<DISCLAIMER> I'm a script-writer, games developer, a Sci-Fi nut and a roleplayer for more than 24 years. I literally can't help doing this. You have been warned 
***
I used to wonder (and grumble) about the unrealistically low insurance costs, and the impossibility of death in non-hardcore. Once I got things straight in my head, I realised that the needs of gameplay can be squared with the world simulation fairly elegantly, using the bits of lore we already have. Here goes:
As members of the Pilots Federation every single players in Elite Dangerous is a member of a privileged oligarchy. We pay stupendeously low insurance payments, getting our space craft replace for a tiny fraction of their actual value. It has been suggested that this is offset by a tax on every bit of goods traded, and every financial transaction made. That is surely a part of the answer, but it's not enough on it's own. It becomes easier when you realise that even if the game attracts an audience of millions, we are still a vanishingly tiny proportion of the inhabitants of Human Space. 60,000 - 100,000 inhabited systems with hundreds of billions of humans. We form (at most) 0.001% of humanity in Elite.
The world of Elite has a nicely non-utopian flavour. I mean, it's a nice, high tech world, but it's at it's heart the "eighties" Sci-Fi of Traveller, Alien and Blade Runner. A used future, in both look and feel. We also know that both the Elite Federation and the Pilots Federation are powerful, shadowy organisations not limited by jurisdiction or power block. As members of the Pilots Federation, each and every one of us is a special snowflake with Freemasons membership and the backing of the Illuminati. Low level members at first, but members nevertheless, quite possibly by virtue of family ties, or catching the eye of a patron.
So yeah. If we hit rock bottom, we get handed a 32,000 cr navy long range scout ship, no questions asked. If we lose our ship, we pay 10% of it's value and it's replaced (with an even more special sub-class having even that halved... a shout out to my fellow Alphas. Own the privilege bruthas and sistas).
The Pilots Federation is vast, and power hath it's privileges. The technology clearly exists to wrap us in layers of protection (note how easy it is for us to settle fines... anywhere). The technology of near immortality clearly exists. Federal law restricts cloning, but the Empire are masters of bio-tech. Officially the Pilots Federation supplies each and every ship we own with those complicated looking pilots' chairs. I do not doubt that they have the very best protection and escape capsule technology human science can manage, but sometimes a catastrophic drive failure just blows the whole ship up. Sometimes a human error makes the ship boost into a station wall at 400m/s, or a railgun slug blows the pilot into a fine red mist. What happens then? We still wake up at a station, ready to take control of a replacement ship (after settling the payments).
So what's going on? Easy. Cloning exists, and some form of "brain-taping" / mind backup is on roughly the same tech level. Basically, in the non-ironman universe of Elite, the commanders are effectively immortal. They die, and it's unpleasant. Pain and fear suck just as much as they do for us, but even when the worst comes to worst, you just lose the memories since your last backup.
Except... and this is one clever aspect of this. The Pilots Federation naturally frowns on the special snowflakes getting all antisocial with each other. A certain level of exploiting the plebes is all in good fun ("hey, let's put on masks and hunt the poor for sport"), it's almost inevitable with this sort of elite, but a truly sociopathic member would quickly remind everybody of the bad side of immortality and untouchability. Hence... at extreme cases the protection will be taken away. This is the explanation to what happens to those who convince Frontier that they just can't play with the other kids, and get hellbanned into griefer-only instancing. They were annoying enough that the leadership of the Pilots Federation took note and removed their protection.
***
So there you go. It even explains why we will have a hightened effect on the background simulation and on economical factors. We are playing people who are more special than any aristocracy of old. Even if you don't want to acknowledge it, you are just a regular guy/gal, a space trucker, an explorer or a merc, it's like you were born into royalty, or are the child of a billionaire. You don't have to acknowledge it in any way, but it doesn't stop being true.
I hope this has amused some of you. (And if Frontier want to make any of it official, I'm happy to write up a clean version, free of cost and with no strings attached.)
***
I used to wonder (and grumble) about the unrealistically low insurance costs, and the impossibility of death in non-hardcore. Once I got things straight in my head, I realised that the needs of gameplay can be squared with the world simulation fairly elegantly, using the bits of lore we already have. Here goes:
As members of the Pilots Federation every single players in Elite Dangerous is a member of a privileged oligarchy. We pay stupendeously low insurance payments, getting our space craft replace for a tiny fraction of their actual value. It has been suggested that this is offset by a tax on every bit of goods traded, and every financial transaction made. That is surely a part of the answer, but it's not enough on it's own. It becomes easier when you realise that even if the game attracts an audience of millions, we are still a vanishingly tiny proportion of the inhabitants of Human Space. 60,000 - 100,000 inhabited systems with hundreds of billions of humans. We form (at most) 0.001% of humanity in Elite.
The world of Elite has a nicely non-utopian flavour. I mean, it's a nice, high tech world, but it's at it's heart the "eighties" Sci-Fi of Traveller, Alien and Blade Runner. A used future, in both look and feel. We also know that both the Elite Federation and the Pilots Federation are powerful, shadowy organisations not limited by jurisdiction or power block. As members of the Pilots Federation, each and every one of us is a special snowflake with Freemasons membership and the backing of the Illuminati. Low level members at first, but members nevertheless, quite possibly by virtue of family ties, or catching the eye of a patron.
So yeah. If we hit rock bottom, we get handed a 32,000 cr navy long range scout ship, no questions asked. If we lose our ship, we pay 10% of it's value and it's replaced (with an even more special sub-class having even that halved... a shout out to my fellow Alphas. Own the privilege bruthas and sistas).
The Pilots Federation is vast, and power hath it's privileges. The technology clearly exists to wrap us in layers of protection (note how easy it is for us to settle fines... anywhere). The technology of near immortality clearly exists. Federal law restricts cloning, but the Empire are masters of bio-tech. Officially the Pilots Federation supplies each and every ship we own with those complicated looking pilots' chairs. I do not doubt that they have the very best protection and escape capsule technology human science can manage, but sometimes a catastrophic drive failure just blows the whole ship up. Sometimes a human error makes the ship boost into a station wall at 400m/s, or a railgun slug blows the pilot into a fine red mist. What happens then? We still wake up at a station, ready to take control of a replacement ship (after settling the payments).
So what's going on? Easy. Cloning exists, and some form of "brain-taping" / mind backup is on roughly the same tech level. Basically, in the non-ironman universe of Elite, the commanders are effectively immortal. They die, and it's unpleasant. Pain and fear suck just as much as they do for us, but even when the worst comes to worst, you just lose the memories since your last backup.
Except... and this is one clever aspect of this. The Pilots Federation naturally frowns on the special snowflakes getting all antisocial with each other. A certain level of exploiting the plebes is all in good fun ("hey, let's put on masks and hunt the poor for sport"), it's almost inevitable with this sort of elite, but a truly sociopathic member would quickly remind everybody of the bad side of immortality and untouchability. Hence... at extreme cases the protection will be taken away. This is the explanation to what happens to those who convince Frontier that they just can't play with the other kids, and get hellbanned into griefer-only instancing. They were annoying enough that the leadership of the Pilots Federation took note and removed their protection.
***
So there you go. It even explains why we will have a hightened effect on the background simulation and on economical factors. We are playing people who are more special than any aristocracy of old. Even if you don't want to acknowledge it, you are just a regular guy/gal, a space trucker, an explorer or a merc, it's like you were born into royalty, or are the child of a billionaire. You don't have to acknowledge it in any way, but it doesn't stop being true.
I hope this has amused some of you. (And if Frontier want to make any of it official, I'm happy to write up a clean version, free of cost and with no strings attached.)
