 This is a Witchspace special report. I'm CMDR Buur Frontier developments have today given their first ever proper deep dive into the new fleet carrier system We already knew how much they'll cost five billion credits and what fuel they'll need tritium But now in the pre-recorded livestream community manager Stephen Benedetti along with developers Dav Stott and Luke Bettiton went through what carriers can do how they move and what changes they'll bring to how Commanders play the game in an announcement that was full of surprises Frontier have revealed carriers to be way more complex and engaging systems than we ever Anticipated and we're gonna break down what we know about them right now the basics When the content reveal live stream was first announced by Frontier about a week ago They did release some initial details on the system that covered a few of the big questions and perhaps hinted at some of the Functionality we could expect in case you missed that reveal what we now know to be facts are this The carriers will cost five billion credits to purchase They have 16 total landing pads of varying sizes other players can dock at those landing pads Carriers have a 500 light-year jump range to make that jump They'll use a new fuel to the game called tritium You can jump your carrier whenever you want, but there will be a charge-up and call-down period before and after the jump You'll be able to customize your fleet carriers loadout in a similar fashion to other elite dangerous ships They're having been a rethink at Frontier since the initial cookie cutter themed carrier design was discussed last year Fleet carrier owners can also set tariffs on goods traded on their carriers services to support the Weekly upkeep costs such as wear and tear maintenance crew wages and fuel If you don't however balance those weekly incomings and outgoings You could incur a debt and if that debt persists in Frontier's words to a huge level Then the carrier risks being decommissioned and sold for parts In short the carrier has running costs, but it also has an income and those two factors need to be balanced Fleet carriers will be coming to a leak dangerous in June And there will be two public beta tests before then one starting on April the 7th for PC players and a second one in May For PCs and consoles you can further manage your carriers finances by setting tariffs and adjusting the buying and selling prices for Commodities traded in its market So that's what we knew already Here's what's new from today's live stream We knew carriers were going to be expensive and so the purchase price of the basic carrier Wasn't too much of a surprise at five billion credits if however You have one of the original elite dangerous Kickstarter level accounts a discount will be applied to that cost at the point of purchase The carriers themselves can be purchased from a number of star ports that will have a new carrier dry dock facility nearby Similar to the capital ship dry docks that we've seen in the Federation and Empire for example So you don't purchase the ship directly from the factory, but rather from a new vendor at the nearby starport Once the carrier has been purchased it will appear in a nearby star system that the new owner will be directed to on the purchase screen The new fuel tritium can be purchased from a refinery economy starport, but it can also be mined from icy planetary rings Commanders will be able to control who can dock at their fleet carrier Restricting it if they so desire to friends or just squadron mates or both or indeed none You'll also be able to prevent a commander who has notoriety from docking at your carrier if you so wish The customization options to carriers are a much-welcomed change Meaning everyone's carrier will be bespoke to their own gameplay style and mission requirements Instead of the fixed build carrier idea that was discussed previously Commanders can now set an identifier that will place an icon next to the carrier on the contacts list That gives an indication of the features of that carrier be they mercenary explorer mining search and rescue or anti-Xeno etc Moving your carrier One of the features that has produced a degree of anxiety in the community was the movement of carriers and how that would be handled The vast majority of the fear being that we'd be in a situation similar to the mega ships in the game Where they only jump on a weekly cycle It is my genuine pleasure to confirm that this is very much not the case and your carrier will actually be able to jump every two Hours tritium fuel permitting obviously the massive frameshift drive used by the Drake class carrier Takes an hour to spin up ready for use and an hour to cool down after use making each jump a commitment But not a nuisance To move the carrier the owner will be able to plot a destination on the galaxy map and once jumped The carrier will appear and orbit a body within the system But commanders thankfully will also be able to target a specific body within the system via the system map and instead Jump to an orbital position around that body This essentially means that you should for example be able to target a distant ring system with a valuable Commodity and a long super cruise range and have your ship appear in orbit Around the rings ready to start mining Likewise if you and your squadron want to target a high intensity combat zone on the far side of a system Then you can have everyone load up ship out and just exit which space aboard the carrier right near your targeted combat zone If however a system has a permit lock the carrier will not be able to enter the system Even if the owner has access to that permit Day to day running Your fleet carrier is a massive ship and you can't run it alone You're gonna need a crew to run your facilities for you and perform maintenance duties and just like your SLF crew They come with a cost association Players will be able to recruit new crew members and add new services to their carrier via a new contact in certain systems Called the carrier management service the running costs for your carrier fall into three different categories core costs optional costs and maintenance costs Core costs are the basic services that any carrier must have in order to function things like a bridge crew and a deck officer To move the carrier and handle traffic control on the flight deck Optional costs are associated with the optional services that you can choose to add to your carrier and Maintenance costs are a flat fee that's incurred every time your ship jumps to a new destination In order to finance these costs the carrier comes with its own separate bank With a credit balance that can be managed and added to or withdrawn from by the owner However, the owner of a carrier can add a percentage tariff on top of the services and goods that it provides Meaning that the carrier if handled correctly will certainly contribute at least to pay for its own upkeep This struck me as a particularly fascinating concept where you place your carrier What services you provide and how you use the carrier could mean in theory at least that it should make money for you as well As being a useful tool for you your friends and the wider community in the game And that value continues when you're not in the game as everyone's carrier is Persistent across platforms private groups open and solo mode if you're not around Your carrier still hangs around for everyone to use just like a starport or any other facility in the game Indeed off the back of this I can see carrier management Theory crafting becoming a thing with commander seeking out whatever the new carrier meta happens to be as the galaxy evolves While we're talking about day-to-day running cost Let's cover off the thing that has given commanders the most anxiety since it was announced debt and decommissioning In context the principle is this as I mentioned your carrier has a bank balance all its own and Separate from your own credit balance and it has running costs that draw from that bank balance If that bank balance reaches zero and you can no longer afford to run the carrier and pay your crew from that bank balance Then the carrier will shut down all of its optional IE the non-default services in order to reduce the running costs those optional services will be brought back online Once the debt is paid if however debt then continues to accrue and go unpaid for a number of weeks The player will be given a week to resolve the financial issue with the carrier before it is finally Decommissioned and becomes unrecoverable Let me start by saying that I understand completely the degree of anxiety that the debt and decommissioning issue has raised Frontier have said in their social media channels that the debt cap that needs to be reached before the carrier is removed is Huge and you have a number of weeks to resolve the issue But without knowing specific details on the system It's hard to comment further what I would say is that the screenshots that we've seen of weekly upkeep costs would seem to imply the following With no extra services activated the weekly upkeep is shown as 10 million credits With a full rack of services activated the weekly upkeep is shown as just under 13 and a half million credits It's a fact in the game right now that you can easily earn over a hundred million credits with about an hour's worth of mining That's roughly seven weeks worth of carrier running costs right there If you assume that no one is landing on your carrier and buying fuel or repairing their ship or re-arming If you're feeling a bit flush and you were to give your carrier a bank balance of one billion credits to be getting on with Again assuming you had no one landing at your carrier and giving you money for services Then that's around a year and a half running costs with your carrier running at full cost With no other input from anyone before you'd incur a debt I'd say you would honestly have to have left the game almost entirely Before that really became an issue and whilst Frontier haven't been specific about refunds on forced carrier decommissioning If you choose voluntarily to decommission your carrier, you can actually get most of the five billion initial cost back I can't believe the forced decommissioning wouldn't work the same There's obviously a balance to be found and finding the new carrier cost slash profit meta is going to be brilliant fun Honestly, but if those figures are accurate I can't see a situation where the vast majority of lightly attended carriers won't just be Predominantly self-sufficient indeed if balanced correctly they could in theory become a colossal mobile credit hose As I've already mentioned your carrier is persistent That's to say if you leave the game the carrier stays there still offering services still potentially bringing in money Even when you're asleep or on holiday But we need to fiddle with these ships for a bit to understand them fully And that's what the forthcoming beaters should help with What else can your carrier do it has both standard and configurable services? You can provide on board the standard core services that every carrier has are a Commodity market that commanders can use to buy and sell goods The money used to buy the goods from commanders comes from the carrier's own bank balance and the money commanders use to buy goods from the carrier goes into that bank balance and Just like that elite has a player economy. Yes, folks You'll at last be able to buy and sell commodities in elite dangerous to other commanders Secondly each carrier will have a tritium depot That can be viewed by anyone visiting the carrier and can be donated to by anyone visiting the carrier Meaning for a group out in the black or indeed at the heart of the bubble the tritium fuel gathering can be a joint group effort And not just the responsibility of the carrier owner The commodity market and tritium depot are managed by a dedicated crew member called the deck officer Additional services on the carrier can be added by recruiting dedicated staff and fitting the new services at a carrier administration contact that can be found at some star ports Added surfaces can be removed and sold back to the admin service for a reduced price at any time or additionally Commanders will themselves be able to suspend services when they're not needed rather than specifically removing them to help reduce the running costs of the carrier The additional services that can be added are as follows Redemption officer who can buy bonds trade dividends power play salaries and codex vouchers from players the carrier bank and Redemption officer will both take a cut of the fee. However Advanced maintenance which comprises three separate facilities allowing commanders to repair refuel and rearm or restock their ships Outfitting which allows commanders to purchase sell or store modules at the fleet carrier Owners will be able to customize what stock they make available for purchase from their carrier Owners can choose to add a shipyard allowing players to purchase sell or store ships at a fleet carrier as With module outfitting the owner can choose and theme what ships will be available at their carrier for others to purchase and Finally a fence allowing visiting commanders to buy and sell illegal goods Frontier have stated that when a fleet carrier is parked in a system The systems authorities will send patrol craft to maintain order and if the visitors to the carrier participate in illegal Activities then the amount of patrols will be increased making illegal activity more difficult by the same token The fleet carrier security level will increase with the system super power over time if no illegal activities take place reducing the amount of system authority patrols and as a side note if you have a pinned Engineering blueprint you will be able to use that blueprint while parked at a carrier just like in a regular starport and Also really importantly when an owner is docked at their carrier They will be able to transfer their cargo directly to the fleet carrier and just like that will have player storage facilities Your carrier has a total internal storage space of 25,000 units Which is vast some of that will be used up by additional services if you choose to add them But the rest can be completely devoted to commodity storage if you so desire If you're not parked at your carrier You can still issue orders to it via a new option in the right hand in cockpit menu That will take you to a carrier management screen meaning you won't have to chase it around the galaxy to make it do stuff The carriers will come with their own livery system Just like regular ships SRVs and fighters and so you can expect to see carrier specific paint jobs and Probably carrier sized ship kits at the very least purchasable for arcs on the frontier store I can't wait for those. I frankly want a spoiler that's bigger than a t10 Steven said at the end of the live stream that they were only scratching the surface of what carriers will bring to the game and that the In-game commander's handbook had been updated to accommodate the incoming super ships It's worth noting as some final thoughts that given the current state of the world and that frontier are all working from home As I speak these words we should be prepared that things like beta dates may possibly slip I also suspect there are things that frontier aren't telling us as yet because obviously they're gonna want us to have some Surprises and find out stuff for ourselves To date they've not mentioned for example What happens if a carrier is attacked or how that might play out in a player versus player situation What has happened to the support vessels that were shown initially with carriers last year I'm not convinced that the artwork is gone entirely yet, but no mention of them has been made today If it hasn't gone, how does it now fit in? Also this carrier shown in the dry dock on the stream looks completely different to what we've seen so far Is it a ship kit or something else? It's already apparent from what we've just been told that carriers are gonna be a significant game changer in many regards We now have player storage coming in mass transport of groups of players of up to 500 light years a player to player Economy a persistent player owned asset that earns money for the owner the transportation of huge quantities of commodities to a marketplace in the blink of an eye which will have ramifications for mining and trading and player minor faction influence at the very least as The plan stands we'll have our hands-on carriers in the first beta in just five days time I couldn't be more excited to see where these vast player owned ships take the game now and In the years to come and don't worry if you haven't got five billion credits to blow on a carrier in the beta There's plenty of things still to be tested and messed around with from trading to mining to BGS work So be sure to get your hands dirty and gather your thoughts and get your constructive feedback to frontier There is an official content reveal forum post that I've linked below where you can review the details of the announcement in their entirety and Put your questions to frontier Interesting times indeed. That's it for now. Thanks very much for watching We'll be back later this week with more videos until then oh seven 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