Pre Fleetcarrier Thoughts

After quite a few optimistic annoucements of "Fleet Carriers" (thank you for this great wording, CMDR Wotherspoon), now there was another one. This time with a level of detail that almost looks like they might really be implemented.

The annoucement was made last week "live on tape". If you want to see the complete one hour not-so-live stream, here it is.

Maybe a short introduction for people not yet playing Elite Dangerous. Within this game you have exactly one commander you are playing. You can have many space ships - but have to park a ship in a station to be able to switch to another ship, which obviously has to be parked in the same space station. If you are in an area far out from inhabited space, there are no stations - and therefore you can not change ships. Spacestations are stationary (hence the name), you can not move them anywhere else. Believe me on this one, I have rammed quite heavy spaceships into stations, they did not move a bit.

So here come Fleet Carriers now - they can be owned by players and are personal space-non-stations - They can offer most services Space stations have without being stationary.

With the annoucement youtube, reddit and the game forums at Frontier Development (FDEV) went crazy. I couldn't say it better than  our CMDR Bob Lowkey said it on our discord, so here is the quote:

Fleet carrier reveal there's so much salt on the stream already makes the Dead Sea seem like spring water.

And I would like to thank FDEV for that alone. All that whining and yelling on all those platforms by themselves provided an excellent entertainment value. Chapeau!

Most of those complaints seem to orbit around the idea, that people wish to play the game exactly like they did without the carriers, and that carriers don't change that playstyle now - or something like that. All in all logic is in short supply in most of the complaints. It almost seems like those players believe, they are forced to buy a carrier and use it all the time. I am pretty sure this is not the case, if you wish to continue playing like you did before, you should be able to do that.

I personally see those carriers as a massive increase in options how to play this sandbox game I like so much. To be honest I have so many ideas how I want to use this thing, that the hardest part will be deciding on what to try out first.

Sure, I am also not 100% in line with all the design decisions and they are not completely arranged around the play styles I enjoy, but I am able to accept, that this asset maybe has not been designed for my own personal preferences, but had to be a bit of a compromise to also appeal to other players.

So, what I want to do with these? A few examples:

They, for the first time, allow to play markets in Elite Dangerous. The ability to buy and sell goods and set prices on your carrier is total new gameplay. Galaxy-Tycoon style, being the boss on your space-flying farmers market. This is like a new game within the game by itself. I want to try this out - and taking into account how bad I am in trading sims, probably lose a fortune while doing so.

BGS support vessel is the next big thing: When our in game faction is at war, can I place this thing near one of the combat zones to provide refuel, repair and re-arm services to our combat ships? That'd be a great addition.

Will there even be respawn on the carrier in case of ship destruction occuring? I sure hope so, then this can also become the hooning base our community always wanted. So when doing racing events in narrow canyons on some planet, you can place a carrier in orbit to ensure respawn near by. All those wonderful canyon rich worlds outside the bubble can now turn into playgrounds of speed addicted low altitude flyers (yes, I am looking at you, CMDR Sanderling).

Exploring the galaxy 500ly a time: So I can jump my carrier somewhere and just have a light weight scout ship analyse the systems around it. If I find something interesting nearby, I can easily pick up the fitting ship to exploit that point of interest - and at some point jump the carrier on to the next center of exploration.

Ohh, and the most important part: FDEV said, the carriers are "indestructable" - I say: CHALLENGE ACCEPTED! I see hours of fun ahead of me trying to get this massive ship I have into the most dangerous places I can think of.

Please file all your further ongoing whining about the announced carriers directly here in the comments, where they will go mostly unread by the public. Thank you.

And for the time being, turn up your subwoofers and watch this fleetcarrier megajumping (yes, this is the technical term, don't ask)  into another starsystem: