Players of the space online game Elite Dangerous are planning a new, highly interesting project that aims to make exploring space more engaging. The upcoming, massive, and very expensive fleet carriers will play a significant role.
What kind of ships are these? The fleet carriers are set to be introduced in June with the large “Fleet Carriers” addon in Elite Dangerous. Essentially, they are mobile space stations, but each player can only own one at a time. They are extremely costly. The base version alone costs five billion in-game credits.
- The fleet carriers feature 16 landing pads for four small ships each, four medium vessels, and eight for large ships. A fleet carrier has a jump range of 500 light-years and can transport 1,000 tons of Tritium as fuel. Tritium is a new resource that must be mined from asteroids. A jump to restricted access systems is not possible.
- However, it is necessary to maintain the ships regularly. Prior to the beta, this incurred weekly costs of at least five million credits in the base variant. The maintenance costs for the ships have been reduced by 80-90% based on feedback from the beta. If a ship is not maintained, it must be decommissioned and scrapped.
- Besides maintenance costs, it is possible to upgrade the fleet carriers to offer ships or other goods for sale. This makes the mobile space stations an interesting trading spot. Therefore, the carriers remain in place when the commander logs out of the game.
- It is, by the way, not possible to destroy carriers, but they can still defend themselves quite well against attackers.
- Carriers cannot be sold but can be scrapped, although at a significantly lower price than the purchase price.
Can the ships be customized? Buyers of the fleet carriers have the opportunity to design them according to their personal preferences. Thus, everyone gets their individual carrier.
An exciting project
How do players intend to utilize these fleet carriers? There is already a very interesting project from a group of players who have an exciting idea for using the fleet carriers. This idea could change the exploration missions into the depths of space.
What is this project about? The galaxy in Elite Dangerous is gigantic. Since the game’s release in late 2014, players have only explored about 0.042% of the star systems, according to the official Twitter channel. The community still has a lot ahead of them.
Explorations into the far-off areas of space always present a thrilling challenge in Elite Dangerous, but they come with dangers. One of them is running out of fuel and players becoming stranded in the void. This doesn’t happen too infrequently, which is why a rescue organization has taken it upon themselves to recover stranded players, the Fuel Rats.
A group of players is now planning, with the project “Deep Space Support Array” (DSSA), to buy fleet carriers and position them at various locations throughout the galaxy. They aim to provide safe havens for explorers looking to explore unknown star systems. Players will travel to these carriers at the currently known boundaries of the galaxy, refuel there, and venture into the unknown areas. This is intended to minimize the danger of suddenly drifting through space without fuel. Additionally, the carriers are expected to offer affordable repairs.
However, the plan is somewhat audacious, as no one knows if the project will actually work and can be carried out as intended. Over 100 players have already signed up for the DSSA project. Whether this works well will be seen in June, when the “Fleet Carriers” addon for Elite Dangerous is released.
Frontier Developments, the developers behind Elite Dangerous, have big plans for 2020. The Fleet Carriers are just one of them. MeinMMO has laid out the roadmap for the space online game so you can see why Elite Dangerous could be really exciting this year.
