Back when Elite Dangerous was fairly new, losing your ship permanently by not being able to afford the rebuy didn't necessarily mean hundreds of lost hours. These days with engineers and very expensive ship loadouts, we need a better rebuy system. It would be far better if the insurance agency would hold a lost ship and the player had the chance to earn the rebuy amount and pay the bill later rather than only having the one opportunity to rebuy or be forced to lose the ship permanently. There's no reason a player shouldn't have an indefinite amount of time to go out and earn their ship back at the reduced cost (rebuy cost) rather than have to restart the game with a starting sidewinder - it's a major hit to morale and I've seen a lot of players quit when forced with this loss after making a dumb mistake or even due to bugs.
General Help players by fixing the rebuy system
- Thread starter Citizenzero
- Start date
Yep. But in all seriousness, that's the real problem with rebuy.
In normal circumstances, you firstly have to make a bunch of mistakes to get killed in the first place (or at least deliberately seek out elevated danger), and then the penalty is essentially a token one and you've probably lost more in cargo / exploration data / bounties / missions / whatever than the actual rebuy fee for most ships.
Except when it isn't, when it shoots right up to catastrophic with no middle ground.
Would much prefer Frontier to balance it so that ship loss was less of a problem - no rebuy, no data loss, just an Elite/FE2/FFE-style return to your last-docked station / last login location and a bit of time used up on the failed attempt - but also rather more likely to happen in the first place. (i.e. more or less what happens if you die in Odyssey content)
There's already a loan system that more or less does that: https://elite-dangerous.fandom.com/wiki/Redeployment#Financial_Support
Personally I wouldn't mind if it had higher loan amounts (since players gain expensive ships much faster than they gain pilot rank), offset by needing to pay a significant amount of interest.
Personally I wouldn't mind if it had higher loan amounts (since players gain expensive ships much faster than they gain pilot rank), offset by needing to pay a significant amount of interest.
My word, here we have a suggestion that is not only sensible, but sufficiently narrow in scope that I could actually see it being implemented. Well done!
I agree with Ian a few posts up - the current system is one of basically trivial consequences, except for rarely when it's catastrophic. Worse, the terrible outcome is far more likely to hit new players, since veterans routinely have the cash on hand for hundreds of rebuys. (Admittedly offset by the fact that a new player is less likely to have a ship that is genuinely difficult to replace yet.) I genuinely do like the idea of instead having your ship end up in an impound lot and having to work to earn it back.
Well why not target the core game design of actually blowing ships up in the first place? what would be put in the junk yard after it got blown into a billion pieces?
So what if instead ships explodes, they simply got disabled...
I know, that there would be those that would be sad/angry/upset/etc that they could not see pixels go kaboom on their screen, but if we would only disable the ships, then it would open up options for us to self-repair, using existing/new modules, call in a towing service or call in friends/fuel rats etc to come and help us out.
And if you call a towing service, then they could hold your ships until you have paid their service fee, which could be the same as the current rebuy cost... Opening up options how you can earn the cash to get your ship back.
- Use the free sidewinder earn the credits needed to pay the towing fee.
- Use on of your other ships to earn the credits needed to pay the towing fee. there are several options here
- Transfer the ship to your location (can you afford it)?
- Travel to your other ship using the free sidewinder.
- Travel mto your other ship using Apex (can you afford it)?
Now, what would this do with griefers? if you are not wanted, they cannot call a towing company on you... but now, friends and others, can rescue you, without costs, except the time you wait.. opening up more options for player interactions.
Think about players doing pirate hunting and got beaten by the pirates, you now got a glorious view when your ship get towed by the pirates, and you end up on an anarchy station, and here you get the information that you have to pay a "ransom" or "finders fee" to get your ship back. and they are so "nice" to call the Pilots Federation so that you have a "free Sidewinder" waiting there for you, if want yo use it...
Arranging PvP tournaments, teaching PvP techniques etc, does not need to involve any rebuy costs at all. as we would have several option to restore the disabled ships without any costs...
seems as though this is a lack of preparation and not an issue with re-buy
or, another option, reduce the engineering grind significantly, increase the chances of lising the ship, make ships kinda consumables
They already are with how easy it is to make rebuy....
That's conflicting facts, rebuy is exactly what make the ships to be a "permanent" item, not consumable.
I was talking about loosing a shipe often with the requirement to build a new one from the scratch
The engineering grind loss seems to be the heart of the issue here perhaps? I mean i've not done any of that yet (still in the newbie loop of making the cash to A rate all the ships systems etc) but from what i understand it is the time/grind involved in those engineered upgrades that is super painful when lost in the rebuy system?
Why not introduce actual insurance brokers in the stations, places/people you visit and they have their own menu system for the offers they can give you (which should include premium cover for all your engineered parts etc)? Heck tie it into the powerplay faction system maybe so each faction has it's own Insurance company and the more allied you are with them the cheaper the insurance/rebuy cost becomes?
Why not introduce actual insurance brokers in the stations, places/people you visit and they have their own menu system for the offers they can give you (which should include premium cover for all your engineered parts etc)? Heck tie it into the powerplay faction system maybe so each faction has it's own Insurance company and the more allied you are with them the cheaper the insurance/rebuy cost becomes?
Yes, it would if one would be so careless as to click the wrong option(s) at the rebuy screen.
As it stands, credis are about to be excessively abundant at that point, so usually (i think in more than 99.99% of the cases) you can afford the rebuy hundredfold if you have taken the effort to 'fully' or even moderately engineer your ship.
Ok so you CAN get back your engineered parts with rebuy? (see i am a newbie really).
Well in that case i see no reason for the OP's concern. Just carry on playing the game as it is and all your problems are solved?
Isn't this basically possible with going on foot in odyssey?
Yes, those won't be lost if you can afford the rebuy.
You definitely can, just be sure to take a breath and read what's in front of you before clicking that rebuy button.
A common factor is that folk don't do that, rattle through the rebuy process & end up with an empty shell.
It's been a while since my last rebuy, but isn't the default option to buy all back? So you'd need to actively make a choice to get the freewinder or just the empty shell of ship you lost?
That was how it was last time I had did not have enough credits to rebuy my ship,
So I had the options to deselect parts, to get the price down
I could ask for a loan, very useful for the small ships and some medium ships, nto so much for the large ships.. but by then you should probably have figured it out to never fly without a rebuy of credits saved...
And of course the option to forsake the entire ship and get the free sidewinder.