Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Idea: have base insurance give you a highly-discounted replacement ship available for a small amount of ISK instead of paying ISK to the player. This would cause insurance to be an ISK sink instead of an ISK faucet, and it would instead generate items (mineral value) to the economy.


Default, minimum level insurance would cover your ship, fit modules, and most types of cargo. Rigs, illegal goods, cosmetic items, and PLEX would not be covered. You can also only receive replacements for the stuff that was destroyed in the ship destruction. The replacement goods and ships would always be tech 1, meta 0. This means that if you lose your Sleipnir Command Ship fitted with a Pithi B-Type Large Shield Booster and a Federation Navy Stasis Webifier, provided both of those modules are destroyed in the wreck, you will be able to purchase a replacement Hurricane with Large Shield Booster I and Stasis Webifier I at around 60% of market value. At higher levels of insurance, the discount would be stronger. With Platinum insurance, you would get the items free of charge.

This could allow you to more quickly recover from a loss and get back to what you were doing, whether it was running a mission, whelping ships for the glory of TEST, or hauling something you shouldn't be hauling through space you shouldn't be hauling it through.



Due to this point being made, I no longer support this proposal. I believe it would devastate the T1 ship industry.

Not a bad idea.

Perhaps offer this option at a premium insurance price.

As Zimmer pointed out... where is the replacement stuff coming from?

- If it is coming from existing market orders... it is still an ISK-faucet (provided the market order exists in the area). You have simply changed who is getting the money.

- If the ship is simply being generated out of thin air... you may be creating an ISK-sink, but are also creating a "supply-faucet" that is in direct competition with the ships and mods that players are creating and selling (because you are taking away the need for players to buy stuff from other players as long as they pay ISK into the system).
Moreover, it kinda defeats the point behind CCP's efforts to get people to locally source their goods and/or defend/haggle for logistics routes (because stuff is being created, not shipped... simply pay into the system and you essentially have an infinite amount of ships... you just have to have a steady supply of mods handy to refit).


Question: Why should it be easy to recover from a loss?

I know, I know... think of the newbies and all that jazz... but your idea kinda guts a core premise of EVE; loss hurts. Be it in terms of money or time.

Considering capital ships are about the only thing that gives a decent payout on insurance, I agree. Nothing else is really worth insuring.

Then lets just decrease insurance on capitals?

Insurance and clone costs are not connected at all. Insurance is related to losing your ship, clone costs are related to losing your pod. The two are not linked directly.
So clone costs being removed is not a good reason to remove insurance. It still hurts just as much as it always has losing a ship.

People build ships to die.
Lets keep it this way.

Insurance simply must go away in current form.
Instead of this we need new new civilian ships offered as a replacement.

Scaling from current frigate ( noobship ) to a battle-cruiser.

I think insurance needs to be reworked to run off your previous losses
but to OP
-1

Getting rid of free default insurance is the first step. If you want insurance - you need to pay for it. Currently the game is giving you free isk for being bad at eve. It makes no sense. Never did.

A way insurance might work:

100 mill megathron (made up number with more made up numbers to follow - focus on the concept not the nubers)

30 days worth of insurance costs 30 mil and you get an 80 mil payout on your 30 mil investment. For the new 100 mil ship you paid 100 (ship) + 30 mil (insurance) to get 80 mil back. For the first month, losing the megathron is a 50 mil net loss. Not great or free, but you paid some isk to soften the blow.

31 to 60 days. 1st renewal period. You made it a month - you're not terrible at eve. You get a reward. The second month of insurance only costs 20 mil. You still get the 80% coverage, but at a reduced cost. If you maintain your insurance coverage for 6 months you get an additional 'good pilot' discount. The monthly renewal drops to 10 mil per month. If you keep your ship insured and not blown up for a year you get a "safe pilot" award painted on the hull (red marking, blue marking, yellow smiley face - whatever) AND you get 'free' 80% coverage on the hull for the rest of its existance.

Insurance discounts only apply to continuous coverage. If you let it lapse - you start over. If the ship swaps owners - you start over (no selling / trading / contracting) ships with insurance discounts.

You're insuring the hulls, not the modules.

You're insuring against loss which isn't the same as self destruction. Self destruct = no payout.

Insurance for 100 mil megathron - to get 80 mil payout.
monthly total isk for insurance:

1 - 30 mil
2 - 50 mil
3 - 70 mil
4 - 90 mil
5 - 110 mil
6 - 120 mil
12 - 170 mil
13 - 170 mil
9 years later - 170 mil

Skill in piloting gets rewarded. Being bad at eve gets nothing (no free insurance).

Uh... want to provide a citation for that? Because historically speaking, non-mining sources of minerals have caused some of the most enduring problems in the game and have required numerous changes to resolve. I'm not really seeing a compelling reason to turn around and re-break that.

Honestly that assertion is just... laughably incorrect.

Isk faucets yield inflation. Inflation needs to be controlled (though certainly not eliminated entirely). A little inflation is a good thing . Runaway inflation would be a bad thing. The impact of ISK faucets is also largely universal. All told, not that bad.

So, you want to replace an "isk faucet" based on the completely unsubstantiated belief that they're "harder to handle" (whatever the **** that means) with a system that magically generates manufactured goods out of thin air, gutting both resource harvesting and manufacturing demand as a consequence?

That's a good point, my suggestion would probably kill the T1 ship industry.