Frustration about insurance

[Coyote]

I did something mildly stupid, but that totally reset the game for me. It took me about a month to get to the point I'm now at, and now it looks like I have to start all over. Yay, fun. Not.　
　

So I had an Asp, a Viper and about 700k credits. I loaded up the Asp with 660k credits worth of haulage and crashed it. Bad, I thought, but at least there's the insurance.
　
Yeah, well. I had two choices:

1) re-buy the Asp for 270k.

I couldn't do that, since I only hat 40k in cash left and the total loan limit is 200k. So I was 30k short of even re-buying an empty Asp.

2) Get the free Sidewinder.

So I got the free Sidewinder. And nothing else, of course. So now I have an empty Sidewinder, an empty Viper and some small amount of cash - simply because I didn't have the chance to cash in the Viper to re-buy the Asp. I guess I lost about 8 million credits in this crash and now have to start all over from the beginning.

I think there's a bit of a flaw in the system here. If I take the free Sidewinder, I should at least be reimbursed for the loss somehow. I mean, either the insurance pays about 7.7M in one case or they pay 30K in the other, leaving me with nothing else. That's a pretty weird deal if you ask me.

 

[{SAS}Stalker]

Not sure what your point is that you are making. You failed to cover your re-buy cost and are suffering for it. How is that weird?

Who flies a 6.6m cr ship with a 40K balance?

 

[Craib]

Mods - Please close this thread before it starts another round of bashing.

Coyote - Sorry to hear about this but the Status panel does show the rebuy costs of your ship and the money you have. Also the manual explains how insurance works. Look at the bright side you get to start again and try and a different method to progress.

 

[Hethwill_Khan]

I am glad FD boys took some RL approach to game rules.

I'd love to reach my insurance company and ask them for FULL cash of my wrecked car without getting myself a new one. Sure they will transfer the cash...sure...

 

[Skip Intro]

This must be the millionth thread open about this. The clue is in your question - you did do something stupid, which is to fly without enough crdits to re-buy your ship.

You spent your reserve of 700k on 660k of cargo then crashed your ship. There is no flaw in the system. You made both mistakes of your own free will.

 

[ParaB]

It's not really rocket science:


DO NOT UNDOCK UNLESS YOU CAN PAY THE REBUY FEE FOR YOUR SHIP.

It's a simple rule. Ignore at your own risk.

 

[Coyote]

I am glad FD boys took some RL approach to game rules.

I'd love to reach my insurance company and ask them for FULL cash of my wrecked car without getting myself a new one. Sure they will transfer the cash...sure...

Guess what: this is exactly what happens. I get reimbursed for the current value of the car (or full value during the first 12 months or so), reduced by the amount of scrap value. Regardless whether I buy a new one or not. Maybe with a retention fee, but that only reduces the amount the insurance has to pay. It does not decide whether the insurance pays or not.

- - - - - Additional Content Posted / Auto Merge - - - - -

This must be the millionth thread open about this. The clue is in your question - you did do something stupid, which is to fly without enough crdits to re-buy your ship.

You spent your reserve of 700k on 660k of cargo then crashed your ship. There is no flaw in the system. You made both mistakes of your own free will.

I would have had enough money if I had a chance to sell the Viper, though. Please don't forget this part.

The "flaw" is more obvious if you look at it from a "value for money" point of view. This system in Elite is not an insurance at all, it's just a "whatever", something they totally made up. An insurance is supposed to cover your losses (and is paid in advance), not to force you to buy new stuff. Also, if I paid my insurance fees, then the insurance should not have to decide wthether to pay or not depending on whether I replace my loss and chip in the retention fee. That is not part of an insurance contract.

And seriously - if I'm the millionth person to have this happening to him: then the usability is somewhat crappy.

 

[ash73]

Charging 5% when someone dies is not real life, it's nuts. No insurance company could survive that way, it should be a small weekly/monthly fee based on the value of your ship; so the insurance company profits from people who *don't* claim. That's how the real world works.

 

[Dimensions]

Insurance cost is not the same as the loan. I think the OP is frustrated that the loan is not enough to cover the the insurance excess cost. We are not sure who is providing the loan. I doubt it is the insurance guys, it is more likely the secretive guy who is backing you who is mentioned in the game manual which has a message directed at the new CMDR.

However I do think that the loan should cover the base insurance cost of the ship, I don't have a problem with that, since it is pretty easy to lose a ship in a blink of an eye. I think someone needs to have a word with the secret backer (Dark Wheel?).

 

[Whiterose]

It would be interesting to run a poll on ther age of people who have lost ships because they didnt have enough cash. My own theory (could be wrong, usually am) is that us oldies who have had to save to buy most things before the age of instant credit will ensure we have enough cash to re-buy, whereas the younger instant fulfilment generation do not keep cash back and are suffering as per the OP (sympathies by the way).

 

[FoxTwo]

It would be interesting to run a poll on ther age of people who have lost ships because they didnt have enough cash. My own theory (could be wrong, usually am) is that us oldies who have had to save to buy most things before the age of instant credit will ensure we have enough cash to re-buy, whereas the younger instant fulfilment generation do not keep cash back and are suffering as per the OP (sympathies by the way).

Well I dunno but I'm one of the oldies . I have EXACTLY 6.5 mill credits now, but I am not getting the Asp yet. Not till I've got a couple more millions in my bank at least.

 

[Coyote]

It would be interesting to run a poll on ther age of people who have lost ships because they didnt have enough cash. My own theory (could be wrong, usually am) is that us oldies who have had to save to buy most things before the age of instant credit will ensure we have enough cash to re-buy, whereas the younger instant fulfilment generation do not keep cash back and are suffering as per the OP (sympathies by the way).

I'm probably as old or older than you and never had a loan in my entire life.

Once again: this is a case of forced bankruptcy because of illiquidity, not because of a lack of capital. In real life, I would have to declare bankruptcy, then sell some stuff, settle the bills, and then close the bankruptcy case and carry on as usual. A bit stupid, but no major deal. And the game does deal with this very, very harshly. There would probably be less complaints if it weren't such slow work to recover.

This is a *game* after all.

 

[DraigUK]

Welcome to today's "I did something stupid but I'm going to blame the game for it" thread.

 

[Coyote]

Well, I was surprised to see another thread like mine. Still, how stupid do you think flying with 220k of liquidable assets and 200k of loan is when it comes to have to be able to cover 270k of costs?

 

[Chevy66]

Insurance works a bit backward, you should have to choose whether or not to pay the premium when you buy the ship. You could either pay up front and never worry about whether you can afford to rebuy, or risk not paying and possibly ending up back in a sidewinder

 

[{SAS}Stalker]

Insurance works a bit backward, you should have to choose whether or not to pay the premium when you buy the ship. You could either pay up front and never worry about whether you can afford to rebuy, or risk not paying and possibly ending up back in a sidewinder

You do pay the premium when you buy the ship its included in the price of the ship , you pay the excess when you crash.


(buy back value - available loan amount) X 1.1 is the absolute minimum your liquid credit should ever be, going lower is asking for trouble especially as its so well documented.

 

[Chevy66]

Yeah but an optional premium would be better, then it would be a calculated risk

To be honest I never worry about the rebuy cost, so far it hasn't gone above the 200K loan amount. when it does I'll just buy a spare ship and continue not worrying

 

[Coyote]

(buy back value - available loan amount) X 1.1 is the absolute minimum your liquid credit should ever be, going lower is asking for trouble especially as its so well documented.

If it's so well-documented, how come there are so many cases of it happening? "It's in the documentation" is the argument our developers often use, too, if the program behaves unexpectedly (and given the amount of incidents, this is obviously unexpected to a lot of people). Doesn't do them any good except making the customer angry. They complain to the CEO, the CEO complains to the devs' boss, and the boss makes the devs change it or at least less surprising. Costs the company quite a bit of money, each time it happens. That's what real life is like.

Anyway, the "well-documented" part is this:
"In such circumstances you have a number of options. Assuming you have enough to cover the hull cost (which includes all mandatory modules), you can choose not to pay for optional modules, reducing the cost."

I could cover the hull costs, if I could sell the Viper. Nothing in there says that I'm not offered to sell my assets. I have enough to cover the hull costs, I just don't have enough cash. That could be easily fixed without breaking much, IMO. And I'm also in favor of the suggested real insurance system instead of this weird stuff.

 

[{SAS}Stalker]

If it's so well-documented, how come there are so many cases of it happening? "It's in the documentation" is the argument our developers often use

I guess because people are'nt reading the documentation and then claiming its a game fault? Whos issue is that?

I've flown my cobra knowing I was under the threshold but I knew what the risk was. I would'nt do it in my asp though even if it means leaving 10-15 tons of trade on the shelf. Its simply not worth tanking 10mil+ credits for the sake of an additional 10-15K profit on one run. As soon as that run is over, the profit negates having to reduce cargo volumes ever again or until you buy equipment again.

 

[giacdegiac]

You bought a 6,600k ship and someone told you (from the right panel) "Ehy mate, since we love you, if you keep at least X (200k?) credits into your wallet we'll be so nice to help you in case YOU destroy the ship by giving you another one. We don't really care if it'll cost us 6,600k".

You didn't care(or forgot about it), you broke your ship and you think that the mistake is coming from someone else then you.

Really ?