Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I love watching a troll get mad.

…and let's stop right there.
It's not an insurance company — it's a game mechanic intended to incentivise ship destruction.

What really doesn't make sense is to have a mechanic that is intended to promote ship destruction not pay out when ships are being destroyed.

It also gives minerals their value. Removing it altogether would just be mean to the miners.
Not really, no. Missions and bounties are huge ISK faucets; insurance is not.

Yes.
No, you're confusing me with you. You're pretty much the only one that has said that so far. Oh, I suppose that Fluffers said something that might be interpreted that way, but you're still confusing the meaning of that answer with what I'm saying. He's saying that, no, people will still get ganked. I'm saying that insurance encourages the loss of ships. If anything, they need to encourage it more.

So, again, let's see if you can actually answer the question: why should they stop paying insurance for CONCORD kills?[/quote]

You and a few others I've seen on these forums tend to tout the benefits if isk sinks in the game. How is not good for the game then if insurance doesn't payout on ships lost in criminal activities when the criminals will have to spend more isk to replace their ships? They should stop paying the insurance for the same reason they lowered the insurance payout on Battleships. I know guys that used to hang out in jita buying and self-destructing battleships for the insurance payout. That was insurance fraud just like the Ganker's insurance claims.

He's not talking about suicide gankers — he's talking about people tearing up his patch of lowsec.
You can do anything and everything you'd like pre-emptively against them, because it's lowsec.
It's not good because it reduces the amount of ships blown up, which is the thing that generates demand and which stimulates production. Moreover, it's such a small faucet that fiddling with it will have very small results, and it will affect a small number of people a lot. If ISK influx is a problem, then it's far better to slightly reduce one of the large faucets instead — a lot of people get a little bit less, which doesn't hurt that much.

Also, adding ISK sinks does not have the same effect as removing ISK faucets, largely because the number of ISK faucets is very small.
No, that was feeding on the idiocy of miners who had no clue about economics and who sold minerals for far below they value. Suicide ganking is not the same thing, if nothing else than for the simple reason that the insurance doesn't cover the whole cost of the loss.

If CCP did not want high sec ganking to happen then they would have made it so you cannot shoot a non red target in highsec.

Also for you people saying that insurance is a serious isk faucet I would like to direct you to here which is the fourth quarter report from 2010 released by CCP. Starting on page 18 they talk about the economy and on page 19 they show a graphical representation of isk faucets and sinks. You will see that insurance is not that big of an issue.

Suicide ganks will still happen without insurance payouts due to people who like to kill carebears not caring about the cost. I point you to the Goons and Hulkagedon. They are probably making money on ice or exhumer speculation, but they are not making money off of the individual ganks.

As for risk versus reward. Risk is anything that can cause a loss of profits. In high security space, a miner in a hulk has to worry about gankers, NPCs, and other miners. An empty asteroid field certainly is a risk, but a minor one since high sec does not run out of low end ores. NPCs are variable risk depending on what ship you are in. If you are in a hulk, then belt rats can be easily tanked. Other miners you might ask? Yes. Another miner can cause the empty asteroid field as well as their competition on the market can lead to a loss of profits. (if they under cut your prices then you are not selling ore. If you are not selling ore then you are not making money) Finally gankers, which are really the only risk to high security miners.

Gankers fall into two categories, for fun or for profit. Ganker's for money look for targets that are soft enough to easily kill while having high potential profit. What is a soft target that has a high potential profit? Oh I do not know, maybe an un tanked industrial with a load of officer mods flying on auto pilot? Maybe a kestrel flying with a bunch of PLEX? Yes those examples will be ganked, however those situations can be reduced if some intelligence is used. Profit ganking though has a lot of variables. You have to find the target, kill the target, and hope that the loot survives. Also the longer it takes to find a target decreases the isk/hr ratio. The fact that it seems so profitable is because there are a lot of people running around in un tanked industrials and there are a lot of items work quite a bit of money.( Would you not pop someone for the chance of a covetor BPC falling in your lap?) Removing insurance payout just means that gankers for profit will just be bitten harder if they fail to kill the target or the loot does not survive, but who cares right? They will just win the lottery next time right? The ganker that does it for fun however does not care about his/her loss and goes after whoever they feel like. (which tends to be carebear miners) And there are a lot of gankers that do it for fun.

Quite a few of you are saying that it is an exploit, abuse, unrealistic of an insurance system. Well yes, in the real world it is. Eve is not the real world. The insurance system was added by the developers to make the loss of a ship less painful. I would much rather grind up 30 million instead of 90 million for the same ship. Is killing someone in the real world wrong? Depends on the social structure you live in. There have been times and places in the real world where killing someone is perfectly fine. Roman gladiators anyone? As I have said earlier, if CCP wanted highsec to be truly safe, they would have made it that way.

Now a fun fact about player ships blowing up. Every player ship that is blown up has to come from somewhere. Where do those ships come from? From another player for money. Where does this player get the resources to build said ship? Either from gathering it him/herself or from buying from the market. Where does the resources on the market come from? From another player who goes out and gathers it. As such money is circulating between players. Another fun fact. If more ships are blown up than are produced demand for said ships goes up and ship producers can charge more money. If fewer ships are blown up, which is happening now, there is less demand for ships and prices go down.

A quick word on making a profit. You do not make a profit until you have paid your expenses. As such if you just spent 200 million to buy a hulk, you have not made a profit until you have mined 200 million worth of ore with it. So, do not fly ships that do not survive for as long as it takes to pay for them. IE do not fly what you cannot afford lose. Some of you were getting mad for the suggestion of mining in anything less than a hulk. Well covetors are a lot cheaper, can be insured for most of their cost, and are not that far behind a hulks' ability to mine. As such can become profitable much more quickly after their loss. Also, some cruisers and battleships can be great mining vessels in dangerous environments.

TL;DR. Words

Well if that's the reason they don't wanna stop insurance payments for criminal behavior, then its quite easy to address.

Only pay insurance to criminals if they have less then 5 million skill points. Problem solved. Stop paying people for being jerks. Being a jerk has to have a cost associated with it. And you definitely shouldn't be rewarded by the GAME ITSELF for being a jerk. isn't it enough reward they get to loot your stuff? Yeah, that's plenty of reward. Stop paying insurance to ganking jerks.

EDIT: Clarification, stop paying insurance to criminals in *highsec* if they have more than 5 million skillpoints. I'm sure one of you trolls would've picked apart my post and suggest that I was suggestion all criminals shouldn't be paid insurance. Just the highsec ganking jerks. :)

In this universe where one simply has to wardec the targets and wait 24 hours, there is absolutely no reason to reward this kind of behavior. I accept that it's an acceptable game mechanic, I got no problem with that. But if you wanna shoot someone in highsec and don't wanna pay and wait for a wardec, then why should you get an insurance payout when CONCORD roasts you. There's no need for this. Stop it.

No, that's the reason why taking away insurance will not reduce the risk on ganking.

However, it will have other impact, such as reducing the incentives to blow up and lose ships. This is a bad thing — if anything, that needs to be further incentivised

Moreover, there is the fundamental argument of: why? Why should insurance be taken away? What problem does it solve? How do you propose to keep the risks the same and/or otherwise incentivise ship loss?
Because there's no reason to.

Well I had typed out a lengthy response but it disappeared when I tried to preview it. Oh well.

CCP is encouraging people to do what they want by providing a sandbox. Whether the player does right or wrong is not CCPs fault.

The insurance system was not added yesterday. CCP has had quite a bit of time to change the system if they so chose to. As such this should be a fair indication of their intentions of the subject.

Nah, sorry but I don't buy that sandbox stuff. If that were true they'd be no fixed laws and no Concord at all. The laws of the secured areas are actually pretty clear and they are enforced by overpowered NPCs, including ships, gates and stations, so they're not optional. Of course the player has the ultimate choice to be "good" or "bad", but CCP has the responsibility to educate the players in order to help construct a healthier community. If we take out the insurance for the ships killed by Concord the suicide ganking will surely continue, but it will be reduced because game mechanics won't reward outlaws anymore. You'll still have the choice to keep going if you really enjoy that playstyle though, but they will be less incentive for newbies and players looking for easy money.
Of course this shouldn't be the only change in regard of ganking, and every workaround and every way to bypass or abuse laws should be fixed as well (like wreck's ownership, which is so flawed ATM). Those changes should also include other changes in order to keep the game balanced, but that's for another thread.

BTW the forums are getting worst every day, almost loose my message too, thankfully I copied it before pressing the preview button.