Fleet Carriers - Mobius "Allow All"?

[El_Presidente]

As Mobius is a group of like minded PvE players will we see lots of Fleet Carriers allowing all players to dock and use?

Asking because that would be my model (if I finally get there and can afford one). I'll be using in a Mobius instance and will look to encourage all payers to use my carrier and may look for a mechanism where jump locations can be set by members via poll or some other mechanism. After that I'll encourage lots of co-operative play for fueling, commodities, purchases with low or zero tariffs. This could also act as a support and mentoring model for newer Mobius players.

I've seen from the start of the beta just how expensive and awkward the operation of FC are right now, but I'm hoping a lot of that gets sorted in the next few weeks.

Thoughts & comments?

[TorTorden]

Got one running in beta.

As it is now.

It's an outpost that you rent, with large pads.
Yeah you can tell it where to park, but that's it for interaction.

Jumping with one, involves waiting an hour, then a lot of humming, and clanging noises followed by a "ding" sound I swear they ripped out of a budget microwave oven.

This will cost you 6+billion and 60 million in weekly rent.

Oh and filling the tank with fuel is another 45-50 million.

[tinnitus]

What, pay billions of credits for a ship (space sim) and I can't sit in the freaking cockpit? WTF

[TorTorden]

What, pay billions of credits for a ship (space sim) and I can't sit in the freaking cockpit? WTF

precisely.

You never leave your current usual vessel, it's at best a slightly scaled down version of the outfitting hangar.
Basically it drops down, then slides a lid on top of you.

The rest is managed by a quite horrible UI that seems to be a cross between catering to PC and consoles, and you can access that anywhere regardless of where you are.

So in essence you can do anything in regards to your carrier without ever even being in the same ly as it.
But considering it costs 50 million or so just to jump it around I would carefully scout everywhere I go with it.

[tinnitus]

That's shitty may as well sit in the boot. Costly addition, a full time job for a squad to keep the lights on. Hopefully there is something wrong with the upkeep if not it needs to go. I know they need to keep the cost high or we all would have one. Is there a rank requirement to buy one?

[TorTorden]

That's shitty may as well sit in the boot. Costly addition, a full time job for a squad to keep the lights on. Hopefully there is something wrong with the upkeep if not it needs to go. I know they need to keep the cost high or we all would have one. Is there a rank requirement to buy one?

No rank requirement that I saw, but I'm both King and Admiral.

In fact you could get the full carrier experience by docking at someone elses.
Just for example, there are Pristine belts in the Delkar system, a mere skip from founders.

A system I normally would consider fairly abandoned, is now populated by about 15 or so fleet carriers...

As for the initial thread.

Only reason I can honestly see, to limit the docking facility would be cheating.
Ie. have incredibly inflated prices for a certain commodity cause only those who have ebayed you $100 get's to join your squadron, or even just withdrawing money directly from your carrier.

For all other use cases it makes far more sense to just allow anyone to dock, if they refuel\re-arm you'll be looking at a cut anyway.

Far less than what it actually costs to to run the flipping thing, but I guess you can use those 500 credits to get a snack from the vending machine in your quarters or something.

Quite honestly this fleet carrier expansion is much less about fleet carriers and more about getting a mortgage simulator.

[lafzy]

Having ground away at Borann long enough to get one, I was dismayed after I heard the initial announcement and canned the idea as the upkeep costs and maintenance required were ridiculous and unsustainable for me. (Mortgage simulator! That's a good one TorTorden and spot on!)

Yesterday's announcements make it kind of viable again. Although they haven't got rid of the upkeep altogether, it will come down by 80 or so %. I think a rough calculation of the weekly maintenance if you have all the additional services is somewhere around the mid 20 million a week, which while still a lot, is way better than the initial 140 million a week proposed. At the revised rate, If I transfer a billion credits into the cash sink it will be maintained for almost a year, which seems a bit more reasonable.

The announcement yesterday included that fuel will be more efficient, spool up times reduced to 15 mins and Cartographics will be added so that it becomes viable to take one exploring, which was my intention.

In terms of what i wish they did, in my view any upkeep costs should be annual and stated up front, which gives a year to prep. Don't mind the 'immershun' idea of paying 'staff' an annual salary, or something like that, or annual 'service and oil change' costs, just not weekly and not ridiculously high amounts.

I understand they don't want abandoned FC's littering the galaxy, but I don't like the idea that it will be scrapped if not maintained. Why not If you can't pay, then staff leave and the fc comes off the server, but rather than lose it, when you log back in you have to re-hire staff and do a bit of grinding to get it up and running again? Would make more sense to me than losing my end game shiny and expensive toy altogether.

Anyway with the way things are changing, who knows how they will operate between now and the end of the beta!

To answer part of the OP's initial question, I think FC's will be visible to all players in open, solo or private groups, and anyone (unless barred by the owner) will be able to dock as I understand it.

In terms of a group vote for travel destinations etc, that's all good if i'm part of a wing with a shared goal, but for me personally, I would want to take mine off into the black at my own pace, although anyone who wants to come along for the ride is welcome! Might rethink that if they re-introduce community goals or if one of the Mobius factions is under attack and issues a call to arms or something, in which case I will probably be happy to use it as a shared base for a while.

[TorTorden]

Indeed, as it was released in current beta I would not bother to get one.

As with the proposed changes, it's actually quite likely that I will.
With what I envision my end list of services would be I would then with the proposed changes be looking at just about 10-15 mil in upkeep, and I could honestly likely spend that much in a week playing just by having the vette transferred around.

For instance I have yet to finish the guardian stuff, so I'd think my first romp would be out that way again, just scout out a pristine belt and send the carrier out there.

As for other players, with this, the amount of carriers out there would be huge, I expect a lot of systems to be filled with these, so even if you don't have one, you should find plenty of them in otherwise un populated systems to dock, refuel and rearm in.
Although storing stuff in one could mean it's suddenly a few hundred lightyears away when you log back in.

[Roger Wilco Jr]

The way the implemented fleet carriers this late in the game makes me think that space legs will never be a thing. If you can't even transfer to the bridge for a jump or to interface with the carrier (like with fighters or the SRV), I doubt you will ever be able to walk there.


PS. hi to the six bots that were online with me.

[Maenden]

I'm very disappointed with carriers. After all the so-called development we ended up (basically) with a spaceport with a FSD. Unless they bring the price down dramatically I can't see there really being a lot of them out there.
The figures I've seen suggest that only about 4% of players can afford the 10 billion of so needed for a carrier with useful facilities.
If the same stats are true for Mobius then our 40,000 members will have 1,600 people who can afford them.
If you put them in agreed local patterns that might be fine, but if you're going to spread them out over the 400, 000, 000, 000 star systems in the game that's one carrier in every 250,000 star systems.

Speaking personally I haven't seen another Mobius member in over 6 months. So the likelihood of finding a Mobius dedicated carrier would seem slim.