There would be people playing the game if it was done iron man style.
If you could give a somewhat plausible reason for how unique mods only available from individual engineers could be re-built exactly as they were via the pilots fed insurance company then ok. I dont think you can though. I can't. I'd rather have the game be internally rational than adding magic hand wavium after magic hand wavium because someone doesn't want there to be consequences.
Currently you have borderline cheaters that have amassed huge sums of credits and credits are basically the only consequence to death. Even non-cheaters can easily amass enough funds that make death basically harmless. I don't think it should be. I think you should be extremely anxious about dying. One good opportunity for that is Engineered mods. It doesn't matter how many credits you have, you still have to do the same activity that a poor person has to do so the risk isn't mitigated by grinding wealth and the recipes are diverse enough that you can't borderline become a robot and grind the necessary stuff to just buy it all back again. I think it's an excellent way to balance the risk of death across the board in a fair way ...putting everyone on an equal playing field.
Of all the things in this game that are unrealistic, you pick on those? Why stop there? I can continue your point and add much more consequence to the players actions. Why do I get a rebuy at all? I didn't buy insurance and the only time they get any money from any player is when they pay the 5% compulsory excess. This insurance company would have gone bankrupt before it even started! Not having paid for the premium means I shouldn't have insurance so rebuy screen should be removed for realism.
When suffering collision damage in my SRV it causes hull damage. When suffering collision damage in my ship it causes shield damage first. Makes no sense. If my shields are protecting my ship from collisions but I can still land at a landing pad makes no sense. Missiles and gun fire cannot enter my shield but materials and cargo canisters floating in space can? They are just making these rules up mainly because of the fact that 'force field' shield generators are impossible anyway, so they should probably be removed altogether for realism reasons.
How about the the super cruise and frame shift drive nonsense. Science has proved its impossible for objects with mass greater than light to travel faster than light. This made up tech is just there for silly game play reasons and adds no realism. Travel time should be in real time if we want realism.
What about the crazy implementation of instancing, I mean what is that about? Completely breaks reality and needs changing to all players in one consistent and permanent reality. Being able to escape into Solo mode is nonsense, needs removing pronto.
What happened to customs in the future, this is completely unrealistic! I am wanted, flying in a high security system and carrying 300 tonnes of narcotics but requesting docking permission and they say "welcome commander, please observe speed restrictions" What the hell? players with any bounty should be instantly arrested and contraband should be immediately seized, or did the human race magically forget how to secure an airport facility. This would only be realistic and a proper repercussion to committing crimes.
Lets talk about these mostly non functional, mostly invisible escape pods, you know what I mean. You have blown up 5000 npcs and not one of them did you see an escape pod. The only time any one has ever
seen an escape pod, it was sitting on the floor of a planetary surface. Doing absolutely nothing, not even emitting a distress call. So why is it the player is magically the only one to get teleported back to the last station they docked at completely unscathed in a brand new ship bought with insurance they didn't buy insurance for. This is nonsense too, death should lead to either death and wipe Iron man style or should leave you stranded on a planet, waiting indefinitely until another player finds you and sells you on the market. That's only if the player even decides to sell you on the market and not dump you randomly in space or worse, sell you on the black market where your'e likely to end up as a slave. That should be the real repercussion for dying, none of this instantly continue where you were nonsense. Completely unrealistic.
On that subject, why is it that along with the magic teleportation, I also manage to save 600 materials? I mean that could be 600 rocks or 600 materials. Those materials I see before I scoop are about 1/6 of the visible mass of a cargo container. So that's roughly 100 tonnes of materials magically stowed away in my escape pod fitted in my Sidewinder!? How is this possible? It is completely unrealistic. These materials should be treated like cargo and be lost on ship destruction, just like cargo. That would be realistic, non of this magic items that have no mass. Now
they could travel faster than light, if only they had thrusters and stuff.
On the subject of cargo, how is it that 1 tonne of cigars occupies the same amount of space as 1 tonne of Uranium? Uranium being one of the heaviest metals and cigars being made of crumpled leaves. Can you believe that my SRV has room for 2 tonnes of cigars? large cigar weighs ~10 grams so that's about 200,000 cigars in my little SRV! Cargo should carry size restrictions too, limiting what can be carried by what.
Considering the impossibility that if the SRV sustains damage from laser guns and collisions, it can be magically fixed with a couple of rocks I would have to say that again this is completely unrealistic, any damage to SRVs should be final until docked in a station where repairs can be paid for because such things are never free.
Why do players get all the SRV pleasure? I want to see NPC's spawning in SRV's every time you land on a surface to explore it. I mean there is always a ship waiting to interdict me in the nothingness of space but no pirates on populated planets? Nonsense again, every moment should have me running from some pirate trying to destroy my SRV for 1t of tea. I want realism that makes every task as difficult and tedious as possible to give me a real simulation of living in space.
I haven't even gone into the fact that the SRV is pulled up to the ship by a tractor beam, the lasers stop dead at 3km and flying into black hole results in bouncing off it! We need these anomalies removed at once, If tractors beams exist I want to be able to use it on cargo canisters and ships, not just SRV's! Lasers should be able to shoot from one end of a system to the other! Flying into a black hole? That should just be game over, end, nothing more of this account. Want to play again? sorry your cmdr is no more buy another account.
Is this the kind of realism you were going for?
...Alternatively you could just remember that it's a computer game.
Computer games are meant to be fun.
Losing 200+ hours of progress due to death in game is not fun.
I could happily get behind the idea of increasing costs in rebuy for modded items, considering A3 thrusters are 500k and A3 enhanced thrusters are 5mil. Makes sense and seems like a massive oversight from FD that a highly improved modified weapon should still have the same value as a regular weapon. Now
that makes no sense, but I guess FD are worried about people making credits from selling engineers stuff.
