 Elite Dangerous Fleet Carriers Flippin' Ech The wait for carriers has been a long one They were initially mentioned as a squadron-owned asset way back at the Frontier Expo in London in 2017 Two and a half years ago I won't recount the whole tortured story since then but suffice to say they've disappeared, they've reappeared then got delayed, then got delayed again and somewhere in there they were redesigned and redefined as personal fleet carriers It's fair to say there's been a solid degree of frustration in the community at their strangulated development process When finally we got our first proper look at the carriers internal game mechanics on the reveal livestream some of it was a surprise but it was, I would say, a manageable surprise in particular I'm referring to the upkeep, debt and forced decommissioning systems When first revealed the upkeep prices were expensive but I could see how it might be manageable and what FDEV's internal design ethos with the carrier system might have been That's to say they're expensive to buy they're expensive to run but with the right management and care they could pay part of their own way at least and with minimal engagement and investment from the owner in the game they would be very affordable The numbers were high but they weren't hilariously unreasonable and you could see a way that you could probably make it work without Elite Dangerous becoming a second job Then Beta 1 happened The upkeep costs that we'd seen and had started to get a handle on were nowhere to be seen they had instead been replaced by ridiculously large upkeep costs The prices to keep your carrier and keep the debt collection people at bay were so high, so spectacularly ludicrously high that they were, as a practical everyday expense in the game utterly indefensible and completely unattainable by most players Let's put my cards on the table here I think carriers are great I want one they're not perfect by any stretch of the imagination there's some things that need addressing and some systems that don't work quite right and by don't work quite right what I mean is that doesn't work and I'm not buying one if it does that but we'll come to that in a moment I think the Universal Carter Graphics issue needs addressing put simply I think Frontier want explorers coming back to civilization occasionally and paying in their exploration data and engaging with a starport I also don't think most explorers want that I do think there's a couple of ways that both Frontier and the explorer community can have their cake and eat it the simplest of which is just to put a Universal Carter Graphics module or part of a module in the carrier and make the payday for dumping data at your carrier less profitable than a starport that would seem an easy win slightly less easy win but actually one I prefer is allow cartographic data to be stored and backed up at the carrier but still make the explorer return to civilization to dump it and profit from it the words transferable data core have been bandied about I quite like that personally there's a degree of discussion in the community right now over whether the carrier should have a shipyard by default over something like a commodity market whilst I agree that a shipyard makes more sense for a carrier than a market does I'd like to go one step further and suggest that by default carriers have nothing but the bare basic modules needed to function and any customization over and above that is left to the player while we're talking about default functionality the inability to move tritium from carrier storage into the fuel carrier without a ship in between and without physically being on the carrier is for me one of the hardest design choices to justify right now if you're on the other side of the galaxy you have to rely on the kindness of strangers to donate to your fuel tank surely a better game mechanic would be to set up a commodity market demand for tritium that you can then transfer into the fuel tank from storage after you've bought it from players maybe another fuel management module would be a nice solution to that but right now as a remotely controlled and still jumpable asset the carrier is a non-starter you're either on board or you're not and it stops jumping when it runs out of fuel it feels right now like this is an artificial construct to stop the carrier jumping vast distances without stopping I don't understand why fdev would want to block that but I'm prepared to be persuaded if anyone has any ideas in the same vein you can't plot multiple jump points in a route for your carrier it can only plot one jump at a time for a large vessel this coupled with the fuel supply and management system I've mentioned would seem a basic requirement then there's the issue with jump timers it's currently two hours to call down, spin up again and jump carriers lack an immediacy of action right now they're not reactive to a dynamic situation particularly with the spin up timer as it is for my part I'd be fine with a 15 minute spin up and a 2 hour call down I want the decision to jump to have weight and to have gravity to it but I'd also like to be able to make that decision quickly if needed plus there's a nice air of drama in loading up a carrier and jumping on a whim to go and do a thing with your squad mates that is utterly lost if everyone has to book a ticket one hour in advance all of that is not an exhaustive list there's discussions around module and ship sales from a carrier and the lack of granularity in stock choices available to carrier owners why is the black market suddenly being called a secure warehouse instead of a black market why can't I change the registry number of my carrier but I can on all my other ships is it a bug or is there some other mysterious frontier reason for it all of these issues are irritations and if left untouched they'll make carriers an okay feature rather than a great feature they pale in comparison however to the showstopper so let's talk about that the upkeep costs as they stand in the beta right now as I say these words are horrendous and unworkable if the current carrier system went into the production version of the game with the horrific costs that we've seen over the last week then hands down no way would I buy one it would be utterly unsustainable for me and I think for the vast majority of players who can afford to buy a carrier or can see a point in the future where they could afford to buy a carrier at the current level they're completely preposterously comedically stupid and that is why they will not stay at that level and I've never believed for one moment that they will stay at that level now of course there are all sorts of discussions about why they're at the level they are at the moment or what frontier might be trying to achieve by making the upkeep in the beta so expensive after all they must have done it for some reason surely there's also a discussion around whether the current negativity in the community around carriers mainly caused by those beta upkeep levels is a massive PR-owned goal and could end up damaging the game to some degree after such a long and tortured wait for carriers in the first place let's be honest commanders the game has had a hard couple of years and could really use a solid win right now but ultimately it comes down to this if no one can afford carriers then no one will own a carrier if no one owns one then frontier will have put countless thousands of pounds of real money into a white elephant feature that they then can't sell me a ship kit and a paint job for and my god I want a ship kit and a paint job for my carrier and they won't be able to make any of their significant investment back from them frontier is a business and it needs to make money from carriers in order to make money from carriers they need you to own one and enjoy using it I guess my point is this carriers are an in development feature try them out as an owner if you can try them out as a passenger if you can't own one give your constructive feedback back to frontier continue to tell them what you like and what you don't like but all the while keep in mind that what you see in the beta right now is absolutely not the finished product the features will be tweaked the upkeep costs will 100% absolutely change and frontier knows that to stand any chance of carriers working as a feature they need to make them enjoyable achievable and useful so keep calm feedback and carrier on let us know your thoughts in the comments below that's it for now thanks very much for watching we'll be back later this week with more videos until then 07 commanders follow the greens on the way out and do keep clear of the toast rack we very much look forward to seeing you next time