Fleet carriers have finally been officially brought to Elite Dangerous after two months of extensive beta tests. Judging by the announcement, these work as much as they did during the second beta. Essentially, fleet carriers will give players their very own space station where they will be able to dock all 16 of their ships. These can be moved all around the galaxy, but, unfortunately, not piloted, and will burn some very expensive tritium fuel. The ships can potentially go up to 500 light-years at once.
Personally, I doubt that the fleet carriers will matter a lot to players. These were possibly intended as groundwork for the Elite Dangerous’ expansion happening next year. Frontier, the game company in charge of Elite Dangerous, has recently revealed that expansion, which will be titled Odyssey and will include fighting on the surface of planets on foot, either as an explorer or as an FPS game. There is the possibility that fleet carriers will fit these new game modes better than the game’s existing features do.
Regardless, players, who for the most part, have reacted badly to these new fleet carriers, are able to buy one permanently starting today. A fleet carrier comes with a significant price tag of 5 billion spacequids plus tens of millions of spacequids in weekly maintenance for the various services that you choose to enable on board. The 5 billion spacequids are refundable if you choose to decommission the ship, so there is always the possibility of just trying out the fleet carrier – if you have 5 billion spacequids, that is.
Players that do not have 5 billion spacequids can occasionally use the carriers of other players since these will be open to the public as shipyards, markets, and even exploration data registries. Fleet carriers could thus end up being as convenient pop-up shops.