I've taken my carrier all over the galaxy, supporting exploration expeditions. I just wish FDev had gave us some QoL improvements, like the ability to scoop fuel from gas giants, the ability to make multiple plots at once and a reduction in the time between jumps. And maybe a better method of transferring fuel lol.
I think the scooping would work but it would be VERY slow As to not abuse the method of gaining fuel. As for Multi plots I can see that working with some limitations. Like only 3 plots at best and a much longer cool down time between jumps.
Good Vid for those considering buying a fleetcarrier. I am also happy to have mine, which I use as a storage. One thing I was missing in your Vid is, that those modules also cost hundreds of Millions to install. You can spend easily over another Billion to install all modules. Just for the 3 Standard Modules (Fuel, Repairs and Ammunition) you spend already 185 Million.
Speaking of microeconomy, the best things to sell from the carrier are the commodities CMDRs need to unlock things. That is, stuff for engineers and technology traders. Some of that can only be gotten from missions or mining, others are kind of semi-rare and sold by only few stations within certain area of the Bubble. For example, if you get a stock of Power Converters and Power Transfer Buses, park your carrier somewhere near Mbooni and make sure your shop is visible on Inara, you will get customers looking to get those Salvation brand AX weapons.
I'll be right over. Not really, but if I do get back into the game, I'll definitely look for carriers selling the stuff. I absolutely hate anything resembling mining or farming or dumpster diving. I never have understood why I can't buy this stuff from the same material "trader" I sell it to.
Thanks for posting this. It’s perfect timing as I’m halfway to getting my FC and many of the questions you’ve answered here were ones I was trying to find answers for.
5:22 - You can (re-)install in all so-called _Fleet Carrier Administration_ systems, which there are many, many more of than those where you can buy FCs (more than 300).
My Fleet Carrier goes out on Exploration Expeditions 4 times a year. Last year, my 4th Exploration Expedition netted my fleet carrier 1.2 BILLION credits from the 50% of the 25% Fleet Carrier Tax that was from all the Exploration data turned in by everyone participating in the Event. This pretty much paid for the maintenance costs for this year. This doesn't even include the amount of credits I made while doing exploration, this is just the 50% of the 25% Fleet Carrier Tax that my fleet carrier made. Yes, Fleet Carriers can break even in just 4 weeks out of each year doing exploration. ISO Terrion Exploration Expedition #9 will be departing Meliae in mid February for a 1 week out, 4 weeks base camp, 1 week back trip of exploration. Oh, and my FC has all services EXCEPT the Black Market and they are always active 24/7 even when it's sitting in Meliae waiting for me to depart on the next expedition.
@@RicardosGaming Back before FDev stopped supporting Consoles on the live game, I had as many as 120 members of my squadron across all 3 platforms combined participating. Now that it's PC only on the live game, I tend to get 20-30 members of my squadron plus a dozen or so more from outside the squadron that have found out about my trips into the black through the Fleet Carrier Users Discord server, or other Discord servers that I advertise the events on. I also pick up about 3-5 people on each return trip who were already out in the black exploring and wanted to get a lift back to the bubble. You're welcome to come along on the next Exploration Expedition (#9). We'll be departing the Meliae system on Friday, Feb 16th no so sooner than 2000 UTC. Base Camp will be a previously unexplored system in the Outer Orion Spur region. ISO Terrion (my FC) will be start its return back to the bubble on Friday March 22 once again no sooner than 2000 UTC. I give myself a full week to jump the ISO Terrion to the Base Camp system and a full week to return, but even with the 90+ minute Fleet Carrier Jump Sequence bug last year, it usually takes me 3-4 days at most to get to the Base Camp system. 4 weeks plus what ever is left of the outbound travel week is plenty of time to explore as much of a region as you'd like. Oh, and my LAST Expedition of each year will go to a previously unexplored system in the Galactic Centre Region. As this is something that should be on every explorer's bucket list (visit Sag A*) I am making it a tradition to head to that region as the last expedition of each year.
Elite needs a mid sized home base ship (smaller than the carrier) with 3 landing pads {L,M ,S} for explorer players that they can own outright without the headache of upkeep.
i was subbed along time ago on a different account, i just started playing elite again after a a break for a few years. Glad to see you are still making videos for the game !
Love my carrier! I spent a lot of time grinding to buy it, more time filling its bank to the tune of just north of 25 billion running cargo missions out of Cubeo. Now I take it with me everywhere and normal gameplay funds it.
Yes, if you go exploring and pick up exobio occasionally the cost is insignificant. And it means you can bring along facing ship for when you find a planet inviting shenanigans.
@@timmurphy1250 when you move the carrier around like this, what is your primary way of making cash? Or do you have so much that the cost is insignificant and you don't need to make money anymore?
To surpass this one jump limit by using CATS. A small program simulating you doing jumps manually. You cant use ur computer meanwhile but it helps a lot anyway. Just run CATS and let the program do the work. I let jump my carrier during worktime.
Kinda wild that rather than paying us rent to operate a service from a suite on our ships we have to instead pay them to have a presence. Definitely the result of "balancing" a live service game rather than making a realistic economy. Makes about as much sense as getting the same bounty reward rather you turn it in for a super advanced, hyper engineered, multimillion credit space ship (that takes 5 minutes of concentrated weapons fire to bring down) or some random guy on a poorly lit planet outpost who goes down in 5 seconds.
Love mine, too. For those of you hesitant about the monthly upkeep....it's not nearly as bad as it sounds right off. If you decide to do exobiology it'll be that much easier. Like a lot of Cmdr's here I also use mine as a deep space exobiology research base. Do some forward scouting for a planet or Gas Giant with Tritium in its rings and stock your fuel supply between excursions (a tad tedious as Tritium mining is slow, but it's free Tritium, eh?). The tough part is choking up the near 6 bil you'll need to buy and outfit it with a few modules. Again, if you're making enough to finally buy that FC the weekly upkeep is chump change, man. It really is a huge convenience if you can afford it. Edit: by the way, Ricardo, I enjoy your vids. :)
My main complaint is the 200 limits on stored gear, really would have liked it to have only the ship tonnage as a limit. While I could simply stick in the ship store, for engineered kit that would be scrubbed and lost, just bought a carrier last night and was already at 172 slots of the 200 used :( I suppose I'll have to buy some ships and kit them out to reassign them as expensive containers *sigh* since thats the only workaround i can see.
AND if you get/use something called ED CoPilot, your FC captain and controller can talk to you, address you BY NAME, say your ship names and lots more plus hear radio traffic around your FC and other stations.. Game changer!
Dose anyone know if there is a Sell History for fleet carriers so the owner can see what has sold? I've started selling components, but it's hard to keep track of everything that's selling. Is there a good way to track what's selling? Thanks .
At what point do you get to choose what variant of fleet carrier your buying? It seems I don't get a choice I just have to part with my 5 billion credits which kinda makes me nervous because I don't know what I'm getting.
The variants, which are cosmetic looks only, not any difference in functionality, are purchased with Arx on the Frontier Store. Once a new variant look has been purchased, you can apply it and remove it at will in the Carrier cosmetics screen, the same place you can change engine or landing pad colours. All the carrier cosmetics are purchased with Arx. When you first buy a Carrier, it comes with in a standard variant, the one with the long pointed front nose (I can't remember the name of the variant in game). This is the same for every Carrier. Carrier cosmetics allow you to change the variant, the control tower voice, engine and landing pad numbers colours, and there is a large variety of paintjobs for them too. The best time to get any item from the Frontier store, is almost always on Black Friday, when they usually have significant discounts on most items (but not all), including Carrier cosmetics. There can also be times throughout the year when some discounts may be available on some items, for example like Easter or Thanksgiving.
Sadly, one of the biggest questions I've always had is a question that wasn't covered here: what are the differences between the different types of carriers? Is there any meaningful difference?
The thing that annoys me about my carrier is that I have to pay to refuel the ship I am flying but any AI craft that lands on it and presumably fuels up before takeoff doesn't . Why can't you receive say 100 credits each time one lands. This would help in some small way toward the upkeep. It would also be nice if you were recognised as the owner of the carrier when you approach for landing.
As others have stated here, the fleet carrier weekly costs is VERY easily offset with at most 10 to 20 minutes of trade. A single trade in a 764cargo cutter with credits to spare. Furthermore 1 ton of tritium at stations costs +/-50k per ton which is also VERY easily off set with ALL forms of credit income. My fleet carrier allows me to have multiple versions of mining/combat/exploration ships and modules all at my finger tips ANYWHERE in the galaxy which for me, removes the need to fit fuel scoops and shields(I sometimes use hull-tank miners) on mining ships making them alot more mining efficient. I also don't have to use said mining ships to get to the selling point which is time consuming in small jumps and risky in pirate attacks, scooping accidents and having to land with a damaged ship. The richest engineering material farms are many ly's out of the bubble for which the carrier has been a HUGE pleasure. Then jump to engineers to do up multiple ships at once without having to do the back and forth over distances. Or just mine to my hearts content for a entire week on end if I please with limpets, fuel, repairs and mass cargo storage a few moments away, then jump the carrier to go deliver and collect stored up billions. I maintain a 5000 ton tritium reserve above what the carrier has in the gas tank which allows me to jump with impunity. Owning a carrier has allowed me to jump to much further and richer mining spots, compete in ANY community goals, tharg combat and stockpile trading goods with everything I could possibly want to for-fill said activities at most but a single short jump away. Using a carrier is ALOT more time efficient for those who don't have too many hours to play games. Don't forget you can have 40 ships in your fleet carrier alone(and 40 at each station in the galaxy), never-mind 200 stored modules over and above not having to lose exploration data and combat bonds(if you have those modules). Buying the fleet carrier was the only real grind but added to the game-play for me. The day I !!completely!! stop playing the game is the only time I will ever give up my carrier.
As a solo player with well over 6.500 hour's invested in this game. The one thing that keep's me from getting one and exploring the cosmos outside the bubble. Is the dame upkeep.The upkeep is the one thing that keep's me from having one.Then there's the issue of there being stocked everywhere, waiting to be bought. Every single one that could be sold in stocked at almost every system and cause's one's device meaning pc or console to utilze more of their resource's to deal with all those carrier's being in the same place and doing nothing but waiting to be sold.
Agreed. I was looking forward to them getting added but the upkeep cost just makes them not worth getting in my opinion. It would have worked better if they were permanent but instanced so only you and your wing can use it, unless you pay for public listing. Automated air traffic control and maintenance for personal use then for public listing you need a crew to deal with the additional traffic. This would also de-clutter the navigation by getting rid of the ones you can't land on.
I mostly play solo and put off buying a carrier until Christmas. I was bored and thought why not. Gone out 3k from bubble and have already recouped the money I paid for it and have 4b credits in the carrier bank all through exobiology. I am by no means an expert at exo but it’s not difficult if a little hit and miss finding the bio sources. Only have univ cart, vista Genomics and rearm refuel repair installed. Weekly upkeep is 13m. It’ll take a while to get through that 4b and of course the carrier bank gets 12.5% of the exo stuff I hand in so it gets a wee top up every time I (and anyone else) dock. Try it and you can give it up without losing too many credits if you feel it’s not for you.
You missed out to tell us important details like how much cost the modules and their up keep. Does the carrier come with a full tank. what's the equipment limit to store and ships ( or just 16 ships )
I'm not sure I understand the big deal people make about the maintenance fee, that's like 1 or 2 Robigo runs per week to cover the costs.. Perhaps I'm missing something and I certainly wouldn't want to take away reasons for people to complain about ED lol, but it seems like a small fee considering what you're getting. Not to mention, if you have the 5b to purchase the damn thing, then 25m should be pocket change.
I've had a fleet carrier since their release day 1. 35 million a week to run it as l have alot of services running in it. Depending on what I'm doing some or most will be suspended reducing costs. It's a vital part of a cmdrs retinue. 200 modules storage. 25000 tons of storage (12000 after my services fitted) All my ships on it. Can go anywhere l please. For PP and bgs activities its vital. And new changes coming might mean it's selling capabilities are enhanced. It cost 8 billion to setup. But us old timers have borann billions so it's not an issue. I can make half a billion a week without a sweat.
Yeah. Played for a long time since the beginning of Horizons. It was fun but FD grind is just too time consuming. If Elite was my "only" game or hobby then yeah an FC would be a good idea. However, having most of the ships, a few billion, most engineers is fun enough.
Its really not bad at all if you have a group to play with, but solo its a griiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiind. Id love to play some time, I could get you "up to speed" in like a week or 2 :) I was able to make 10 bil cred during the last gold rush and buy my FC. Would love to have you aboard CMDR ~o7
I want a fleet carrier specificly for for Vista Genomics. I'm elite in trading, well nearly Elite III for all the trading I'm doing to make enough to buy a fleet carrier, and I'm elite in exploration. I want my own place to sell exobiology data to get to elite in exobiology.
I always try to carry a little tritium with me as a thank you in case I need to use their services. I'm usually running around doing the EXO biology. I've done a little xeno combat as well. I have enough money to buy any ship in the game and I have quite a few ships but I still can't afford a fleet carrier.
@@RicardosGaming I was on last night and they are becoming prolific throughout almost every populated star system 🤣 sometimes I get to a new system and do a scan and it takes forever because I keep saying a bunch of things from carriers. I still want one though eventually. I went ahead and bought a type 10 and another python 2 that wasn't pre-built last night. I actually didn't like the pre-built, not to mention if you take your modules off they're destroyed. Now I have to grind for the engineering on this one and rebuild it the way I want it. I don't know what they were thinking when they rebuilt this ship.
Carrier upkeep cost are trivial these days. A carrier with only the refuel/rearm/repair installed, has a weekly upkeep of 9.5 million. I can get that in one single high intensity on-foot conflict zone, with credits to spare. Doing 3-4 of those, and I have enough credits to pay for a fully equipped Carrier, plus they also get me my weekly 400 Arx. That's actually why I started doing them in the first place, for the Arx, paying for my carrier upkeep is just a bonus. 🙂
I waited about a year until Odyssey seemed properly done and then farmed because... well, might as well. The Thargoid war interests me not a whit. So I haven't logged in for over a year, much though I've always loved the game for the experience of just flying spaceships around. Anyone remember the "lockdown mining boom"? That was me - I knew that when carriers came they'd cost a fortune and require spanking weekly upkeep. So I mined for billions. I budgeted for about 5 years of not having to play without losing the thing and that's probably down to 3 years and change by now. The 2024 notes seem promising and at least the game won't be hived off into server tickdown, but I'm cautious. Always the way with FDEV, isn't it? Sadly.
I plan on it. I want at least 4 billion in cushion money for the upkeep. I got around 8 billion so far. Out here in the black I am pulling more money in discovering organic life than exploration data. When I get back I should have 10 or so billion.
I really don't understand people complaining about the weekly upkeep. It isn't a Python just sitting in a hangar. There's at least 100 NPCs walking around in this video. Don't they deserve to get paid? Also, 25 mil per week is trivial. A few bounties, a few cargo runs, pop a few asteroids, done. By the time you've saved billions to buy the thing you have no reason to complain about a few million. I haven't even played in two years and I still have enough in the bank I could pay the upkeep for three months if I had a carrier. That's after spending something like a billion on my partially engineered Cutter. One or two runs in my Cutter would pay for a week's upkeep. I could spend the rest of my time getting drunk in the bar. But my question is, what happens when you log out? If I park a carrier in a system to buy from miners, do I have to sit here and wait until they all get off my ship before I log out? Or does my carrier sit there earning me money while I sleep.
Pretty annoying that your fleet carrier just gets… sold. Would be nice if it went derelict at worst and you just had to have it repaired when you logged back on.
@@AndrzejWojtyniak I mean, I do mostly exploration so it likely couldn’t benefit me as my little dbx can do 71ly and that takes less than a minute. Multiply that by eight and I’ve gone farther than 500 in less time. That and the upkeep doesn’t seem all that worth it. If it was a one time investment then maybe I would.
I took a year long break and didn’t even bother to suspend my FC’s services beforehand. When I got back, it still had over half of the budget I gave it (and it was parked in a remote system 500 ly outside the bubble, so doubt I made any money from refueling). They’re honestly not that expensive to maintain and having a mobile “home station” is super worth it.
I wished we could drive iur fleet carriers around a system like aregukar ship. Also for those of is eho eant to take a long break from gane we should be abke to pause the whole carrier and have no upkeep fees. What if your ill in real life, have to go on a mil deployment, etc... there is no way to pause the carrier as a whole. I went a year without playing game and my carrier ate a billion credits for doing nothing. What a rip.
@@maxvitionunityBack when community goals happened most weeks, all you had to do was wait for a trade based community goal that made a station have unlimited demand for a particular commodity at a very high price. You were able to pull in credits super fast. These days, the best way would probably be to use “billionaire’s boulevard” to do exobiology. Orthrus hunting is also a great way to pull in money super fast, but that requires a rather expensive ship to do, not to mention a fair bit of know how.
Some of us were crying out for bases for years. The usual crowd told us that was impossible, would never happen, could never happen etc. etc. Then Frontier surprised us all with Carriers - and of course they've been a fantastic success. Now I'm waiting for Frontier to have another attack of vision-cum-common-sense and give us player trading. By which I mean not the scrawny, limited version we have now but full trading, of everything. ("Nooooooo it's impossible and in any case we'll all die of cancer if that happens!")
The bar is only used for buying and selling on foot materials. Even if you could install it, you don’t have any of those materials to sell or any need to buy them. It does suck that they abandoned console.
That's really not the focus as one should already have "serious money" by that point. You don't buy a carrier to make money. It's all about the convenience factor.
i doubt ill ever have one, its 5 billion to get im only at 1 billion which has been a huge grind all ready, i heard i can lose the fleet carrier so i can just lose 5 billion! the fleet carrier runs on special fuel which a new thing to grind, its like buying a mobile home station, you cant fly it, it will only teleport to specific areas and thats if you can find a spot to put it, other players carriers take up the spaces wether your in solo or public.
I've just got back into ED and I've been making 1 billion every two days with my exobiology krait phantom. I set a plot 1000ly out from the bubble to find a cluster of unexplored systems and bookmark each one I complete on the system map to avoid repeating. You get 100 mill from a first footfall/stratum scans, also I installed a 3rd party app called the Elite Dangerous Exploration Buddy, its amazingly helpful! Once you get the hang of it you will make billions, I'm up to 7billion so in a few days ill get my fleet carrier with a nice credit buffer.
Doooood, you make it sound like 25M/week is some astronomical amount. You should be able to make at least that in an hour, just hauling crud. ;) Good video though!
I could easily buy one of these things, I have over 6 trillion in the space bank, but if it doesn't make me money, and only costs me money, why the hell would I buy this? I already have a full-time job, I don't need another one in a game.
Fleet carriers seem great but 45min to jump 500ly and 25mil a week, no thankyou! Frontier gives you something nice but then delight in punishing you, that's frontiers mantra. No wonder they have issues. Just us hard core players left in the game then.
16 minutes to jump and the base cost is 5 million. Even if you took all the modules which would run you around the 30 million mark a week.........its pathetically easy to make that money up in a few minutes. Don't get me wrong but you seem butt-hurt at frontier and would like to spread misinformation.
Years later, they are still awful imo, I played this for 1800h and enjoyed it, got burnt out and havent played it for over a year. Recently got back into it and upon seeing that I have a FC at -200 000M in debt I remembered why I stopped playing this game. This insane grind for a thing that should make elite easier but instead it is nothing but a huge paperweight that I constantly need to feed money and manually have to refuel it since it's crew is useless, can't even have npc trading for a passive income so you need to rely on the dwindling playerbase. I did my research on all about carriers before I grinded and yet this grind offended me so much it singlehandedly killed my love for this game that I liked and played more than any other game. Didn't even help now after I sold it.
Once you're a billionaire, twenty-seven million a week (my upkeep costs) is one or two hauls-worth of gold, silver, or whatever to acquire. I can get a weeks worth of upkeep money in under ten minutes. No big deal.
25 million a week is not that expensive?? Like 2 hours of trading yesterday netted me almost 300 million? I'm set for the next 3 months because of 2 hours 😂
Well, no thanks, Fontier. I have a huge, awesome fleet carrier in No Mans Sky that i got for free with 1 day of effort, and it costs me nothing weekly. In fact, it actually makes me tons of money. In Elite, you have to horribly grind for 3 years and then become a slave to the thing. Frontier has no clue what players really want. Hello, games do. Save yourselves and switch.
@@RicardosGaming Oh absolutely and continue to jump in when I can. Real life is imposing it's will and I am not happy but, as the saying goes, that is life, lmao.
Fleet Carriers: the redundant credit sink that was supposed to be difficult to get but turned out everyone can get it given they are willing to put in the effort resulting in carriers dotting the system map in abundance to the point that they are effectively getting in the way... EVERYWHERE! and you can't even directly fly it... it's just a stagnant annoyance that serves more as an unimpressive bragging right for those who feel like they do need to compensate for something. i was and still is very disappointed about the carriers... boring and unimpressive.
Fleet carriers - the lampost on the corner of the Elite Dangerous Galaxy ....
I've taken my carrier all over the galaxy, supporting exploration expeditions. I just wish FDev had gave us some QoL improvements, like the ability to scoop fuel from gas giants, the ability to make multiple plots at once and a reduction in the time between jumps. And maybe a better method of transferring fuel lol.
You could scoop on gas giants, in the precedent versions
just started playing did they add any of that?
I think the scooping would work but it would be VERY slow As to not abuse the method of gaining fuel.
As for Multi plots I can see that working with some limitations. Like only 3 plots at best and a much longer cool down time between jumps.
As far as I know Fdev have had plans for fuel scooping from gas giants, and even entering their upper atmosphere, for the past 10 years.
Good Vid for those considering buying a fleetcarrier. I am also happy to have mine, which I use as a storage. One thing I was missing in your Vid is, that those modules also cost hundreds of Millions to install. You can spend easily over another Billion to install all modules. Just for the 3 Standard Modules (Fuel, Repairs and Ammunition) you spend already 185 Million.
Speaking of microeconomy, the best things to sell from the carrier are the commodities CMDRs need to unlock things. That is, stuff for engineers and technology traders. Some of that can only be gotten from missions or mining, others are kind of semi-rare and sold by only few stations within certain area of the Bubble. For example, if you get a stock of Power Converters and Power Transfer Buses, park your carrier somewhere near Mbooni and make sure your shop is visible on Inara, you will get customers looking to get those Salvation brand AX weapons.
I'll be right over. Not really, but if I do get back into the game, I'll definitely look for carriers selling the stuff. I absolutely hate anything resembling mining or farming or dumpster diving. I never have understood why I can't buy this stuff from the same material "trader" I sell it to.
Seriously hoping the implement a mini carrier at some point. The assets have already been made so not too much of a stretch
Thanks for posting this. It’s perfect timing as I’m halfway to getting my FC and many of the questions you’ve answered here were ones I was trying to find answers for.
Fab - hopefully it got a 👍
@@RicardosGaming Of course, and a subscription.
@@TwoLeftThumbs wooooooooo
5:22 - You can (re-)install in all so-called _Fleet Carrier Administration_ systems, which there are many, many more of than those where you can buy FCs (more than 300).
My Fleet Carrier goes out on Exploration Expeditions 4 times a year. Last year, my 4th Exploration Expedition netted my fleet carrier 1.2 BILLION credits from the 50% of the 25% Fleet Carrier Tax that was from all the Exploration data turned in by everyone participating in the Event. This pretty much paid for the maintenance costs for this year. This doesn't even include the amount of credits I made while doing exploration, this is just the 50% of the 25% Fleet Carrier Tax that my fleet carrier made. Yes, Fleet Carriers can break even in just 4 weeks out of each year doing exploration. ISO Terrion Exploration Expedition #9 will be departing Meliae in mid February for a 1 week out, 4 weeks base camp, 1 week back trip of exploration. Oh, and my FC has all services EXCEPT the Black Market and they are always active 24/7 even when it's sitting in Meliae waiting for me to depart on the next expedition.
fantastic money making there - getting it to work for you!
@@RicardosGaming Back before FDev stopped supporting Consoles on the live game, I had as many as 120 members of my squadron across all 3 platforms combined participating. Now that it's PC only on the live game, I tend to get 20-30 members of my squadron plus a dozen or so more from outside the squadron that have found out about my trips into the black through the Fleet Carrier Users Discord server, or other Discord servers that I advertise the events on. I also pick up about 3-5 people on each return trip who were already out in the black exploring and wanted to get a lift back to the bubble. You're welcome to come along on the next Exploration Expedition (#9). We'll be departing the Meliae system on Friday, Feb 16th no so sooner than 2000 UTC. Base Camp will be a previously unexplored system in the Outer Orion Spur region. ISO Terrion (my FC) will be start its return back to the bubble on Friday March 22 once again no sooner than 2000 UTC. I give myself a full week to jump the ISO Terrion to the Base Camp system and a full week to return, but even with the 90+ minute Fleet Carrier Jump Sequence bug last year, it usually takes me 3-4 days at most to get to the Base Camp system. 4 weeks plus what ever is left of the outbound travel week is plenty of time to explore as much of a region as you'd like. Oh, and my LAST Expedition of each year will go to a previously unexplored system in the Galactic Centre Region. As this is something that should be on every explorer's bucket list (visit Sag A*) I am making it a tradition to head to that region as the last expedition of each year.
Wait... you can run a black market on a carrier?
i cant wait to do these things glad the game is still alive for my new 4090 VR build
Elite needs a mid sized home base ship (smaller than the carrier) with 3 landing pads {L,M ,S} for explorer players that they can own outright without the headache of upkeep.
@@dagoelius I agree
I can make 1.5 billion in a week on exobiology. the cost of the carrier isn't a problem. I love the flexibility a carrier offers
I can make 1.5 billion from Exobiology in 1 day :)
i was subbed along time ago on a different account, i just started playing elite again after a a break for a few years. Glad to see you are still making videos for the game !
cheers dude!
Love my carrier! I spent a lot of time grinding to buy it, more time filling its bank to the tune of just north of 25 billion running cargo missions out of Cubeo. Now I take it with me everywhere and normal gameplay funds it.
I cannot do without mine
Yes, if you go exploring and pick up exobio occasionally the cost is insignificant. And it means you can bring along facing ship for when you find a planet inviting shenanigans.
Mines currently about half way to Colonia, will be it's third time there. I think I'll stop there a while and do some exploring.
Half way to Colonia and I'm around 70million in data
@@timmurphy1250 when you move the carrier around like this, what is your primary way of making cash? Or do you have so much that the cost is insignificant and you don't need to make money anymore?
would not be without mine love it got plenty of creds to keep it running for many years o7 chap great vid
Cheers man! I have several billion myself in the bank for about 10 years
To surpass this one jump limit by using CATS. A small program simulating you doing jumps manually. You cant use ur computer meanwhile but it helps a lot anyway. Just run CATS and let the program do the work. I let jump my carrier during worktime.
excellent point
Still not fully sold on a carrier for myself. I often count my weekly game time in minutes rather than hours, so credits accumulate slowly
what about tritium cost? at max capacity and max jump how many jumps can the carrier make before refueling?
Nice one Ricardo. I take my FC everywhere. Out in Colonia atm
thats a long old poke
@@RicardosGaming Takes a few day's. I explore a little along the way. Need about 11k tonnes of tritium for a round trip 😎👍
yeah mine are normally around the Thargoid areas@@CmdrDjBurp-dr5uy
Kinda wild that rather than paying us rent to operate a service from a suite on our ships we have to instead pay them to have a presence. Definitely the result of "balancing" a live service game rather than making a realistic economy. Makes about as much sense as getting the same bounty reward rather you turn it in for a super advanced, hyper engineered, multimillion credit space ship (that takes 5 minutes of concentrated weapons fire to bring down) or some random guy on a poorly lit planet outpost who goes down in 5 seconds.
Love mine, too. For those of you hesitant about the monthly upkeep....it's not nearly as bad as it sounds right off. If you decide to do exobiology it'll be that much easier. Like a lot of Cmdr's here I also use mine as a deep space exobiology research base. Do some forward scouting for a planet or Gas Giant with Tritium in its rings and stock your fuel supply between excursions (a tad tedious as Tritium mining is slow, but it's free Tritium, eh?). The tough part is choking up the near 6 bil you'll need to buy and outfit it with a few modules. Again, if you're making enough to finally buy that FC the weekly upkeep is chump change, man. It really is a huge convenience if you can afford it.
Edit: by the way, Ricardo, I enjoy your vids. :)
My main complaint is the 200 limits on stored gear, really would have liked it to have only the ship tonnage as a limit. While I could simply stick in the ship store, for engineered kit that would be scrubbed and lost, just bought a carrier last night and was already at 172 slots of the 200 used :( I suppose I'll have to buy some ships and kit them out to reassign them as expensive containers *sigh* since thats the only workaround i can see.
Totally agree
If want to slowly break even with an FC. You can support remote mining operations and put a buy order on mined ore.
Excellent point
AND if you get/use something called ED CoPilot, your FC captain and controller can talk to you, address you BY NAME, say your ship names and lots more plus hear radio traffic around your FC and other stations.. Game changer!
Will give it a go
Is there a way to make it squadron-related somehow? A common storage for the guildies would be a big W in consideration of buying it.
"Some NPC pirate got a little fruity" LOL! That got a good chuckle out of me just the way you said it.
ah exactly - got have a laugh with these things!
@@RicardosGaming 100% 😁o7
Great vid thx
Nice summary. Cheers... Just got back into the game a few days ago.
and will you be buying a carrier??
Dose anyone know if there is a Sell History for fleet carriers so the owner can see what has sold? I've started selling components, but it's hard to keep track of everything that's selling. Is there a good way to track what's selling? Thanks .
Not so far
At what point do you get to choose what variant of fleet carrier your buying? It seems I don't get a choice I just have to part with my 5 billion credits which kinda makes me nervous because I don't know what I'm getting.
The variants, which are cosmetic looks only, not any difference in functionality, are purchased with Arx on the Frontier Store. Once a new variant look has been purchased, you can apply it and remove it at will in the Carrier cosmetics screen, the same place you can change engine or landing pad colours. All the carrier cosmetics are purchased with Arx.
When you first buy a Carrier, it comes with in a standard variant, the one with the long pointed front nose (I can't remember the name of the variant in game). This is the same for every Carrier. Carrier cosmetics allow you to change the variant, the control tower voice, engine and landing pad numbers colours, and there is a large variety of paintjobs for them too.
The best time to get any item from the Frontier store, is almost always on Black Friday, when they usually have significant discounts on most items (but not all), including Carrier cosmetics. There can also be times throughout the year when some discounts may be available on some items, for example like Easter or Thanksgiving.
Everyone gets the standard "Drake" version. You can then customize the appearance with ARXs if you wish.
Sadly, one of the biggest questions I've always had is a question that wasn't covered here: what are the differences between the different types of carriers? Is there any meaningful difference?
At the moment it's all cosmetic.... check out next Mondays video
great video, just wana find out how to make carrier self-sustaining if it is possible at all
Gonna try and get one for mining load carrier up then go sell and obviously have it as a mobile base
The thing that annoys me about my carrier is that I have to pay to refuel the ship I am flying but any AI craft that lands on it and presumably fuels up before takeoff doesn't . Why can't you receive say 100 credits each time one lands. This would help in some small way toward the upkeep. It would also be nice if you were recognised as the owner of the carrier when you approach for landing.
Very good point
As others have stated here, the fleet carrier weekly costs is VERY easily offset with at most 10 to 20 minutes of trade.
A single trade in a 764cargo cutter with credits to spare.
Furthermore 1 ton of tritium at stations costs +/-50k per ton which is also VERY easily off set with ALL forms of credit income.
My fleet carrier allows me to have multiple versions of mining/combat/exploration ships and modules all at my finger tips ANYWHERE in the galaxy which for me, removes the need to fit fuel scoops and shields(I sometimes use hull-tank miners) on mining ships making them alot more mining efficient. I also don't have to use said mining ships to get to the selling point which is time consuming in small jumps and risky in pirate attacks, scooping accidents and having to land with a damaged ship.
The richest engineering material farms are many ly's out of the bubble for which the carrier has been a HUGE pleasure. Then jump to engineers to do up multiple ships at once without having to do the back and forth over distances.
Or just mine to my hearts content for a entire week on end if I please with limpets, fuel, repairs and mass cargo storage a few moments away, then jump the carrier to go deliver and collect stored up billions.
I maintain a 5000 ton tritium reserve above what the carrier has in the gas tank which allows me to jump with impunity.
Owning a carrier has allowed me to jump to much further and richer mining spots, compete in ANY community goals, tharg combat and stockpile trading goods with everything I could possibly want to for-fill said activities at most but a single short jump away.
Using a carrier is ALOT more time efficient for those who don't have too many hours to play games.
Don't forget you can have 40 ships in your fleet carrier alone(and 40 at each station in the galaxy), never-mind 200 stored modules over and above not having to lose exploration data and combat bonds(if you have those modules).
Buying the fleet carrier was the only real grind but added to the game-play for me.
The day I !!completely!! stop playing the game is the only time I will ever give up my carrier.
Most definitely
Well put my fellow Cmdr.
As you say. Good spot for trade and the cost is irrelevant.
As a solo player with well over 6.500 hour's invested in this game. The one thing that keep's me from getting one and exploring the cosmos outside the bubble. Is the dame upkeep.The upkeep is the one thing that keep's me from having one.Then there's the issue of there being stocked everywhere, waiting to be bought. Every single one that could be sold in stocked at almost every system and cause's one's device meaning pc or console to utilze more of their resource's to deal with all those carrier's being in the same place and doing nothing but waiting to be sold.
Agreed. I was looking forward to them getting added but the upkeep cost just makes them not worth getting in my opinion.
It would have worked better if they were permanent but instanced so only you and your wing can use it, unless you pay for public listing. Automated air traffic control and maintenance for personal use then for public listing you need a crew to deal with the additional traffic. This would also de-clutter the navigation by getting rid of the ones you can't land on.
I mostly play solo and put off buying a carrier until Christmas. I was bored and thought why not. Gone out 3k from bubble and have already recouped the money I paid for it and have 4b credits in the carrier bank all through exobiology. I am by no means an expert at exo but it’s not difficult if a little hit and miss finding the bio sources. Only have univ cart, vista Genomics and rearm refuel repair installed. Weekly upkeep is 13m. It’ll take a while to get through that 4b and of course the carrier bank gets 12.5% of the exo stuff I hand in so it gets a wee top up every time I (and anyone else) dock. Try it and you can give it up without losing too many credits if you feel it’s not for you.
You missed out to tell us important details like how much cost the modules and their up keep. Does the carrier come with a full tank. what's the equipment limit to store and ships ( or just 16 ships )
This a series mind u
Quick question. I only play in Solo, but could other Cmdrs access my FC?
Yea
Not only that, they are cross platform as well, so accessible by those playing on PC, PS and Xbox
Thanks to Cocijo's attack on sol i am now in the market for a fleet carrier!
I am saving my money for system expansion
I'm not sure I understand the big deal people make about the maintenance fee, that's like 1 or 2 Robigo runs per week to cover the costs.. Perhaps I'm missing something and I certainly wouldn't want to take away reasons for people to complain about ED lol, but it seems like a small fee considering what you're getting. Not to mention, if you have the 5b to purchase the damn thing, then 25m should be pocket change.
I've had a fleet carrier since their release day 1.
35 million a week to run it as l have alot of services running in it.
Depending on what I'm doing some or most will be suspended reducing costs.
It's a vital part of a cmdrs retinue.
200 modules storage.
25000 tons of storage (12000 after my services fitted)
All my ships on it.
Can go anywhere l please.
For PP and bgs activities its vital.
And new changes coming might mean it's selling capabilities are enhanced.
It cost 8 billion to setup.
But us old timers have borann billions so it's not an issue. I can make half a billion a week without a sweat.
Yeah. Played for a long time since the beginning of Horizons. It was fun but FD grind is just too time consuming. If Elite was my "only" game or hobby then yeah an FC would be a good idea. However, having most of the ships, a few billion, most engineers is fun enough.
Its really not bad at all if you have a group to play with, but solo its a griiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiind.
Id love to play some time, I could get you "up to speed" in like a week or 2 :)
I was able to make 10 bil cred during the last gold rush and buy my FC.
Would love to have you aboard CMDR ~o7
Sunday night, CG are over days ago... 1 hour jump time.
I want a fleet carrier specificly for for Vista Genomics. I'm elite in trading, well nearly Elite III for all the trading I'm doing to make enough to buy a fleet carrier, and I'm elite in exploration. I want my own place to sell exobiology data to get to elite in exobiology.
I always try to carry a little tritium with me as a thank you in case I need to use their services. I'm usually running around doing the EXO biology. I've done a little xeno combat as well. I have enough money to buy any ship in the game and I have quite a few ships but I still can't afford a fleet carrier.
They are an investment for sure, though with current revenue generation this is achievable in a few sessions
@@RicardosGaming I was on last night and they are becoming prolific throughout almost every populated star system 🤣 sometimes I get to a new system and do a scan and it takes forever because I keep saying a bunch of things from carriers. I still want one though eventually. I went ahead and bought a type 10 and another python 2 that wasn't pre-built last night. I actually didn't like the pre-built, not to mention if you take your modules off they're destroyed. Now I have to grind for the engineering on this one and rebuild it the way I want it. I don't know what they were thinking when they rebuilt this ship.
Carrier upkeep cost are trivial these days. A carrier with only the refuel/rearm/repair installed, has a weekly upkeep of 9.5 million. I can get that in one single high intensity on-foot conflict zone, with credits to spare. Doing 3-4 of those, and I have enough credits to pay for a fully equipped Carrier, plus they also get me my weekly 400 Arx. That's actually why I started doing them in the first place, for the Arx, paying for my carrier upkeep is just a bonus. 🙂
I waited about a year until Odyssey seemed properly done and then farmed because... well, might as well. The Thargoid war interests me not a whit. So I haven't logged in for over a year, much though I've always loved the game for the experience of just flying spaceships around. Anyone remember the "lockdown mining boom"? That was me - I knew that when carriers came they'd cost a fortune and require spanking weekly upkeep. So I mined for billions. I budgeted for about 5 years of not having to play without losing the thing and that's probably down to 3 years and change by now. The 2024 notes seem promising and at least the game won't be hived off into server tickdown, but I'm cautious. Always the way with FDEV, isn't it? Sadly.
It's not that bad. I've earned enough in 2 months with my carrier to upkeep it for the next 8 real life years if I had every service installed LOL
Akin to lamp posts... LOL! Well, I never got one. Not for the cost to buy, but the upkeep.
It is a big commitment and more like a lease than a purchase
I want to buy one and have the credits for it. i want to be out in the black with my Carrier but not too far away to miss out on Bubble drama
Go on live a little…
I plan on it. I want at least 4 billion in cushion money for the upkeep. I got around 8 billion so far. Out here in the black I am pulling more money in discovering organic life than exploration data. When I get back I should have 10 or so billion.
Love my FC... ( I'm a miner )😊
I really don't understand people complaining about the weekly upkeep. It isn't a Python just sitting in a hangar. There's at least 100 NPCs walking around in this video. Don't they deserve to get paid? Also, 25 mil per week is trivial. A few bounties, a few cargo runs, pop a few asteroids, done. By the time you've saved billions to buy the thing you have no reason to complain about a few million. I haven't even played in two years and I still have enough in the bank I could pay the upkeep for three months if I had a carrier. That's after spending something like a billion on my partially engineered Cutter. One or two runs in my Cutter would pay for a week's upkeep. I could spend the rest of my time getting drunk in the bar.
But my question is, what happens when you log out? If I park a carrier in a system to buy from miners, do I have to sit here and wait until they all get off my ship before I log out? Or does my carrier sit there earning me money while I sleep.
I love my FC too kuch and i got over 130 billion so i am not worried about keeping my fleet carrier alive
That is a good effort
Pretty annoying that your fleet carrier just gets… sold. Would be nice if it went derelict at worst and you just had to have it repaired when you logged back on.
same.
I always thought they could jump 2k light years…guess its not worth getting..
It`s the end game progression. Writing that, you`re saying that end game is not worth reaching.
@@AndrzejWojtyniak I mean, I do mostly exploration so it likely couldn’t benefit me as my little dbx can do 71ly and that takes less than a minute. Multiply that by eight and I’ve gone farther than 500 in less time. That and the upkeep doesn’t seem all that worth it. If it was a one time investment then maybe I would.
1 simple fact you need to know about FC : they kill your credit balance even when offline.
I made about 10 bil. It`s upkeep for a couple of years.
I took a year long break and didn’t even bother to suspend my FC’s services beforehand. When I got back, it still had over half of the budget I gave it (and it was parked in a remote system 500 ly outside the bubble, so doubt I made any money from refueling). They’re honestly not that expensive to maintain and having a mobile “home station” is super worth it.
I wished we could drive iur fleet carriers around a system like aregukar ship. Also for those of is eho eant to take a long break from gane we should be abke to pause the whole carrier and have no upkeep fees. What if your ill in real life, have to go on a mil deployment, etc... there is no way to pause the carrier as a whole. I went a year without playing game and my carrier ate a billion credits for doing nothing. What a rip.
you are not the first to suggest this
A mini carrier whould be nice for 4 to 5 peoples.
Still one Question, how the hell did you make that enough money to get it...
Community goals
@@RicardosGaming and how do you get it? i meant what kind, your or the game
@@maxvitionunityBack when community goals happened most weeks, all you had to do was wait for a trade based community goal that made a station have unlimited demand for a particular commodity at a very high price. You were able to pull in credits super fast.
These days, the best way would probably be to use “billionaire’s boulevard” to do exobiology. Orthrus hunting is also a great way to pull in money super fast, but that requires a rather expensive ship to do, not to mention a fair bit of know how.
Some of us were crying out for bases for years. The usual crowd told us that was impossible, would never happen, could never happen etc. etc. Then Frontier surprised us all with Carriers - and of course they've been a fantastic success.
Now I'm waiting for Frontier to have another attack of vision-cum-common-sense and give us player trading. By which I mean not the scrawny, limited version we have now but full trading, of everything. ("Nooooooo it's impossible and in any case we'll all die of cancer if that happens!")
So many things I cannot do on console.
Even if I CANT USE the bar, it’d be nice to install for PC players to use.
The bar is only used for buying and selling on foot materials. Even if you could install it, you don’t have any of those materials to sell or any need to buy them. It does suck that they abandoned console.
@@caltheuntitled8021 oh i get it, because i don’t have access to the mats, wouldn’t be able to set them to sell them.
Makes sense.
Due players really own their fleet carriers?
Did I really spell that "due"? lol
Do the carriers have the same problem as other ships with navigation
I felt like I was robbing SS Muh Dik this morning by making 1.3 million off 7 tons of gold I bought for 35k 😂
How can you make serious money with one?
That's really not the focus as one should already have "serious money" by that point. You don't buy a carrier to make money. It's all about the convenience factor.
buying and selling commodities either for on foot engineering or running rares
Go park it near a gas giant and fill it with platinum
i doubt ill ever have one, its 5 billion to get im only at 1 billion which has been a huge grind all ready, i heard i can lose the fleet carrier so i can just lose 5 billion! the fleet carrier runs on special fuel which a new thing to grind, its like buying a mobile home station, you cant fly it, it will only teleport to specific areas and thats if you can find a spot to put it, other players carriers take up the spaces wether your in solo or public.
I've just got back into ED and I've been making 1 billion every two days with my exobiology krait phantom. I set a plot 1000ly out from the bubble to find a cluster of unexplored systems and bookmark each one I complete on the system map to avoid repeating. You get 100 mill from a first footfall/stratum scans, also I installed a 3rd party app called the Elite Dangerous Exploration Buddy, its amazingly helpful!
Once you get the hang of it you will make billions, I'm up to 7billion so in a few days ill get my fleet carrier with a nice credit buffer.
Just do it
@@paoemantega8793 lol
I'm not saying 25m a week is cheap, but I honestly thought it would be more than that.
Yeah well plus tritium, if you jump it
Doooood, you make it sound like 25M/week is some astronomical amount. You should be able to make at least that in an hour, just hauling crud. ;)
Good video though!
It’s a lot to some people … not me … but some
Or almost twice that in less than 10 minutes of Orthrus hunting
I could easily buy one of these things, I have over 6 trillion in the space bank, but if it doesn't make me money, and only costs me money, why the hell would I buy this? I already have a full-time job, I don't need another one in a game.
Convenience I suppose
@@RicardosGaming I get that, but the upkeep completely eliminates the convenience factor for me.
@@IsaacA192 I use mine a lot… bouncing ships everywhere
35 million per week with all services.
everything but where to purchase it...
Last time i checked, the bartender is buggy. Giving away my mats for free 😢
not had that issue - is it logged??
Perhaps he / she is nipping under the table ?
Free you say. Are you anywhere near Sagi A?
Its like owning a yacht, you pay for the convenience
Good perspective
Fleet carriers seem great but 45min to jump 500ly and 25mil a week, no thankyou! Frontier gives you something nice but then delight in punishing you, that's frontiers mantra. No wonder they have issues. Just us hard core players left in the game then.
16 minutes to jump and the base cost is 5 million.
Even if you took all the modules which would run you around the 30 million mark a week.........its pathetically easy to make that money up in a few minutes.
Don't get me wrong but you seem butt-hurt at frontier and would like to spread misinformation.
The upkeep is nothing, it can be made in a day. Hell, years worth of upkeep can be made in a day or a few.
Well i have 10yr worth of upkeep in my FC bank. Dunno why you think that way.
You jump 500ly every 20 minutes. 1500ly in an hour at peak efficiency.
lol so popular the games pretty empty
Years later, they are still awful imo, I played this for 1800h and enjoyed it, got burnt out and havent played it for over a year. Recently got back into it and upon seeing that I have a FC at -200 000M in debt I remembered why I stopped playing this game.
This insane grind for a thing that should make elite easier but instead it is nothing but a huge paperweight that I constantly need to feed money and manually have to refuel it since it's crew is useless, can't even have npc trading for a passive income so you need to rely on the dwindling playerbase. I did my research on all about carriers before I grinded and yet this grind offended me so much it singlehandedly killed my love for this game that I liked and played more than any other game.
Didn't even help now after I sold it.
dont think ill ever make the 5bill hahaha
A good community goal will sort that out
Once you're a billionaire, twenty-seven million a week (my upkeep costs) is one or two hauls-worth of gold, silver, or whatever to acquire. I can get a weeks worth of upkeep money in under ten minutes. No big deal.
Mr Money Bags :) - granted established players can laugh at the weekly cost
@@RicardosGaming LOL
I'm a wee mite at 3 billion in the bank, but still.
billion is better than a million@@Tamburello_1994
You need to move to the UK, upkeep is a lot less than that here (for the time being) 😅
I did the spire farm with 2x payout pp 1.0, I'm set for years to come.
You "own" the Fleet carrier. The services are not free. That's not a lease. Your employees are not slaves despite the empire's best effort.
25 million a week is not that expensive?? Like 2 hours of trading yesterday netted me almost 300 million? I'm set for the next 3 months because of 2 hours 😂
Oh hell no you can keep your carrier
Well, no thanks, Fontier. I have a huge, awesome fleet carrier in No Mans Sky that i got for free with 1 day of effort, and it costs me nothing weekly. In fact, it actually makes me tons of money. In Elite, you have to horribly grind for 3 years and then become a slave to the thing. Frontier has no clue what players really want. Hello, games do. Save yourselves and switch.
Since I don't play regularly any longer I gave up my Carrier!!
that is unfortunate - still a good game
@@RicardosGaming Oh absolutely and continue to jump in when I can. Real life is imposing it's will and I am not happy but, as the saying goes, that is life, lmao.
@@bulletstop100 tell me about it - life gets in the way
@@RicardosGaming It sure does!!! Lmao!
Fleet Carriers: the redundant credit sink that was supposed to be difficult to get but turned out everyone can get it given they are willing to put in the effort resulting in carriers dotting the system map in abundance to the point that they are effectively getting in the way... EVERYWHERE!
and you can't even directly fly it... it's just a stagnant annoyance that serves more as an unimpressive bragging right for those who feel like they do need to compensate for something.
i was and still is very disappointed about the carriers... boring and unimpressive.
Do you talk like this in real life too? Has anyone ever mentioned that you repeat the same sentence in 3 different ways?
I dunno - what did your mum say?