Increased rebuy for engineered modules to tackle credit inflation

Credits are utterly inflated since the implementation of void opals and deep core mining in general. Lore wise, actually a cool thing as with advanced technologies we now are able to amass a giant fortune. The problem? They aren't worth anything anymore. New players can easily get a fully A graded Anaconda within a day and unlocking a hand full of basic engineers in a week will grant them the top power level there is to achieve in this game.

Only ship transfer costs display a somewhat valid credit sink but that's about it. Even the most expensive ships are no longer expensive, relatively seen. To tackle this I propose the following:

- Increased rebuy for engineered modules.

Your insurance grants you your ship as it was when you lost it, a fatal failure in the first place. And you do not pay any extra credits for engineered modules where valueable materials, way more valueable than credits, are spend to even achieve this level of power for each module. It is only fair to pay extra credits for your insurance company for them to replace your modules, engineered.

This works intuitive, like this: Assume a vanilla module costs 5% of its buying price to replace, each grade of modification increases this percentage by 20% and each secondary effect (for example fast charge for shield generators or phasing sequence for pulse lasers) by 5%. This means that a G5 engineered module with a secondary effect will cost 5% + 5*20% + 5% = 110% of its original credit value to replace. The credits are spent to pay their respective workers which gather materials for the company to be able to replace such high value modules.
Keep in mind that this is only accounted for each module so if you only run one G5 engineered module (for example a G5 increased range FSD) your total rebuy upon ship destruction won't increase significantly (maybe instead of 5% you pay 10% relatively speaking).

The aimed effect for this change is to make losing expensive ships more risky and cheap, small ships not so. For example a fully G5 engineered Viper MK III will never exceed a ~3M-ish credits rebuy mark as a fully A rated Viper MK III merely costs 3M credits to buy in the first place. This is intended because engineering a higher class (=expensive) module gives a much higher effect than engineering a smaller class module. Take a C3A and a C8A powerplant for example. Overcharging them both to G5 and adding the monstered effect (which have the very same material costs for both modules) will result in +5.5 MW for the C3A powerplant but +17MW for the C8A powerplant. That's 3 times as much despite having to pay the same amount of materials.
With this pwoer difference it is only fair to scale the rebuys the same way the prices are scaled (non-linear). The result is as already mentioned: high risk for piloting big, expensive ships engineered and low risk for piloting small, cheap ships engineered.

With much higher rebuys the potential loss of a ship displays a huge credit sink that is appropiate considering how fast credits are earned these days.

Additionally let's assume you lost your ship and can't afford to rebuy it completely. You will be able to unselect specific modules as you already can and replace them with stock modules using the already available feature of the rebuy menu. This will significantly reduce your rebuy costs per modules at the cost of losing an engineered module.

Lastly, another sideeffect is that purchasing modules in discounted equipment shops plays a more significant role as the scaling of the rebuy price soley depends on the original starting price. Assuming you bought one module in normal shops and one in LYR space (= -15% module costs) means that you can save 16.5% max. of the initial module price upon paying a rebuy if you bought it in LYR space compared to normal shops, making module buying location much more significant which adds a tiny bit of gameplay depth.

The values can obviously be adapted and changed but I aimed for around 100% of a module's original buying price for a fully G5 engineered module so this whole idea wouldn't work if it would be implemented using a 30% aiming mark as the difference is too low and credits will remain inflated, albeit not as much.

Thanks for your attention.
 
I believe ship destruction should be something to be avoided, but I am aware that there are others for whom a rule that suits me would spoil their game, so I am happy to simply play to avoid losing ships where possible.

I am in favour of the general idea that modifying your ship increases insurance, potentially massively. More could be done with the insurance percentage to add consequence as a balancing factor.

I'd like a griefer style of player to be able to go out in a blaze of glory rather than just respawn & carry on endlessly and had hoped notoriety would play a part in that when it was originally introduced in 3.0 (March 2018).
 
Understand your thoughts but losing the engineered modules would be far more irritating than losing credits ...

I’d suggest a few things:

1 - Insurance is invalid if you are currently wanted. Sidewinder for you, criminal!

2 - Increase the options on the rebuy screen:
- i) Free Sidewinder
- ii) Current cost for unengineered modules
- iii) Increased (how much?!) cost for like-4-like including engineering

For consensual PvP there would need to be some way to issue a “challenge” (similar to a Wing Invite) that would, once accepted, allow either player to fire first without becoming wanted.

For non-consensual PvP ... don’t start a fight you can’t win!
 
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Understand your thoughts but losing the engineered modules would be far more irritating than losing credits ...

I’d suggest a few things:

1 - Insurance is invalid if you are currently wanted. Sidewinder for you, criminal!

2 - Increase the options on the rebuy screen:
  • i) Free Sidewinder
  • ii) Current cost for unengineered modules
  • iii) Increased (how much?!) cost for like-4-like including engineering
For consensual PvP there would need to be some way to issue a “challenge” (similar to a Wing Invite) that would, once accepted, allow either player to fire first without becoming wanted.

For non-consensual PvP ... don’t start a fight you can’t win!

I'm not keen on invalidating insurance for being wanted, I think that would be exploited by griefers to frustrate other players (by making them wanted then claiming the bounty).

I like the rest though. It seems sensible to me that a thing that makes your ship more likely to survive should have more of a cost if you don't survive.

Perhaps knocking back the engineering on a random module by one level each time the ship goes through an insurance claim would work, but grandfathered modules would be a sticking point and I can see it being a generally unpopular proposal.
 
You are making assumption that rebuy is a part of regular gameplay and happens daily several times.
I remember last two mine:
  • two weeks ago took a planetary mission for the first time and died under heavy rain of land turrets fire in restricted zone
  • three of four mounths ago, I returned into ED from mounth-two break. Forgot how to fly in combat zone.
A lot of times I managed to escape with 2-4% of hull.
 
I believe ship destruction should be something to be avoided, but I am aware that there are others for whom a rule that suits me would spoil their game, so I am happy to simply play to avoid losing ships where possible.

I play a character that avoids habitual ship loss, but it's hard to have any sort of organic PvP experience when no matter how many times you shoot someone down, you know you their is no disincentive for them to come back for more because there is no attrition mechanism.

For consensual PvP there would need to be some way to issue a “challenge” (similar to a Wing Invite) that would, once accepted, allow either player to fire first without becoming wanted.

The nearest lawless system is only a hop, skip, and a jump away.

Most jurisdictions should not be recognizing duels, and if one has to be settled in regulated space, simply refraining to report it by turning crimes off should suffice.

I'm not keen on invalidating insurance for being wanted, I think that would be exploited by griefers to frustrate other players (by making them wanted then claiming the bounty).

Of course it would, but consequences have to go both ways.

You are making assumption that rebuy is a part of regular gameplay and happens daily several times.

Getting shot down is largely optional, but the relative lack of turn around time or attrition still commonly results in play styles that are phenomenally reckless and result in radically different sorts of encounters that would be expected if punishing losses were possible.

While some people certainly like this, I don't feel the core game mechanisms should emphasize it.
 
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Considering death is actually very avoidable in ED, I'd opt for increasing the cost of repairing engineered modules, significantly, on top of the increased rebuy for engineering.

Logically speaking, it would make a lot of sense to have to visit and engineer to fully repair engineered modules (you can repair them up to 85~% at any starport, or with a repair module), but considering how often I end up with a wrecked ship, this would probably just serve to annoy me rather than add anything of value. Lol
 
Or you could just respawn with stock unengineered modules......
I'd be down for that as an option but with respect to the PvP community that visit the rebuy screen alot let alone for training purposes there should be an option to be able to replace engineered modules too. I'd be open for an alternative payment method next to credits. maybe pay materials in advance? Or maybe deliver commodities to refineries that process them to get materials?
 
Rather than simply the rebuy, I'd rather that it increased all values relating to maintenance/rebuy/rearming/transfer by a percentage. The only thing it shouldn't affect is resale value to prevent players engineering then selling modules.

I don't agree with it changing the overall costs though, it should instead be limited to the module in question. It doesn't make sense for an engineered pulse laser to somehow increase the rebuy cost for your hull plating.

Another potential improvement would be for it to be varied based upon the modification in question rather than simply the grade, so that it doesn't kill off hull tanking even more with increased repair costs while the cost increase could be used as an additional balance lever to bring potentially overpowered mods in line. For example, a charge enhanced distributor could increase maintenance costs by 100-500% depending on grade while the comparatively simple weapon focused modification might only increase costs by 50-250% and the easily maintained shielded modification might only put the cost up between 10% and 50% depending on grade. Sure, a particular mod might be the "best" in the field, but may not be cost efficient to operate over a longer period.
 
I don't agree with it changing the overall costs though, it should instead be limited to the module in question. It doesn't make sense for an engineered pulse laser to somehow increase the rebuy cost for your hull plating.

I never said that engineered modules increase your whole ship's rebuy. You only pay increased rebuy for each individual engineered module so assume you have only one G5 engineered FSD and the rest is vanilla, you pay 5% of each vanilla module upon destruction +110% of your FSD's buying price in credits which sums up to an average of about ~10% of your total ship's credit value but this is just a guess and not a factor on top.
 
Considering death is actually very avoidable in ED, I'd opt for increasing the cost of repairing engineered modules, significantly, on top of the increased rebuy for engineering.
To screw hulltanks even more? its like 8/10 ships being 4000mj mamba or fdl is not enough? I worn you, we cant push those numbers to 11/10:) BUT i will agree if we nerf skill boosters to curent g2-g3 standards, this would have no effect on pve in practice, but restore some balance in pvp.
As to OP suggestion i like it, game just needs more money sinks, so this is a good start. I also think small ships are too cheap(i fly them a lot) and i found funny that pair of vipers(and often 1) that together have rebuy cost of 500k usually beat fdl with with 10mln rebuy, but its effect of absurd ships and modules price jump with size without respective increase in capability.
 
To screw hulltanks even more? its like 8/10 ships being 4000mj mamba or fdl is not enough? I worn you, we cant push those numbers to 11/10:) BUT i will agree if we nerf skill boosters to curent g2-g3 standards, this would have no effect on pve in practice, but restore some balance in pvp.
As to OP suggestion i like it, game just needs more money sinks, so this is a good start. I also think small ships are too cheap(i fly them a lot) and i found funny that pair of vipers(and often 1) that together have rebuy cost of 500k usually beat fdl with with 10mln rebuy, but its effect of absurd ships and modules price jump with size without respective increase in capability.
My shield tanks often end up in quite the state after a battle.
A simple balance pass for my suggestion would just be make hull plating cheaper to buy, and shield technology more expensive.
After all, armour is just armour, but shields are complex technology.
 
A simple balance pass for my suggestion would just be make hull plating cheaper to buy, and shield technology more expensive.
After all, armour is just armour, but shields are complex technology.
You like your 4000mj FDL, don't you? Do you want to fight in this FDL only other FDL's or it's so important for game ecosystem that some people make selfnerf and take other ship so those weaker can win something? ,because it's current state of pvp, and we can't talk about rebuys of engineered ships in other context than PvP.
 
You like your 4000mj FDL, don't you? Do you want to fight in this FDL only other FDL's or it's so important for game ecosystem that some people make selfnerf and take other ship so those weaker can win something? ,because it's current state of pvp, and we can't talk about rebuys of engineered ships in other context than PvP.
I'm confused. Making armour cheaper is a buff to armour. And making shield technology more expensive is a nerf to shields.

I also don't own a 4000mj FDL.
I usually fly hybrids. :p

(I do own and FDL, but it catches fire if the weather man even suggests it might be sunny)
 
My shield tanks often end up in quite the state after a battle.
A simple balance pass for my suggestion would just be make hull plating cheaper to buy, and shield technology more expensive.
After all, armour is just armour, but shields are complex technology.
Armor is not always armor. In Elite itis yes but even today armor has some pretty complex science behind it. Let alone the angle of impact on tanks, which is represented in world of tanks and adds some depth to armor mechanics. Whereas in Elite everything deals damage and armor hasn't got the ability to completely negate damage. Even a C1 MC with an armor pen of 20 will deal damage to a T10 with an armor hardness of 75. That's almost just 1/4th!
However, I don't think alterning the shields and armor prices will help the issue I am trying to tackle.
 
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