Ship impound yard: What should happen when you can't afford your insurance claim.

[Ryan256]

I have seen numerous threads on the forums from people who lost ships that it took them months to acquire. Whether it was due to them taking a risk or simply making a bonehead mistake the result is the same. They cannot afford to pay the insurance claim on the ship and wind up losing a multimillion credit craft that took them months to acquire. My suggestion for fixing this issue is this: Ship impound.

It works like so:
Instead of that multimillion credit ship simply being gone when you can't afford the insurance claim, it gets put into impound and is held there until you pay the insurance claim on it. You, meanwhile, are put back into a basic Sidewinder with whatever credits you still have to keep playing. But you can only have 1 ship in impound at a time. Get killed again without being able to afford the insurance on your craft & you're just out like the current system and have to start back with whatever credits you still have.

Example:
You have a 100M credit Python and 1M credits available. You take off for a warzone to do some fighting and end up getting pummeled by a wing of 4 Vultures. Your 100M credit ship that took you 5 months to be able to afford is toast. And you are short 4M credits on the insurance cost. But instead of your awesome ship simply being gone it now gets put into an impound with a 5M buyout cost. You are now back in a Sidewinder with your 1M credits. Enough to afford a decently equipped Cobra to start earning that 5M credits you need to get your Python out of impound. Once you have 5M you travel back to the station that has your Python in impound and pay the insurance claim. Your Python is now available to you again through the stored ships tab of the Shipyard.

Trying to juggle the complicated issue of what happens when the player dies is a very tricky part of game development. You want the penalty to be severe enough that players fear getting killed and try to play their best to avoid it. But at the same time you do not want it so severe that you drive players away because something they have worked months to achieve is now gone. In the above scenario it would probably take somewhere in the neighborhood of 12~15 hours of game time to get the credits you need to recover your ship. I believe this is penalty enough without making the player have to start again from ground 0. Its severe enough that it hurts. But not so severe that you are causing your players to loose enjoyment in your game. After all. This is a game and to enjoy ourselves is why we're here.

 

[SpartanBeef]

The solution

Example:
You have a 100M credit Python and 1M credits available.

You are about to press the launch button. You stop and think to yourself "I should probably check my rebuy costs". You realise that if your lovely 100M Cr python is destroyed you can't afford to rebuy it. You go to the ship yard and use your 1 million to get a cobra MK3 and equip it for rare goods runs(or bounty hunting). You make a few rares runs and get the money to afford the rebuy cost of the python. You get back in your python.

The ship loss mechanic is working as intended and is already very forgiving. If by the time you can buy a python you haven't worked out not to fly what you can't rebuy then you probably shouldn't have left the sidewinder.

Aside from anything else, please explain how you impound a ship that has been blown into smithereens.

 

[xondk]

I think the current insurance system is fine, there is plenty of warning that you cannot afford the rebuy, a quick look at the first page on the right screen will show red text, attracting your attention towards your rebuy and the fact that you cannot afford it?
I get that people want to go ooohh new shiny, want to use it now now now now! but it is the same thing that happens if you take your new shiny car out and wreck it, the dealer isn't going to give you a new and the insurance is going to make you pay to get it fixed, most likely with a big premium...
Yes, I get "But this is a game and games should be fun" I get that, but at least to me, games actually punishing you increases the risk and as such the enjoyment and fun the game gives.

 

[Leoben Capa]

There's already interest-free loans if you can't afford the rebuy cost.
How do you impound a ship that's been blown to pieces?

 

[Feldspar]

One major problem with this, the ship has been destroyed, why would it be in an impound lot?

It is easy enough to gain the credits to pay for your insurance excess before you boost into a station wall, there is already a loan in place as a safety net, anyone flying a ship worth more than the loan should already know this. In the end what you propose is to reduce the penalty of death even further.

At most they should add a removable message that warns you when you can't pay your excess and then let you decide whether you want to run the risk.

 

[Kalisperas]

There's already interest-free loans if you can't afford the rebuy cost.
How do you impound a ship that's been blown to pieces?

I think they just used the wrong word here. "Impound" doesn't really make sense, but I get the idea. In real life, if you wreck your car, the insurance company doesn't say, "If you can't afford your deductible on the day of the accident, you're out of luck". You can certainly wait until payday to pay the deductible, you'll just have to walk or borrow a car until then. This change would keep the penalty for death the same is it is: you're out the re-buy cost of the ship, you could just defer that insurance payment, and have to "walk" in the meantime.