And i come here from eve online where if you die you pretty much loose your whole ship 
I feel like I'm being punished - Insurance game mechanic flaws
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Harbinger
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Old thread this
Yeah gotta love zombie threads being revived with advice and laughter aimed at the original poster some 3 months after he likely stopped reading it.
I made a mistake on my first character, Aidan Patrick crashing with my python valued at 85 million and I was shy for insurance at a balance of around 100k. Made it an entire trip and crashed entering the mail slot of the destination station. Gone. Poof. Finito. I had 2 mil left in my wallet after being forced to select the sidewinder. I deleted my account and started from scratch with a new character and now have a Python valued at a purhase price of 281 Million.
I'd do it again, but I agree the insurance on larger ships can get a bit excessive. However, once the new insurance changes hit in 1.3, this should be a non issue as you'll get an increase based on your pilots federation rank... Which I'd assume happens for all 3 trees... meaning "leveling up" in this game is being able to die cheaper. I see no issue with it in it's planned state.
Maybe I missed something, but I haven't seen the devs wondering about it. The reason people complain so much is, IMHO, not because the game 'trips you up'. It is because people in general never take responsibility, and will complain about everything, everywhere, all the time. In this case the OP turbo-boosted an uninsured ship into a gigantic space station. What is unfair is not that he lost his ship, but that he is allowed to get back into a sidewinder/secondary ship without taking mandatory flying lessons first.
Why do you think there are doing a console release?
A. They love plastic crap.
B. They need more money.
Just because someone never said anything does not mean you cant work out what's going on.
It's a nobrainer for me. If I have the assets, I should be able to liquidate them.
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I always felt the insurance feature lacked enough punishment. All I have to do is make sure I can afford the buy back prior to flying the thing and it never will ever matter.
When I calculated out what I needed for my Asp and for it to be fully outfitted for exploring, I added the insurance cost rounded to the next million to know exactly what I needed to fly the ship and if I do something stupid, to be able to buy it back and still have a few credits.
In my opinion, the insurance per ship should cost me something, daily, weekly, whatever. I should need to pay for this service. Getting a break on 95% of the cost without any of my income seems a bit strange to me.
All that said, it wouldn't be a terrible idea to be able to sell some of your assets from the buy back screen, but you are supposed to take insurance cost into play beforehand and have that cash on hand.
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Old thread this
Personally I would make the insurance amount you can borrow related to your combat rating. The higher the rating the more you can borrow.
And where would that leave explorers and traders? I've been playing for months as a trader, I fly an Anaconda but I still only have a Mostly Harmless combat rating. I would have thought that if anything it would make more sense to only make the amount you can borrow comparable to your average earnings.
I wouldn't mind being able to sell your assets that you own so long as it's a reduced price, something like 30% of the ship's worth or less. It needs to be heavy hitting. If it doesn't get implemented I'm fine with it, it's not difficult to keep insurance money for your ship.
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In my experience, the way death is handled in this game is one of it's great strengths and one of its great weaknesses.
On the one hand, the insurance system makes death meaningful: when you get blown up, you lose money and time. This makes people very paranoid about going into any situation half-cocked, and punishes any silly little mistakes that anyone can make (like accidentally hitting boost while you're trying to land, or running into an asteroid while you're in a dog fight with a Conda in a RES). And this paranoid game play gets even more extreme once you start purchasing bigger and more expensive ships because the penalty for screw ups rises exponentially. For example: a quick mock up for a trade-Conda would cost around 8.7 million dollars to insure and if you're making 1k credits per ton both ways, with 402 tons of cargo, and an average of 10 minutes between both points, you'd need to grind 4 hours just to make back whatever you lost in your hull and upgrades. Once you start talking about cargo as well, that's even more money that can be lost to the void for one little misclick. But that's just for trading, what about combat? My very nearly A-specced Fer De Lance cost around 4.2 million to insure, so one death and I'm spending four or more hours hunting RES bounties to make up the money (depending on your spawns, naturally). Needless to say, with the stakes being so high, people are usually extremely careful with how they spend their time trying to maximize profit and lower risk, which is a good thing to a lot of people. It gives them agency, because they succeed and fail not on the roll of a dice, but rather their own skill (usually) and ability to assess risk vs. reward.
But, the counter point to this is that the current insurance system doesn't encourage a lot of people live dangerously. We find the activity that nets us the best money for our and we enjoy doing, and we stick to it. Sure, I might get the trading bug and do some runs, but that quickly gets old and I'm back to RES hunting (at least for now, I honestly am I little worried about the new update making the NPCs nigh-unkillable, but I digress). Now, I would love to hunt down wanted players! It would be kind of fun to get into all out brawls, trying my damnedest to get their bounty while they try to turn me into space dust and/or get away, however... Human opponents are significantly more dangerous than AI ones (for now), and the likelihood of me cashing in their bounty goes down significantly because they'll either just get away, pull the ole logoffski, force me to run, or blow me up. Now, add in insurance and it's not just time that I'll lose if worse comes to worse, I'll also lose 4.7 million. I don't know about you, but I always factor in the worse case scenario, and it just doesn't make any sense (monetarily) for me to hunt down wanted players right now when I can make a steadier income by hunting NPC pirates. And touching on trading, the risk can be even bigger since you're not only going to lose your ship if things go bad, but also all of your cargo. Some people do take that risk, but I have a feeling that many people don't like trading in open for fear of player pirates... Which is understandable. Heck, I can even understand why people combat log, since every death is measured in hours of progression lost. Do I agree with it? No, but I can understand it at least.
Do I know how to 'fix' the perceived problem? Heck no! But it's just something to think about before anyone damns the OP for miscalculating insurance cost.
On the one hand, the insurance system makes death meaningful: when you get blown up, you lose money and time. This makes people very paranoid about going into any situation half-cocked, and punishes any silly little mistakes that anyone can make (like accidentally hitting boost while you're trying to land, or running into an asteroid while you're in a dog fight with a Conda in a RES). And this paranoid game play gets even more extreme once you start purchasing bigger and more expensive ships because the penalty for screw ups rises exponentially. For example: a quick mock up for a trade-Conda would cost around 8.7 million dollars to insure and if you're making 1k credits per ton both ways, with 402 tons of cargo, and an average of 10 minutes between both points, you'd need to grind 4 hours just to make back whatever you lost in your hull and upgrades. Once you start talking about cargo as well, that's even more money that can be lost to the void for one little misclick. But that's just for trading, what about combat? My very nearly A-specced Fer De Lance cost around 4.2 million to insure, so one death and I'm spending four or more hours hunting RES bounties to make up the money (depending on your spawns, naturally). Needless to say, with the stakes being so high, people are usually extremely careful with how they spend their time trying to maximize profit and lower risk, which is a good thing to a lot of people. It gives them agency, because they succeed and fail not on the roll of a dice, but rather their own skill (usually) and ability to assess risk vs. reward.
But, the counter point to this is that the current insurance system doesn't encourage a lot of people live dangerously. We find the activity that nets us the best money for our and we enjoy doing, and we stick to it. Sure, I might get the trading bug and do some runs, but that quickly gets old and I'm back to RES hunting (at least for now, I honestly am I little worried about the new update making the NPCs nigh-unkillable, but I digress). Now, I would love to hunt down wanted players! It would be kind of fun to get into all out brawls, trying my damnedest to get their bounty while they try to turn me into space dust and/or get away, however... Human opponents are significantly more dangerous than AI ones (for now), and the likelihood of me cashing in their bounty goes down significantly because they'll either just get away, pull the ole logoffski, force me to run, or blow me up. Now, add in insurance and it's not just time that I'll lose if worse comes to worse, I'll also lose 4.7 million. I don't know about you, but I always factor in the worse case scenario, and it just doesn't make any sense (monetarily) for me to hunt down wanted players right now when I can make a steadier income by hunting NPC pirates. And touching on trading, the risk can be even bigger since you're not only going to lose your ship if things go bad, but also all of your cargo. Some people do take that risk, but I have a feeling that many people don't like trading in open for fear of player pirates... Which is understandable. Heck, I can even understand why people combat log, since every death is measured in hours of progression lost. Do I agree with it? No, but I can understand it at least.
Do I know how to 'fix' the perceived problem? Heck no! But it's just something to think about before anyone damns the OP for miscalculating insurance cost.
Why can't I give you more rep ? Given the harsh death penalty, only hardcore PvPers will actively engage in a PvP environnement. Those people are probably in a minority and complain that not enough people want to PvP. The reason is simple : not everyone find it fun to see hours of game just go *poof*.
At the same time this game will NEVER have many people playing it due to that very reason. ED is a niche game and as long as the players/designers make it with penalties like that, most gamers will avoid ED, as time = money. Lose that time and nothing can replace it.
It's also why gamers have been asking for a PvE EvE like game, not yet another shooter in space with the same mechanics as the previous space games. The very games players are avoiding because of the hurdles. ED is yet another of these space sims having that same exact problems EvE has (trying to stay even open -- back in 2013 CCP literally said they needed DUST to survive as a company).
More hurdles = less players. Exactly what Cata did to WoW and 6 million players unsubbed. These "l33t" games are killing themselves, while casual games are growing (probably because gamers are sick of min/maxers and what they do to games).
The search is on still for that space PvE game that isn't EvE 2. Instead of copying WoW, space games are copying EvE, and in the end it's the same results. Insular games that will carry on via fumes; patches will be slower than dirt; expansions would be like patches in WoW. Nickel and dimed (SOE game development essentially).
and thats fine with me because frankly most gamers are lazy and stupid the ME ME ME xbox/playstation era and frankly we can do without em
I don't much mind insurance, I have to pay out rarely enough, but I'll add one point I don't think I've seen covered yet:
Having stiff penalties for death almost certainly precludes a LOT of what would otherwise be fascinating and engaging gameplay mechanics. While it's realistic, a punitive penalty for failure is invariably less interesting than a rich reward for accomplishing a seemingly impossible goal.
Elite Dangerous' current motto might as well be "There's not a lot for you to do, but at least you can still die penniless and alone."
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And how are you going to pay for ED, then?
WoW may have those lazy kids, but Blizzard isn't hurting for cash (nor nickel and diming it's players to pay the light bill, too).
See?
The trade off for this "elite" game is players have to pay a la carte for everything. Something like Godaddy and it's offerings (annoying as hell). And content is v-e-r-y slow in coming out despite all those nickels and dimes.
Either a game has the rugrats and have content coming out regularly (WoW we know a patch will be coming out in usually 3-4 month cycles, and expansions every 2 years); or a game has 200,000 players total and space really becomes a lonely place, and maybe there will be a content patch in 6 months. To me that isn't "elite" that's existing on crumbs and it feels it. When those MMO wars were going on (2010-2013) the major complaint with WoW returnees was the unpolished nature of the new games. Once you have that goodness you look at games with the expectation it'll be equal or maybe better than WoW. If it isn't, it's "fail". That's why WoW players have that "meh" attitude with other games. Yes, we're spoiled (I readily admit it), but it's also good because you know what is possible because another game did it. Back in 2008 I kept asking SOE can we have a method to group up easier (3hr waits for groups is taxing), all I got were excuses and resistance from the status quo (see the same pattern here with ED about Supercruise???). I went to play WoW a year later, and within 4 months of playing, WoW's LFG was introduced and MMOs have never been the same again. One publisher said no and the community flat out didn't want it; the other publisher said yes and the community is mixed but still uses LFG (and now LFR). SOE could've had it first.
Games need those Xboxers it pays the bills.
I'm veering toward the idea that if you don't have enough money for insurance then you get back the worth of the assets minus pro rata what you can pay. There's still a penalty in that you won't be able to rebuy everything, and it might involve hunting down new modules if you had a high-end ship, but it makes this issue go away.
i dont have to pay for ED anymore im a kickstarter backer ive already paid my dues
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