4Game

Now that we have fleet carriers, and though I'm still far from owning one, a lot of veteran CMDRs say they don't even feel the upkeep cost because they're so rich, so should we push the endgame a bit further and get planet-based player owned settlements ?

Here are a few argumenrs for it : a FC is basically a player owned starport, you got all the facilities you could want as long as you put them in. Even DSSA carriers are like player owned stations placed by a helpful community to serve explorers on their journey into the black. Why couldn't we have the same thing but on planets ?

The reasonning behind it would be simple : locate a suitable landable planet somewhere, mark a location, and pay a cost to build your settlement, any services you'd want there to be, and an upkeep cost just like you would on a carrier. This means the settlement can't be moved from that planet, so you'll need to chose wisely.

What we could add to balance the fact that you can't move that settlement around, would be reslurce nodes on planets, so you would place your settlement on a resource node/zone, and have mining activities that would create resources and sell them, bringing money to help with the upkeep costs.

I'm not sure what the mechanics would be for settlements being attacked and damaged, maybe you'd want to make players able to attack and disable settlements, forcing you to go back there, secure the place, and turn the power back on.

That last thing, I think, would get abused quickly in the bubble, but here's my counter-argument : this is to encourage CMDRs to explore and create their settlements outside of the bubble, replacing some of the DSSA fleet carriers with planetside settlements.

I see a lot of potential for this, but I'm not sure this would ever happen.