Good point that I completely missed
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So, for those with an interest in ED it has probably not escaped your notice that the introduction of personal fleet carriers is but days (or weeks) away. The upfront capital investment for a fleet carrier is extremely large, and the ongoing running costs are also not insignificant. That being the case, I wondered if there is any interest in purchasing and running a Mudspike carrier?
For those who have not been following the recent beta tests hereās a quick rundown of how they work:
- A fleet carrier is a capital class ship that is player controlled. They have a number of landing pads and exist in all instances and across all platforms. They are essentially mobile stations.
- The fleet carrier is purchased, owned and controlled by an individual player (initial cost: 5 billion credits).
- The owner has full authority to run the carrier, including specifying who can dock, and when / where the carrier jumps.
- Carriers can provide a variety of services similar to stations, including trading goods, refuel, restock, repair, shipyard and outfitting services, redemption office, and universal cartographics.
- In order to deliver most of these services they must be commissioned (at significant cost) and maintained. They each incur a weekly running cost. A basic carrier with no services costs 10 million credits per week, a fully outfitted one around 26 million credits.
- The carrier can jump up to 500Ly every 20 minutes, and a jump can be scheduled at any time. The carriers will use a new fuel (tritium) which can be purchased (expensive) or mined from asteroids.
- Carriers can only operate if their finances are in the black. If they fall into debt for a significant period they will be automatically decommissioned.
Itās easy to see how having a Mudspike carrier could create gameplay opportunities. I play on the PS4 mostly on my own (though generally in open) and it would be nice to have a focus for a bit of multiplayer exploring / mining / piracy / political meddling / thargoid bashing / just messing around.
I intend to buy a carrier a couple of weeks or so after the update hits (to avoid the rush). I have 4.9 billion credits and am in the middle of a LTD mining run. If there is enough interest then I would be willing to hand it over for Mudspike use. In this case I would execute decisions made on this forum in terms of services / gameplay / location etc, acting as manager of the carrier. I tend to be available to play for a couple of hours late at night UK time (23:00 - 02:00 or so), so carrier movements / changes would take place then.
If there isnāt sufficient interest or if it doesnāt look feasible to run a group carrier then I will still buy one for myself and head out into the black to explore some more of the galaxy. I thought I might jump around 5 to 10 thousand LYs and then jump 500ish LYs every fortnight or so, exploring the local systems and mining more fuel at each stop - basically taking it easy. Iāll post my movements here and anyone who wants to tag along is welcome.
Thoughts?
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Previously on Elite Dangerous:
I posted screenshots and descriptions of some of the highlights of the Distant Worlds 2 expedition last year in the previous ED thread. Since then a lot has happened. After returning to Sag A* and selling my exploration data for a cool 700 Million credits I refitted the Forty Niner for max jump range and headed for Colonia. There I spent some time unlocking the engineers and refitting and optimising the Forty Niner for deep core mining. I also invested in a laser mining Type 9 (the Clementine) and spent some time mining painite and void opals. The views around Colonia are stunning.
When the fleet carrier announcement was made I think this spurred a lot of commanders to take up mining in earnest to build up their bank accounts in preparation for the upcoming expense. The result was that the bottom dropped out of the painite and void opal markets at Jacques Station, and mining in Colonia became impractical. So I bit the bullet and made my way back to the bubble.
To this end I bought and outfitted an exploration ship, the Crawfords Mask, a Krait Phantom with a jump range over 65 LYs. The trip back was made in two legs, with a stop off at a rather pretty nebula at about half-way(ish):
Once back I had the Clementine ferried down to Panorua, a system near Borann. I tweaked her for low temp diamond mining and set to work building up capital for my own fleet carrier. Itās not easy making a Type 9 look pretty but sometimes the surroundings make it possible:
So here we are at the end of 9 months worth of travelling, outfitting, engineering, and mining, finally docked in our new home - the good ship Fei Paw:
Iām currently orbiting the first moon of planet 10 in the Col 285 Sector XN-D A28-8 system. A new LTD triple hotspot has been found here and a lot of fleet carriers have taken up station to mine LTDs and recoup some of the expense. Tritium is also relatively abundant, or so I have heard. Iāll be stationed here for a week or two to fill the tritium tanks and mine some LTDs.
I have a standing order for 1500 tons of tritium at 120% of average market value (though this is not the best price you will get in system at the moment). Once I sell my first load of LTDs, probably this weekend, Iāll put a larger order out at higher price. My long term aim is to head out into the black for some serious exploration, making 500LY hops roughly every one to two weeks. For that Iāll need a carrier full of tritium - about 20000 tons of the stuff. So if anyone wants to pop by and mine some tritium they are more than welcome.
o7 Commanders. 
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Ok, that LTD hotspot was really not working for me so Iām going to jump to another one that is about 200LYs outside the bubble this afternoon.
EDIT:
Well, I had several hours free today to do a bit of LTD and tritium mining. First things first: move the carrier. However it seems that fate had other ideas.
Our destination was a system about 200 LYs outside the bubble where an excellent mining spot has been discovered. I entered the galaxy map, selected the system, and clicked the button to schedule a carrier jump. No joy. Apparently the system was full up - no free slots available. No problem, weāll just jump to a neighbouring system. I tried five systems in close proximity and all were the same - no free slots available.
So I looked further out and found a system 17 LYs away that had space (just within a single jump for my Type 9). This time when I clicked the button the countdown started - Yay! 15 minutes later, just as the engines were about to spool up, an error message appeared: āDeparture canceled due to an unknown error.ā Well thatās strange. Whatās worse was that the carrier was left in a locked state - I couldnāt schedule a new jump or cancel the current one. I found an issue on FDevs issue tracker and added my report to it, and by the time I had finished the carrier had unlocked. To cut a long story short, I tried 4 more jumps with no success. For the final one I travelled the 400LYs to the target system and scanned it first, but this still didnāt work. So a rare afternoonās play wasted with nothing to show for it.
I logged in again half an hour ago to try one last time and everything worked! I guess FDev have fixed whatever the problem was. So here I am in the Col 285 Sector BC-K A38-0. This system is only 9 LYs from the target one so it all worked out OK in the end.
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I hope you continue with these adventures @HavlokUK Iām really enjoying reading them. The pics are spectacular
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My words.
I got the ED installed and even took some training missions and was taken away by its beauty and sense of the depth of the Universeā¦
Though for the moment I am very much into DCS and a bit still into Il2. So ED is waitingā¦
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I think ED is on sale right now for like $9. YMMV on the lasting appeal of it, but I promise you can get $9 worth of entertainment out of it.
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Agreed. I am on hiatus but I feel like thatās going to change when I eventually jump on the VR bandwagon. Still, definitely worth the purchase, even in 2D.
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ED is a truly beautiful game, but not all the time. I tend to play in spurts, where after a while I get bored with a repetitive gameplay loop or the grind towards a particular goal, and Iāll leave it for a bit. But then Iāll come back and do something different - maybe take a mini exploration trip, for example - and out of the blue the game will suddenly hit me with a spectacular sight, and remind me why I started to play it in the first place.
I have to say I am really enjoying the fleet carrier update so far. I wasnāt convinced they were well designed during the betas, but since their release there have been a lot of capitalist shenanigans that has added some much needed spice to the game. The variety of uses the player base have put them to is amazing.
The Buur Pitā s take on fleet carriers:
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So do we have a MS carrier gang yet? I donāt play often but it would be quite neat to hop into someoneās hangar to occasionally log in and see whatās going on 
I brought up the idea a couple of weeks ago but there didnāt seem to be any interest. However, I will start to post updates on where my carrier is and what itās doing, and if you want to stop by and join in that would be grand.
EDIT: the good ship Fei Paw is currently parked in the KATURI system. On Friday at around 10pm game-time she will jump to COL 285 SECTOR BC-K A38-2 (or a nearby system if itās full) where she will spend the weekend. Some time after midnight on Monday morning she will jump back to the bubble.
There is an awesome triple LTD hotspot around planet 2 where i intend to do some serious mining. If anyone fancies coming along they are welcome, just dock with the Fei Paw before it jumps on Friday. I have a standing order for LTDās at the max allowable buy price (a little over 500K credits) so you could sell to the carrier between trips to the ring if you like, or you could just fill your cargo hold and sell it on at full price once we jump back. The target system for the jump back will be chosen based on LTD buy-price, so youāre guaranteed a short trip to the seller.
I should also warn you that there are some gankers skulking around the system interdicting and destroying mining ships - I ate a rebuy in my Type-9 on my last trip.
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@boomerang10 surprisingly enough itās HavlokUK 
, however I play on PS4 which tends to limit who I can link up with in game
Oh bummer! Iām only about 3 jumps away from Katuri. I thought it had cross-platform for some reason, oh well.
Supposedly it does, as in we are all in the same universe and all affect the BGS equally. However, Sony seem to be a bit funny about letting PlayStation players play live with others, so I can only hook up with PS4 players in game. My daughter has the same issue with Minecraft.
You are still welcome to come along on the trip though if you fancy.
How many ships can you dock? I have a pretty nasty Conda, a Type 10, and good core mining python. I might jump in for some shenanigans this weekend. Havenāt played in quite a few months though.
At the moment you can only dock the ship you arrive in as I havenāt got around to buying the shipyard service yet. I could sort that out tonight, then you could transfer as many ships over as you like - I think the limit is 40 per player but I havenāt seen that tested anywhere.
Oh, and you might consider bringing some subsurface missiles as those deposits have had a rather mighty buff
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Ill try to get the game installed tonight and see if I can at least find the carrier. Iām assuming you are playing on Open mode? Or do we need to join a private server?
Iām in the katuri system, I have no idea how to find the carrier. I also searched the commanders, did not see a HavlokUK. Iām on PC so I donāt know if ill be able to see the carrier or not.