One problem I can see here is that after a skirmish you may end up having to pay more for repairs than a rebuy, so it would make more sense financially to self destruct and start afresh. Perhaps scale the repair costs to the rebuy costs so that if you crawl in with 1% hull remaining you have to pay 80% of a rebuy cost for repairs?
The problem with boosting repair costs is that the cost of repairing a badly damaged ship, including integrity, needs to be less than the rebuy cost of the ship, otherwise we’ll get a repeat of Commanders self destructing as opposed to repairing ships.
Oh, absolutely.
Rebuy costs would be first in front of the firing-squad if it was up to me.
Firstly, there would
definitely be something related to "premiums" that would increase with risk.
Basically, the rebuy cost would start off at, say, 30% of a ship's value and increase with every claim (to the point where the only incentive to use rebuy would be to retain your engineered modules) and it'd also reduce by, say, 5% every week - to a minimum of the current 5%.
The idea being that if you're regularly doing something hazardous (or illegal) you'd probably want to do it in a cheap, unengineered, ship while, at the same time, players who avoid getting exploded would eventually reap the rewards of their carefulness.
I'd
also create some kind of system that would allow players to take advantage of some kind of "faction insurance", whereby if you're participating in a war, hunting 'goids or getting involved in
meaningful PvP, the faction you're supporting would subsidise rebuy costs or, perhaps, provide replacement ships at discounted rates.
If, OTOH, you're just PvPing for the lulz, I'm afraid you're SOL. There's no such thing as "psychopath insurance".
In addition, I'd revise the cost of rebuys so that engineered modules incur a huge extra rebuy premium.
If, for example, you were at the optimal rebuy rate (5%) and you had an unengineered 4A Beam laser on your Annie (with a value of Cr9m) it'd add Cr500k to the rebuy.
If, OTOH, the Beam laser was engineered, I'd multiply it's rebuy cost in accordance with it's level of engineering.
If our Beam laser was G1 engineered it might add Cr1m to the rebuy, G2 would add Cr1.5m to the rebuy, G3 would add Cr2m etc.
And, yes.
I understand that this sort of stuff could, potentially, create a situation where somebody could be flying, say, an FdL worth Cr100m, get exploded half a dozen times (thus increasing their rebuy premium) and then, eventually, find themselves with a rebuy cost of, perhaps, Cr200m for a ship worth Cr100m.
Good.
The idea is to force people to consider whether or not it's wise to use a given ship, and modules, for a given purpose.
The current system simply allows people to "buy success", firstly with credits and secondly with engineering, there's never any significant penalty for choosing unwisely due to the abundance of available credits.
