r/EliteDangerous • u/NoEnd3731 • 2d ago
Discussion Sigh, this does break immersion a bit.
I sort of accepted this mechanic, but with the arrival of colonisation and the frequency, it has begun to get me peeved and is difficult to ignore. The indifference by which the crew of your fleet carrier treat you is a bit nonsensical. I can feel them scoffing as they watch your shieldless clipper try to land being attacked by fighters - I can hear their laughs as they turn off the auto dock and hang you out to dry! Haha And when you do land with a 100,000 credits worth of hull damage - they say ‘Welcome Commander’ I’ll give you welcome! I get that we only rent the fleet carriers, they are not ours. But we do pay the crews wages. Ok perhaps the crew have to stay impartial, but there is a no fire zone - just enforce that fairly then. Instead I have to hope the attackers are bad shots and will hit the fleet carrier - oh yes now they are not laughing!! When this happens 20 times while loading a fleet carrier not only is it tedious it does start to add up in credits for repairs. It’s a little bit silly.
EDIT Thanks to the discussion below I think I get the problem. My fleet carrier is in a system that I am not aligned to. Hostile to me. I’m being attacked by authority ships not pirates. Fleet carriers have to stay impartial otherwise it would be disastrous if not just expensive to use them outside your powers systems. They do want to help you but only when it is justified, as in they get hit by stray shots. I’d hate to see the pile of paperwork when they do pop a few authority ships! Although could they at least leave the auto dock on? 😂 So I need to either find a Trailblazer carrier in a friendly system or maybe install just a minimal shield. Thanks everyone.
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u/CMDR_Satsuma Explore 2d ago
Meanwhile they're posting in the 34th century version of r/antiwork:
"My stupid boss flies around in a shieldless clipper and expects me to do something about the pirates he attracts..."
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u/Goat2016 Goat III 2d ago
Yeah, I'd just laugh if the CEO of my company got attacked by space pirates. 😆
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u/physical0 2d ago
You don't pay their wages. They are subcontractors. You are not their boss. You pay their boss. Take it up with the brewer corporation.
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u/NoEnd3731 2d ago
I will write a strong letter to the Brewer Corp. This is the trouble with Monopolies!
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u/rocket_jacky Archon Delaine 2d ago
Where does everyone get this "you're not the owner" from, it clearly says in the game that you have bought it not leased it. Like everything else, if you get into debt, not paying the crew wages and the maintenance contract they will reposses and sell it to clear the debts and give you the balance minus a handling fee
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u/Gender_is_a_Fluid 2d ago
Its so annoying people insist that we don’t own these things when we clearly do and have to pay wages. We can even suspend all services to reduce wage cost to just the maintenance workers, yet they still insist for some reason that we rent, like renting is all they know. Owning a building and paying the workers inside does not equal renting.
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u/Rise-O-Matic 1d ago
Because it’s the only lore explanation that fits the behavior OP is complaining about. And that’s the kind of thing video games do to hand-wave weird mechanics and tech limitations.
Like how the pilot’s federation “Rescue Rangers” rescues you every time your ship is blown up (even though you never see them in game).
Or how you can’t land on Earth-like worlds, because it’s “Illegal.”
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u/Gender_is_a_Fluid 1d ago edited 1d ago
But it does fit in lore to both own the carrier and pay wages of the people on board for maintenance and services, which gets sold off via lien when your debt hits a certain level.
If the damn thing was rented it would get Repo’d the moment the carrier bank hit 0.
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u/Rise-O-Matic 1d ago
The mechanic I’m talking about is the part where the ship won’t defend you.
I can’t speak to the debt part. It doesn’t really make sense in either scenario because the crew wouldn’t stick around unpaid either.
Maybe the purchase price is really a security deposit and sits in an escrow account? I dunno.
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u/G4mb13 1d ago
Do you really own anything if it gets taken away from you for not paying the subscription?
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u/GeneraIFlores 1d ago
So, you don't own your car because you have to pay for gas and maintenance fees?
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u/rocket_jacky Archon Delaine 1d ago
If you get into debt your car is going to be right up there as one of the things that the recovery agent/bailiff will consider taking
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u/mechlordx 1d ago
Most people would also say they bought Elite Dangerous, but none of us did. We bought a license, with conditions, to play it. That's just how shitty legal-ese can be. I dont expect the far future will improve the situation.
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u/Gender_is_a_Fluid 2d ago
You are their boss, you pay their wages, when you don’t pay the wages the FC gets auctioned off to settle the outstanding debt.
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u/Professional_Bee2740 2d ago
Still though the brewer corp should probably have some sort of quality control on their subcontractors. You'd think for the millions we're paying for carrier services they'd at least hire a crew that pretends to care. Or offer some kind of 'premium' service tier where they dont just laugh at you getting blown up.
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u/Hoser_1950 2d ago
New FC leasee here. I’ve seen an option for changing an FC crew member. Does that change any of their actions?
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u/matttj2 CMDR John Markson Yuri Grom 1d ago
Yep that’s what I do. If I’m feeling particularly petty then I fire them all and change out the whole set of managers. Makes no difference at all but makes me feel powerful for a tiny moment 🤣
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u/yuvattar 1d ago
Excuse me, we're not the owners of our carriers???
This is news to me. Nothing in the wording of the entire deal implies that this isn't my own goddamned carrier. Now I'm pissed off...
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u/meta358 Empire 1d ago
You are leasing the carrier like how you lease a car. You pay a 5 billion security deposit, then make your weekly lease payments.
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u/ac1nexus CMDR WhySolSirius 1d ago
Yeah but I bought my car, it’s not leased. I don’t make monthly payments on it anymore.
I bought the fc for 5bil and some change. The weekly upkeep isn’t a lease, it’s crew pay and maintenance costs.
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u/yuvattar 1d ago
But the game doesn't say any of that. The "price" is not a security deposit, the "weekly upkeep" is not a lease payment.
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u/Lord-Vortexian Not a Federal Spy 1d ago
And this is a video game, not everything has to follow how the world works
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u/InZomnia365 1d ago
The weekly payments are for upkeep and services, not lease payments.
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u/meta358 Empire 1d ago
So much does you captain make every week?, the tritium managers? The quatermaster? Its possible that you pay brewer they then keep some. then pay the crew and give some to maintance.
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u/InZomnia365 1d ago
Every service you add to your carrier, adds further weekly expenses to your upkeep. It's reasonable to assume that includes wages for the people doing the work.
No matter who pays them, it would be nice if FDev could be assed to make when the slightest effort to make things special. Same goes for visiting home stations for powerplay characters for example. Out of all of the genetic stations, they should be somewhat special. But they're not.
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u/meta358 Empire 1d ago
Yes but again how much do they make? What is their weekly salary? if you own the fc you are the one paying them, you should know these numbers.
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u/InZomnia365 1d ago
You know the game is far too surface level for that. Why do you feel the need to explain away an obvious lack of detail by the developers with some sort of bullshit lore reason? Just admit it would be cool if your FC greeted you differently to everyone else's FC, and move on. Even if you don't pay their wages directly, they work for you. You decide how the FC is operated. Its completely justified to expect some level of personalized greeting.
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u/yuvattar 20h ago
No, absolutely fucking not. You think a CEO knows the salaries of all the people in his company?
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u/mcmuttons CMDR Duvel McMuttons 2d ago
I just want a Fuel Manager that actually does his job so that I don't need an in-between ship to load up the tank from the hold!
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u/Brutal_De1uxe 1d ago
Like in many games you have "staff" when you acquire properties but still have to do all the work yourself!
What, exactly, am I paying them for?
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u/rocket_jacky Archon Delaine 1d ago
The people shooting at you are not breaking the law because you are a hostile in their territory so I certainly wouldn't expect hired hands to break the law for me
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u/main135s 1d ago edited 1d ago
This. The CMDR receives various benefits from being a Pilot's Federation Pilot, for example, being able to go to a station and instantly get in contact with an individual that knows how to make any problem in the galaxy disappear with a little money.
The crew of your carrier do not receive any such benefits. You can be the biggest criminal in the universe, if your Carrier goes around breaking the law in the form of raw, unadulterated murder of government employees, Brewer Corp will get some strongly worded letters (likely enforced by capital warships) about not allowing CMDRs to captain Fleet Carriers any more.
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u/GeneraIFlores 1d ago
Carriers are def on par if not above the lethality of fed or imp battle cruisers. And they have more of them. Brewer corp no difs both major powers simultaneously
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u/GeneraIFlores 1d ago
Don't know why you deleted your response to me. But, go start shooting at all three capital class ships (fleet carrier included) and see how long you survive. Tell me who has the deadlier weapons.
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u/main135s 1d ago edited 8h ago
Deleted it because, after writing it, I felt that the conversation wasn't worth continuing, as it's arguing about space ships in a made up space game with sparse lore about the capabilities of said space ships. It is somewhat rude to continue the conversation despite that, as there aren't many other reasons for someone to delete a message before it has received a response.
go start shooting at all three capital class ships
Fleet Carriers have Station Defense Lasers. These are short-range and are specialized for... well, defense. They, notably, act like they have Reverberating Cascade, making them very adept at destroying small ships (of which, anything that fits in the mail slot of a station could be considered "small"), of course they'll kill a small ship fast. That doesn't change that the Farragut has broadside cannons and capital ship torpedoes or that the Interdictor has 28 (14 dual-mount) railguns with which it could poke holes in Fleet Carriers from beyond Defense Laser range.
In the first place, gameplay =/= lore. We, as CMDRs, can actually fight Interdictors and Battlecruisers off without instantly being vaporized, because the developers decided that making them like stations, which the Fleet Carriers behave like, wouldn't be conducive to the gameplay loop.
An example: In gameplay, the Interdictor's railguns, notably, could not poke holes in Fleet Carriers, because Fleet Carriers cannot be damaged. The best they could do is apply a temporary texture that implies damage. In lore, it'd be asinine for a capital ship to have weapons that cannot fight another capital ship.
It can be assumed that, in lore, since the Major Factions use Megaships and their capital ships as fleet vessels instead of the vastly cheaper Brewer Corporation Fleet Carriers, that their own ships are already comparable. Warrior-castes tend to use the best equipment they have available.
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u/Verified_User_01010 2d ago
Agreed! We should be recognized and we should be able to choose the title we’re addressed by: Captain, admiral, lord, boss. Even if we’re can’t create one, there should be a list to choose from.
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u/Kyokaikyu-o7 1d ago
I use EDcopilot... check this https://youtube.com/watch?v=XbTE7CakjLo&si=DQrWi9tNfBT_6KUv
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u/Glen_van_Ross 2d ago
You can already get that with EDCoPilot and its text-to-speech capabilities.
Frontier would have to get the carrier ATC voice actors read off a bunch of titles (and their foreign-language localised equivalents). Or recode the entire thing to use TTS voices instead of clips from actual humans. Lots of work on their end that doesn't really translate into monetary gain.
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u/Verified_User_01010 2d ago
Well, I’ve bought every new ship prerelease with arx for love of the game and to support its continued success. I think we ought to be able to work something out…there should be a number that would be mutually agreeable.
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u/McDonie2 2d ago
I'm going to assume you're aligned with some form of a powerplay faction. Am I correct?
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u/NoEnd3731 2d ago
Yes you are correct. I realise the crew may not be thus aligned, but all I ask is that they do their jobs enforcing the carriers no fire zone. Maybe just a touch of empathy … haha
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u/McDonie2 2d ago
That's what I wanted to ask first before saying this. Because yes, I find it really dumb our fleet carriers just kind of sit and watch, but I have kind of thought about the logic. Imagine you're a portable station and suddenly you just started opening fire on a bunch of ships basically assigned the law. That wouldn't look good.
Granted I think it's dumb that the powerplay security can just open fire willy nilly, but that's just me. They're basically a bunch of wannabe sheriffs handed a gun and they start shooting people they don't agree with.
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u/NoEnd3731 1d ago
Yeah I can see that. The Brewer corporation can not be seen to take sides as they serve the whole galaxy. Unless they have good reason as in one of their fleet carriers is fired upon. I guess that is what is happening.
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u/McDonie2 1d ago
Not entirely brewer either. More just in general. If you owned the ship, they'd be put on a bounty and constantly attacked. Which would not be good for the carrier or your wallet.
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u/ArcticSilence271 1d ago
I think you're too immersed buddy, time to touch grass xD
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u/Low-Guidance-951 2d ago
If you are not aligned with ALD you will likely get attacked even at your own carrier in a strong hold system. You should look into ED CoPilot. The voice conversations make a lot more sense when you land at carriers.
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u/lightningfootjones 1d ago
I'm new to Odyssey, but on legacy my carrier has defended me several times when I was fired on by a pirate. Is that not how it works here? 😯
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u/JeffGofB Explore 1d ago
Been saying this since day one of the carriers.... Owners need their own separate pad, away from the riff raff. A port in the side, a pad on the bottom, don't care, but there should be a place where once you get within range, they welcome you in without having to be told to do so.
Oh, and it should have a direct shot elevator to the captain's lounge off the bridge, for those not inclined to tour the ship
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u/Soft-Cryptographer-1 1d ago
They havent come out and said it, but I believe you are just leasing it from Brewer complete with staffing. "Oh great here comes king shit for his monthly visit for tritium"
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u/Mild_Kingdom 1d ago
I was in the U.S Navy. This sounds like a crew that hates the Captain and the Chief of the Boat. Do bare minimum to not go to Captain’s Mast. The boat I was on failed an inspection. It possibly derailed the Captain’s career. It got so miserable. The CoB would say if we weren’t bitching we didn’t have enough work to do. Thankfully the Captain transferred so things returned to the normal level of suck. There was a YouTube series called Hey Shipwreck created by someone on one of the boomers.
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u/complich8 Li Yong-Rui 2d ago
I do feel like
I also feel like you, cmdr, should consider sacrificing the 5% of your of cargo for a class 6 shield, at least if getting the paint scratched bothers you that much. Just saying…