When Fleet Carriers launched in 2020 I think many of us were rightfully excited. And while they do provide a lot of functionality in terms of acting as a mobile station for your fleet and storing goods, I still feel like they are an unfinished asset with a ton of potential that’s unrealized. There’s a lot that could be said for the initial price, upkeep mechanics, added costs and functionality of the various modules, cluttering up system maps (make it collapsible already) and the switch from Squadron owned to Private ownership. But I think there’s enough of that already said that posting about it would be redundant.
What I do think could add immensely to Fleet Carriers is an actual fleet management system.
Currently you’re able to hire three NPC Pilots from the Crew Lounge. However only one can be deployed in the SLF’s at any one time even if your bay allows for two. This effectively negates any incentive to hire on any more than the one piloting your fighter. What I propose is a system of assigning them a variety of missions using your very ships located in your Fleet Carrier. Metal Gear Solid V and No Mans Sky have very similar systems that work to great effect but even Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood (2010) had a very similar and well functioning system.
The core idea is to assign your NPC pilots to missions using your personal fleet. A mission’s probability of success could be factored in by a few things. The system you’re in, difficulty of the mission, the pilots ranking, and the ship they’re being deployed with. An Elite pilot being assigned a pirate massacre mission in your engineered Corvette for example would fare better odds of success than a Mostly Harmless pilot being assigned the same mission in an unengineered Cobra Mk3.
The missions of course can have time durations on them ranging from hours to days and the mission’s payout can vary accordingly from mined rocks, bounties, materials or local faction rep depending on how it’s implemented. There would of course always be the chance of your ship coming back damaged or outright destroyed, in which case you would need to payout the insurance for a failed mission. This of course also removes the ship from your available fleet until it returns. The Pilot still takes the same percentage that they already do, but now given the responsibility of manning one of your ships independently.
Because this system is based entirely on probability from those various factors (system, pilot ranking, mission difficulty, ship stats/outfitting) once your Pilot instances out of your Fleet Carrier’s space it can effectively be gone from the system until the timer finishes to remove CMDR interference. Alternatively, Frontier could also make it an NPC ship found within the system same as any other ship in the background, but the first seems easier to implement. However doing the later also adds an incentive to take it away from less populated systems as CMDR’s may just gank your NPC ship for the fun of it in more trafficked systems.
This management system should be limited to the console in your captains quarters, finally giving the room some functionality and a feeling of executive control. Though personally I’d like to see a lot more done with this room in particular (decorations, holographic system map, etc…) but that’s another subject.
Overall I think this would be an engaging way to removing some of the grind and generating passive income onboard your carrier to offset the upkeep while still working within the limitations of the bgs and keeping a system of risk/reward at play. It’s a proven and fun system in other games and adds a level of management to your Fleet Carrier that you can choose to use or ignore. Mission Durations also serve as a way to not turn it into a credit farm. You would still need to login and collect the reward before assigning them on another mission and as long as you're logged in might run a mission of your own right? Furthermore I don’t see something like this eating too much into development either as it’s effectively a system of statistics and probability.
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/wpwwtp/fleet_carrier_management/
