps would use more, of course.

 

[Northpin]

Instead, make it that the Carrier consumes tritium to keep its power plants running. So you have to mine or buy tritium constantly, not just for jumping but also when stationary in a system. That would be more "meaningful" than just money. Jumps would use more, of course.

Hell NO!

 

[DemiserofD]

Ofc it is not if someone is making 5 billions in one month.
But that's rather rare.

There are only 30k carriers for a population that reached 500,000 monthly players - as FD mentioned in one of their official papers.

Which means there are 15 times more players that cannot afford one. 15 times.

If it weren't for that relogging data cg at the beginning of May 2021 that netted me exactly 4 billions, i would have never afforded a carrier on my Epic account by regular play
And even with that CG, i got the carrier only when it got discounted during the Colonia Bridge CG

So, to conclude, Carriers are not exactly easy to get, and while they're not exactly hard to maintain they're not exactly easy either - hence me saying that i do think the upkeep is rather well balanced

The math doesn't really check out on that. Assuming they were earning credits slowly but regularly, then in order to not be able to afford to the weekly upkeep, it would have taken them over five years of playing the game in order to afford the fleet carrier in the first place. And that's assuming they spent literally none of their money on anything else.

Hell NO!

Why not? That sounds an awful lot more deep and interesting than just taking credits.

 

[Maolagin]

Here's an idea - now that we have FC interiors, give Odyssey players the choice to opt out of carrier upkeep costs. Instead, having just fired the engineering crew, they need to go do a certain amount of maintenance tasks each week in various internal spaces. You don't have to do them every week of course, but then the carrier starts to fall out of good repair. Let the maintenance slide so long that it reaches 0% repair, and BOOM!

I figure, 100M an hour incomes vs around 30M a week in upkeep, about 20 minutes worth of walking around hallways pushing buttons and checking on dials would be fair.

 

[Bottom Hat]

It is supposed to be a money sink for those who complained they had nothing to do with the billions. Going back some time.

 

[Kissamies]

That would just discourage people moving the already often static Fleet Carriers. It would be better to significantly lower the cost of jumping, and replace it with a mooring fee that increase each week you remain in place. Only to be applied in inhabited systems, of course.

I don't think people should be encouraged to jump around without reason either. That'd just needlessly tax the servers. How about mooring fee depending on the system carrier population? The more there is, the more you'll have to pay. That might encourage spreading them around more.

 

[Mavsy 81]

They should add more systems that effect the money tick imo.
A rework of crews and another level of trading thats more management based using commodities would be a good start.