Fleet Carriers are coming to Elite: Dangerous this week

Gamers having followed the development of Frontier's sci-fi action-adventure Elite: Dangerous are most likely set to get excited about the announcement that was made by the developer, stating that the official beta testing for the long-awaited 16-player fleet carriers will start on PC on April 7 and on console (PS4 and Xbox One) at some point in May, before hitting its official launch in June of this year.

Frontier Developments shared its key info on its site and you can check it all, as well as the new trailer, below.

• Costs 5,000,000,000 credits for the base model, which includes a Commodity Market and a Tritium Depot.


• The ships are individually owned, and the owner can only have one Fleet Carrier at a time.


• Owner can manage docking permissions.


• Has 16 landing pads: 8 Large, 4 Medium, 4 Small.


• Do not have determined loadouts but instead have Optional Services that can be tailored to the playstyle of the owner's choice.

JUMP DETAILS

• Max jump range of 500ly.


• Require the commodity 'Tritium' as fuel to perform a jump, which can be mined from asteroids or purchased from starports.

RUNNING A FLEET CARRIER

• Require regular maintenance, which incur weekly running costs.


• Additional services can be purchased from Carrier Construction starports, and contribute to the overall weekly running costs.


• Bank: used for all Fleet Carrier transactions; buying services, paying visitors for desired commodities, restocking and more.

DECOMMISSIONING FLEET CARRIERS

Owners unable to keep up to date with the weekly running costs will incur debt. Once a huge amount of debt has been accrued, their Fleet Carrier may be at risk of being decommissioned.

There are, however, multiple ways to manage a Fleet Carrier to continue generating revenue or minimise services when you wish to reduce running costs.

Update: This article originally failed to clarify that it was the Fleet Carriers that are going into beta testing, not the game itself. Apologies for the confusion, folks.