Frontier Development has been working on a new update for its live service game Elite Dangerous. Frontier Development delayed the update for a couple of months, but have slowly released information on what to expect from the update. The most major change that the new update brings is the introduction of fleet carriers. The fleet carrier acts as a quasi mobile base featuring landing pads and trading stations.
Fleet carriers are classified as capital ships being the only of its class and the largest ship that a player can own. Naturally, they offer landing pads to store smaller more conventional ships. A fleet carrier has eight large landing pads, four medium, and four small, giving them larger capacity than an orbital outpost and the same as a space station. The owner of the carrier can dictate who as permission to land on the pads.
Fleet carriers come base equipped with a 500 light-year jump range making it the largest range of any available class, and fleet carriers can be specialized with individual parts to make that range farther or increased cargo capacity. Fleet carriers will offer trading services from trade supplies or ships and parts, although the owner of the carrier will need to source the goods and the supplies will be limited.
With all the pluses of the fleet carrier, it does cost an initial fee of 5 billion credits, making it the most expensive by a wide margin, with the next most expensive ship, the Imperial Cutter, having an entry fee of 200 million. A fleet carrier will come with a monthly fee of 10 million credits, the ship can be reposed if the maintenance fees are not paid. A fleet carrier is only available at space stations with a carrier construction yard, which so far only Clark Port, in the Ehlanda system has one.
Fleet carriers will enter beta testing April 7th for PC players, then the beta will come to consoles. The update will be officially launched in June. The Horizons expansion will not be needed to acquire a carrier. The fleet carrier is the final update out of a four part series in preparation for a new expansion of Elite Dangerous.