Since credits are by far no longer the only currency we have, it makes quite alot of sense to reduce the amount of time it takes to get a certain value of credits. However, as credits have been becoming more and more, the death and crime penalties have not.
With mining offering a great credit income source, covering the first level of end game income sources it doesn't give you any valueable materials, merits or similar currencies of interest for other parts of the game. You have to do something else than mining to aquire said currencies.
There is a downside though. Rebuys and crime have become meaningless. Even a 50m credit rebuy is nothing that hurts anyone now. Even a couple of my friends who just started the game are now sitting on billions of credits. That won't grant them a free ticket to hunt thargoids or do any other kind of high end PvE or PvP but it is a free card to never lose a ship ever again and thus have no risk at all.
Which brings me to the point of this thread. Risk doesn't exist in this game anymore. No matter if you are in a Cutter with a one billion credit bounty, you can easily cover the cost wit ha small amount of time invested in mining deep core deposits. While ships have become stronger and stronger through engineering, they haven't become more expensive to replace, same goes for criminals.
This is why I suggest to first increase the rebuy costs for every modded module on your ship (up to 100% rebuy instead of the current 5%) and go even further for criminals to not replace modules or a whole ship at all upon destruction and being caught by authorities if the bounty is incredibly high (100m or more for example).
Ofcourse, this is just a general idea and the values can be tweaked but the point is that risk should be present in the game as it has been before. Now assuming you are a criminal hunting NPCs you will get a bounty pretty quickly and thus authorities will hunt you down. If you are having a bounty of 100m or more you will lose your ship upon destruction and be granted a free sidewinder at the nearest detention facility.
Assuming you are a lawful commander but are having a fully engineered Python for example, you will have to pay the basic 5% of your current ship's value plus (5*X)% of the credit value of any modified module with X being the grade of the module. For example If you are having a C7A powerplant that roughly costs 50m credits but is engineered with a G5 blueprint, you will have to pay 5*5 = 25% of its credit value to replace it, meaning you have to pay 12.5m credits for the powerplant alone. This may sound like alot of credits but keep in mind that with the current credit income values this is a matter of just a hand full of hours invested in mining for a fatal failure of yourself ... and that I said the values can be tweaked.
Now the last case where you are a criminal of below 100m bounty value, you will have to pay 100% of your module's value in credits multiplied by X with X being the grade of the module again. Taking the C7A powerplant as an example again, that would be roughtly 50*5 = 250m just to replace the powerplant itself.
In case one can't afford this, you can choose to not replace a module and select a default E rated module until you can afford the rebuy.
Lastly, a little suggestion that is slightly off-topic but still relevant: Remove the decay of notoriety alltogether and force the criminal to do social jobs in order to decrease the notoriety. For example doing rescue missions, countering famine, rebuilding stations, etc. It might be required to purchase a new ship for this that is clean. This will ensure continous ATR response for utterly high notoriety players that can't be countered by sitting in a station over night.
Now I believe this will ensure way more risk in this game and make crime and rebuys something to consider again instead of self destructing your 50m rebuy Cutter just to get back to the bubble faster or search for the nearest IF to pay off your utterly low bounty.
With mining offering a great credit income source, covering the first level of end game income sources it doesn't give you any valueable materials, merits or similar currencies of interest for other parts of the game. You have to do something else than mining to aquire said currencies.
There is a downside though. Rebuys and crime have become meaningless. Even a 50m credit rebuy is nothing that hurts anyone now. Even a couple of my friends who just started the game are now sitting on billions of credits. That won't grant them a free ticket to hunt thargoids or do any other kind of high end PvE or PvP but it is a free card to never lose a ship ever again and thus have no risk at all.
Which brings me to the point of this thread. Risk doesn't exist in this game anymore. No matter if you are in a Cutter with a one billion credit bounty, you can easily cover the cost wit ha small amount of time invested in mining deep core deposits. While ships have become stronger and stronger through engineering, they haven't become more expensive to replace, same goes for criminals.
This is why I suggest to first increase the rebuy costs for every modded module on your ship (up to 100% rebuy instead of the current 5%) and go even further for criminals to not replace modules or a whole ship at all upon destruction and being caught by authorities if the bounty is incredibly high (100m or more for example).
Ofcourse, this is just a general idea and the values can be tweaked but the point is that risk should be present in the game as it has been before. Now assuming you are a criminal hunting NPCs you will get a bounty pretty quickly and thus authorities will hunt you down. If you are having a bounty of 100m or more you will lose your ship upon destruction and be granted a free sidewinder at the nearest detention facility.
Assuming you are a lawful commander but are having a fully engineered Python for example, you will have to pay the basic 5% of your current ship's value plus (5*X)% of the credit value of any modified module with X being the grade of the module. For example If you are having a C7A powerplant that roughly costs 50m credits but is engineered with a G5 blueprint, you will have to pay 5*5 = 25% of its credit value to replace it, meaning you have to pay 12.5m credits for the powerplant alone. This may sound like alot of credits but keep in mind that with the current credit income values this is a matter of just a hand full of hours invested in mining for a fatal failure of yourself ... and that I said the values can be tweaked.
Now the last case where you are a criminal of below 100m bounty value, you will have to pay 100% of your module's value in credits multiplied by X with X being the grade of the module again. Taking the C7A powerplant as an example again, that would be roughtly 50*5 = 250m just to replace the powerplant itself.
In case one can't afford this, you can choose to not replace a module and select a default E rated module until you can afford the rebuy.
Lastly, a little suggestion that is slightly off-topic but still relevant: Remove the decay of notoriety alltogether and force the criminal to do social jobs in order to decrease the notoriety. For example doing rescue missions, countering famine, rebuilding stations, etc. It might be required to purchase a new ship for this that is clean. This will ensure continous ATR response for utterly high notoriety players that can't be countered by sitting in a station over night.
Now I believe this will ensure way more risk in this game and make crime and rebuys something to consider again instead of self destructing your 50m rebuy Cutter just to get back to the bubble faster or search for the nearest IF to pay off your utterly low bounty.
