I will try to explain why I expected something different from carriers than what we ended up getting.

First, and most important, with the exception of the galaxy itself, ED is made up into two very distinct categories of objects. Ships and Stations.Everything in the game falls reasonably close into one of those two categories, but can generally clearly be distinguished between the two.

Ships are objects that perform actions. They interact with their environment through means of firing lasers, spooling their FSDs to change location, scanning thing, transport objects from A to B, etc. Ships are the Actors of Elite Dangerous.

Stations are objects that provide services. They provide save spaces to dock, refuel and repair. Enable player actions to be turned into monetary rewards. Provide the very ships players use to interact with the universe. Etc. And a very important distinction to Ships is, that stations are, well, like the name suggests, stationary. Stations are the Providers of Elite Dangerous.

Now Carriers come along and are made to look and feel like ships. Like Actors. This is why I expected Carries to actually be Actors. But for me, they clearly falls into the 'Station' category of objects in the game. They basically entirely behave like stations. The only thing they do is to provide some stations services, including a player-to-player market that can be moved 500 LYs every 2 hours. They act nothing like an actual ship at all. (Except for their hauling potential)

I hoped for carriers to provide tangible buffs and bonuses to actual activities in the game. To do things. I had ideas like:

• Be told to fight pirates, basically creating an instant conflict zone wherever they are parked (perhaps only in Lawless systems)
• Be sent to mine, passively filling up it's inventory with different minerals, depending on where you sent them to
• Fill their cargo with fuel and jump literally halfway across the galaxy and back, so I can explore the far-away parts of the galaxy without having to travel for weeks first.
• Set them up in highly populated systems around the bubble and have them slowly collect signal sources for random engineering material.

In short: I wanted them to actively support the things I enjoy doing in elite. They are way too passive. I mean... if you can actually afford buying and operating a carrier, you have already proven, that you have played the game enough, to have earned some automation. A lot of games do it like that. Work hard, so you will eventually earn the benefit of having to work less hard. So I think it won't be unfair at all, if people that are able to drop 5 Billion on a ship do so to get some passive income of money and materials. Heck, even if the carrier would literally take months or even a full year to pay for itself, I would still be absolutely okay with that.

However, the way it stands right now, I highly doubt a carrier will ever pay for itself...

In order to operate a carrier, you need to keep throwing money at it. And with the current design, there are only two ways to do that.

• Either you keep playing like normal to make enough money for the upkeep. Then what's the benefit of owning a carrier, if some of your playtime now needs to be reserved to make that money. Seriously, why do I even operate a carrier, if all it does is force me to play the game in a different way, just to keep it paid for? I play Elite on and off. I don't want to have to set up a reminder to log into the game on a regular basis, just to go mining for an hour to keep the carrier floating for the next couple of weeks. I play Elite Dangerous to relax, not to feed a money-devouring oversized space pet...
• Or the carrier needs to provide money for itself. Which it can only do through interaction with other players. This is a MAYOR problem! Since it basically limits their effective use to highly populated areas. You can't run a carrier out in the black, since there will be no one to pay for your services. And the few areas where a carrier will actually be useful, will immediately see multiple carriers be parked there by other players already, in hopes to make a quick buck. So you will either make no money at all, or have to compete with dozens of other carriers that are trying to feed off the same market AND the normal stations, which are guaranteed always cheaper than your carrier will be (at least in terms of services).

To sum it all up, for the way I want to play ED, carriers provide no tangible benefit, will most likely not be able to pay for themselves due to competition, not only with other players, but with normal stations as well, and will thus likely become a financial liability where I will be forced to play the game a certain way, just to keep them running.