From the comments, a theme already surfacing: I'm not clear how all of this will work in game, and I'm not the only one... I would love to see more clear and open communication, so at least everybody knows what to expect! For those commenting that "they've already been clear about this", please cite an official source. Lots of people are saying how it's going to be, and disagreeing with each other (that in itself is good reason, I think, for more clarity). I've included below some of the official sources I've seen on the matter - happy to add more if people find some to signpost to me! I should also add, I still love this game, for what it is and could be in future. A little healthy criticism doesn't detract from that! Nov 2012: robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/12820-Insurance-FAQ-And-Update Apr 2013: robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/12968-Customer-Service-Update May 2013: robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/12986-Lifetime-Insurance-Clarification Insurance Q&A - support.robertsspaceindustries.com/hc/en-us/articles/360000093467-Ship-Insurance-FAQs
if your not sure how it works.. how about FINDING OIUT HOW IT WORKS before making a video about it and muddying he waters with your conjecture? your fearmongering int eh guise of "criticism" this isn't criticism. this is you making shit up and then just saying "i don't actually know.. so clearly no one knows"
I believe this is a cry wolf moment. I saw it explained a while ago. When your insurance runs out, you pay for insurance in game, and if you have none you pay a “premium” to bring it back. If you lost it in game and that happened you’d just exchange it for cash and buy another.
I have backed and followed SC for a long time. This is my best understanding: In-game UEC (not a UEC) purchased ships may be lost if not insured. Real money purchased ships will have a period of insurance included. When that period expires, if you lose your ship, there is a policy lapsed fee when you file a claim (payable in UEC) that is much higher than the in-game cost if insurance, if you had purchased beforehand. LTI ships will have a policy that does not expire. There may still be expedite costs. There is also the possibility of entering deep Vanduul space which is uninsurable. In game purchassed ships are not covered here, and real money ships will have a very long recovery period due to the 'retreival and restoration' costs of the ship being lost so far out. This is based on lots of various videos and discussions I have seen over the years. It seems pretty clear, and fair, but of course it may not be accurate.
They will make them very expensive in game, you are correct. They will also lower the payouts. Currently they use cheap prices and high value missions as a way to push testers to use them more. This is so they get enough data before moving on to the next thing that needs the most attention. @ViniciusConsorte
Farrister got that part wrong. They clarified to say that the ships is unavailable until you pay the full insurance for it. The Real Life paid ship is NEVER gone for good, without insurance. it's just unflyable, until you use in-game currency to insure it. No one at CIG was that stupid to get into legal issues by removing a paid ship just because insurance is gone.
Making a real-world purchase unplayable until you pay a fee in game is pushing the boundaries on being legal or not. I don't see that ending well either.@@Warhammered
One of the big reasons I limit my SC purchases is because I don’t really know how this is going to play out long-term. I’m sure it’ll work out ok… but the fact that they still sell LTI makes me wonder.
I'm glad somebody is asking these questions again. This is all stuff that has bothered me since I started playing. We need more up to date details and preferably some concrete answers on where they plan to go with all this.
Even the stuff like weapons/armor that has been paid with money. Will there be a claim back terminal that will charge to retrieve them back or will we just get 1 set then if lost we have the ability to craft them again... who knows. Shouldn't take this long considering how much they're willing to sell this stuff. They should have stopped at ships.
@@dannic8987 Didn't CIG say something about a terminal in your persistent hangar where you'll be able to claim items and armor that are part of your "hangar"?
@@cowboy6524 Reddit can be the worst of places, its a place where people can be genuinely helpful or insanely hostile. I only read, never write there and only fairly recently started commenting on UA-cam
Holy crap! And they call SC a scam with a lack of logic. I'm not saying EVE is a scam. If you played knowing what was possible and still did it, there seems to be no hidden agenda from the developer. I'm just not understanding the scam community when that exists in EVE. But not a word from them on that game. Irony! Don't even get me started where ED is at. But its from the ED community where I received the most insults for believing in SC. Hypocrisy!
@festersmith8352 The main difference with Eve though is there is a layer of abstraction. You can't 'directly' purchase ships with real money. Sure, you can buy a PLEX with real money, flip it, and then use the credits to get the ship (only to then theoretically loose it). However, for some reason that additional layer is deemed 'acceptable' by the zeitgeist, whereas SCs more 'direct' approach isn't. If I had to guess, if CIG decides to keep insurance as is; at some point in the future they'll offer a subscription tier where one of the perks is full coverage equivalent to the current LTI level for all ships in your hangar, while you're subscribed.
True that one had to buy the PLEX and convert it to isk which is what many did do, including myself at times, but in EVE there is no insurance and a real painful risk of losing your hard earned ship. Roberts said long ago that SC would not be subscription based and he has big plans to sell advertisement space in SC but like everything else in SC plans can and do change over time. Whatever. I'm willing to pay fair price for my entertainment which I'm sure will still be much cheaper than many other big boy hobbies.@@Tiyrant
@@Tiyrantif thats the case, than CIG also has a layer in its very thorough TOS when purchasing a pledge. The one most people ignore. The TOS states repeatedly "you do not purchase anything, you make a pledge towards the development of the game..." When you purchase a Polaris pledge for 750USD its not a direct purchase of the Polaris. Which is considered a "virtual goods" situation which then places insurance and ships into the same window as the PLEX subscription, as subscriptions are also a "virtual good" and maintain those same protections.
As far as I recall, the last time they addressed this, one of the few details they knew for certain is that you will NEVER permanently lose a ship purchased with real money, regardless of your insurance length being 3 months or LTI. You might have a long reclaim timer, but you'll never lose it.
You're right you just have a longer timer to respawn your ship. You never lose it permanently. Just like if you buy armor and someone takes it. You'll get it back on the next wipe.
When did they speak about this? There was the unofficial statement that was taken down shorty after being posted. And CIG’s website still states i q people can be without a ship
@@Farrister I remember it too. I don't have the official source, but If you had spent at least little time thinking about it, you would have realized you can always melt any item in your hangar and then buy it back for the obtained store credits (no ship disappears from your hangar just because it got destroyed in game). So yep, you have just made a useless video, my friend.
I for one have stopped spending real money on ships until i know exactly how the ship sale model and insurance is going to work in the future, happy to be a backer and support the game as much as i can but they do need to figure these things out and let us know before SQ42 comes out. Great vid, look forward to reading all the comments!
My expectation is that uninsured ships will be subject to longer reclaim timers and greater fees, but little more than that. The reason that there's so little clarity on this (merely a hypothesis) is that if people realize how little impact insurance will really have, they won't chase those LTI tokens.
You forgot to mention the difference between the Hull (the LTI part) vs. Component (not covered by LTI) vs. Cargo (also not covered by LTI) Insurances. Also that the Insurance costs will be lower in Safe Space vs. Wild Space. This is essentially a CREDIT SINK requirement for game play.
I could have sworn they addressed this but it certainly didn't become common knowledge among the community. I believe they said players would never permanently loose content they were rewarded with a pledge they will just loose the insurance plan and have to pay in game once it expires. if expired in-game you would have to pay a premium to replace the ship without active insurance but you will be able too. I don't have the time to locate these post but they promised the community you won't loose your ships or item they are account bound, without LTI you may have to go through in game hoops to recover them but they will still be there.
Your insight on the need for ongoing funding is spot-on. It certainly makes the case for a subscription / monthly cost for private servers. Folks could pay a nominal fee to have a private server with cost scaling for how many other players could come into that server (i.e. 10, 20, whatever). That would allow CIG to collect for a service that motivated consumers would be happy to fund.
Doesn't sound like the vision of the game. I mean, the server meshing and replication layer stuff indicates against individual servers.....if they get the tech to work.
Exactly what I thought and started with LTI only with very first ship. Some in Spectrum want to argue that it’s no big deal and you can do it in game but yeah one less thing to be concerned about.
Maybe they will remind players when we refuel/repair/rearm … and re-insure. I just imagine we will have to pay a nominal (in game) fee to get an uninsured ship replaced. If it costs 1000 UEC to get a destroyed ship returned or 12,000 UEC a year for insurance, (or 1000 UEC for 24 hours’ coverage), players might decide to NOT insure and instead simply pay for a replacement … playing the odds of getting destroyed less than once a month. A combat ship would be worth insurance, they get destroyed a dozen times a play session, but a Freelancer might risk going uncovered, opting to avoid any conflicts instead. With a huge fleet, it may be impractical to insure something that they use twice a year. I cannot imagine LOSING an uninsured ship PERMANENTLY, but being unable to claim it without paying a fee, that I could see.
In November, I melted all of my ships and purchased a multi-ship package with SQ42 and SC games, as well as LTI. The subscriber pack of 3 cutters with LTI was purchased earlier this month. Now, all of my ships are LTI with room to upgrade if I see something that I really want. After the original melt, these purchases, and a few upgrades, I still have over $400 in store credit, so can upgrade to about anything. I will not need more insurance.
My view on it right now is that literally any insurance right now and for the foreseeable future is all LTI and is unlikely to change anytime soon so I don't really bother trying to find LTI.
I was under the impression that LTI meant that you never had to pay additional respawn costs, not that I would never permanently lose my ship. If that's the case, I'm never buying another ship without LTI. It's insane if CIG doesn't protect players' cash bought ships...
this would also be literally illegal in EU countries. If it would be a "you lose all access to the ship" kinda deal, well I hope that they've saved some of that billion dollars cause damn is it ever a lawsuit waiting to happen
lti jsut means you dont have to reup your insurance. this guy has NO idea wtf he is talking abotu.(and literally admits it here int he comments) he is spreadignt he same bullshit fearmongering withotu bothering to learn. the sad thing is he LITERALLY SHOWS WHERE IT EXPLAINS INSURANCE and then claims it doesnt show count because.. its old?
This is a very good reality check that is conspicuously lacking in the majority (if not all) Star Citizen ship reviews. All those wishing to purchase ships should take into consideration purchasing a lifetime insurance (LTI) and include LTI in their budget; it's like a hidden tax. Thanks for this wake-up call, Farrister!
The issue for me is that we don't know how important LTI will be - maybe it's gonna be huge, or maybe it's gonna be minor. Nobody seems to know for sure!
I’ve gotten to the point of having one ship that is lti which is the one I would want to fly if all else fails and the rest I just cycle through melting cycles not caring about insurance. Since there hasn’t been any talk about it recently from CIG, it isn’t worth my effort to try and seek out
Last time I brought up insurance on spectrum, I got flamed because everyone thought it was too soon to discuss the subject. Switching the monthly subscription to include different levels of insurance without explaining the function of insurance - to me - was a bad move because there is no defined value correlation with subscription cost. However, CIG implies a valuation with the different levels of insurance correlated to monthly subscription cost. This could get CIG into trouble because they are implying longer insurance has a higher value without defining the value for what is called "insurance."
Here's my idea: Go HARD on insurance. The insurance that we get via the pledge store only covers the basics, like basic comps. To keep good comps, you have to pay a moderate ingame aUEC price. However, The best components (I.E rare looted ones, or ones unapproved by the UEE that come from criminal systems or something) can not be insured. Additionally, raise the buying and selling points of components, and add the cost of those components to repair/restocking if they are taken from the ship. This would make looting components valuable, but also impossible to farm. I don't think claim times should go up, but having your ship destroyed shoyld shorten your insured time. Punishing players for essentially throwing away their ships is very important and could make crucial changes to pvp and pve encounters.
One of the issue with insurance is also that, as we see in the current game, it is usually quicker to abandon or destroy a damaged or crippled ship than lose a lot of time going to a station for repairing it. If they introduce repair time and non negligible cost with it, it will get worst. And increasing importantly the time to reclaim would also lead to a new drama. I think that in the end they will have to give LTI to every ships bought in real currency. But you will have to pay at least a fee in game to retrieve your ship.
While i do agree that it would be the best solutions, this comes with it's own problems. To deny access to something bought with real money until you pay more money is not only morally questionable, but in many countries also illegal. It would also in many countries be illegal to have people loose their virtual objects/properties for any reason
While they're at it; CIG should update the ASOP terminals and have a window for retrieving ships and one for claiming ships. Somebody needs to make the scrolling stop!
For the most of the situation probably is fine... but I think in a situation must be an exception, like what if - the player has only one ship - doesn't play that much or for any other reason can't afford to renew the insurance He still can't access to his ship and he can't make money to renew it because he can't leave the station/planet Imagine see the "SHIPLESS" people beg in chat to receive some cash to be able to play or worse... buy credits to access your own bought ship. Can be mitigated tho, like giving out some credits maybe with logins or stuff like that idk
It is good that this topic is talked about so people dont have so much illusions about things. I have bought ships for little over 1000$ but i havent "bought" ships. I have SUPPORTED THE GAME DEVELOPMENT. If i lose my ships ingame after the insurance has ended and i have been so ignorant not to buy new insurance ingame then its fine by me that i lose those ships and the money. In the end you buy these "ships" with money that you are ready to lose. And btw. This insurance is for the hull only. So things inside the ship and cargo insurances are a thing ingame.
When I backed on KS, I got the Aurora LTI package for $45. This past week, now that the game is starting to pick up the pace in development and we're seeing a more functional "game" in existence, I dropped another $45 and got another LTI package. I upgrade my original one to a C1 that now has LTI and can be used for core gameplay loops, and the second one to a better starter that can be used as a quick-claim shuttle. Not knowing exactly what insurance is going to entail, plus not knowing if there will be premiums to maintain a loadout or internal vehicle cargo like armor, guns, food and supplies, etc... Is a huge pain in the ass, and just made me want to have two with LTI as a baseline just in case, that I can then hopefully shell out in-game money to protect the internal components and inventory of. In the current state of the game, it sucks that there's no option to retrieve a ship via a terminal vs claiming it, and then losing everything you stowed away that's not in the cargo grid. It makes it hard to want to flow with that "persistent universe" gameplay when you have to jump through hoops to store your ship every session, or risk losing any food or armor/clothes you have stashed away. Gun racks are an awesome QoL feature that see almost no use from me because of the fact that if my game crashes, or I lose my internet connection outside of a 30K, I lose everything I took the time to stock my ship up with for a gameplay session. My hope is that LTI will cover the ship itself and any internal inventory it has (Food, Personal Weapons, Armor), where-as an in-game premium fee is charged to maintain any upgraded ship components onboard, with a much higher premium to insure any cargo on the grid from the time of your last docking. Not in the form of respawning the ship with that cargo, but maybe a flat, rounded-down payout that covers the lowest estimate of what the cargo might have ended up being worth. It's not as hardcore as I'm sure some players would like, but the continuous threat of losing anything you take the time to put on a ship that they want you to consider your "home in the stars", only to get ganked by the monthly meta build griefer or pad-rammer, and spend another hour restocking your ship with basics and expending your (possibly limited) time to play in a cycle of busywork seems like a hard punishment for someone who may not even be playing in a combat capacity. I wholly understand cargo not being insurable, but I feel like at the very base, the ships lockers and inventory should be insurable to allow you to get back in the game quickly in the event of a computer crash, griefing, power outage, etc.
@@Farrister From the way I understood it was, anything you paid IRL cash for can not be permanently lost. It includes armors, weapons paints/skins etc. There might be some sort of wait time or UEC insurance fee for ships, aspeshaly if your in a fringe/lawless system. Even LTI might not completely cover losses in no security systems, but either added Ins. before going into or a UEC deductible for extra damage claims . It is not completely worked out by CIG yet, but have heard this from CR and devs before . If so SC would certainly be a scam in the highest magnitude. Think of losing a legatus package ... Lawsuits out the ass, plus credibility would be down the toilet = No game/bankruptcy event. It would not make any sense to do it.
I know for a fact, in this economy, a large portion of the player base would just uninstall the game and forget about it if they lost their ships that they paid real money for. I only have 7 friends that play the game and they all said they'd just uninstall and play something else if they lost their ship and had to repurchase it with more real money. Those aren't great odds.
I have backed and followed SC for a long time. This is my best understanding: In-game UEC (not a UEC) purchased ships may be lost if not insured. Real money purchased ships will have a period of insurance included. When that period expires, if you lose your ship, there is a policy lapsed fee when you file a claim (payable in UEC) that is much higher than the in-game cost if insurance, if you had purchased beforehand. LTI ships will have a policy that does not expire. There may still be expedite costs. There is also the possibility of entering deep Vanduul space which is uninsurable. In game purchassed ships are not covered here, and real money ships will have a very long recovery period due to the 'retreival and restoration' costs of the ship being lost so far out. This is based on lots of various videos and discussions I have seen over the years. It seems pretty clear, and fair, but of course it may not be accurate.
I recall someone explaining that insurance will run out but you won't lose your ship. If you want to get the ship back you need to just buy the insurance again. In game.
I have an idea. Make the insurance system similar to real life. Make it a periodic payment. Per ship. Higher value ships cost more in-game money. New players will only have to pay little. But as they buy more ships in game and buy higher value ships, the expense becomes a bit bothersome. Then give subscribers a perk - all ships are insured during your subscription periods. So, it gives a choice to the players. Either you earn in-game money to insure your fleet, or subscribe and save the in-game money for something else.
At this point it's the norm. All non-subscription MMO does the similar thing to entice users to pay monthly, so at least it won't be worse than other games..
I think the best balance between letting people keep their ships that they spent hundreds on and not making it pay to win is a system where you pay for a certain tier of in game insurance upfront when buying the ship (with in game credits) and there are no periodic payments. And these insurance tiers define how many times we can respawn the ship after destruction. So let’s say I saved up a bunch of credits and wanted to buy a starrunner, the cheapest option would be to buy an uninsured one that I’d lose if I ever died with it. For a considerable amount more, I could buy one with ‘bronze tier’ insurance which means I can respawn my ship after destruction the same way as in the current PU, but after 3 respawns I’ll lose it. The tiers increase and you get more respawns with each but they cost exponentially more, so perhaps the most expensive tier could be platinum that would get you like 20 respawns or something, and for a considerable fee you could renew the insurance so if you’ve got like 1 respawn left you can pay to go back to having 3 or so, and while paying is an inconvenience it would cost less than buying a whole new issue of the ship. And you could upgrade so you could buy an uninsured ship and then pay for insurance later, you’ve just gotta hope you keep the ship safe in the meantime. With this system the people who spent real money on ships can keep them permanently without having that much of an advantage (besides avoiding the insurance cost) so it’s not really pay to win and lawsuits are avoided
@@evildude2135 that sounds ok from players perspective, but how can CIG keep make money? Palworld dev recently revealed they spend about $500K a month for the servers. While Star Citizen may not have as many live userbase as Palworld when it releases in the future, the amount of computing resources that need to be handled in server side means they have to pay A LOT for AWS. CIG needs to generate revenue continuously to pay devs and server or Star Citizen will not last very long.
The thing is, CIG clearly tells you with every purchase that these are, in fact, not a purchase but a support donation. The ship we get in return is a "thank you" gift and is not regarded as the purchased item. While there might be legal consequences to that, I don't think it binds them to protect or keep your ships under any circumstances (even though we all agree that would be the correct thing to do regarding backers) extract from the RSI website : "When a pledge is made for any item on the store, the money is contributed towards the development of the game. In return for helping fund RSI’s operations, you receive the items listed within the pledge." This is why they have the "pledge" terminology
I think it's more complicated than that lol, CIG isn't a charity, it's a business, and it's not a charity hub, it's a store. In some places maybe it's enough to say that, in some places probably not. It doesn't excuse not being clear about what insurance means, in my opinion
Fundraising doesn't apply only to charity (e.g. kickstarter) and I didn't say their fundraising activity was an excuse for being unclear. I only said (because you mentionned personal responsibility and legal aspects) that in my opinion, they are protected by the fact that all the items (including the insurance that may go with it) that you can get through a pledge are delivered in good faith and best effort by CIG (as the T&C states). If you lose your ship after the insurance expires, it doesn't change the fact that the insured ship was indeed delivered (and kept for as long as the insurance runs) when you contributed. Even then, we can't really define what counts as "well informed" ourselves because, as you mentioned in your video, while it might seem clear to me, it might not be for others.
My first ship was an avenger titan with 6 months insurance. When I found out it would be possible to lose that ship permanently, if it wasn’t insured, it made me super uncomfortable. I melted it and since then everything I’ve bought has LTI. LTI should come with all ships bought with real money. Packages already bought should all be upgraded to LTI and previous insurance levels should translate to a percentage discount on services at your home location.
@@Farrister you're right though, that there hasn't been recent, clear communication about insurance from CIG. Generally I think there's a lot of confirmation bias going on when people speculate about the game. Some people want the game to be very sim-like, including the insurance system. Ultimately I think CIG are going to make game design decisions that appeal to a wider audience than the space sim niche (for longer term success). This means more gamey mechanics like we have with the capacitor system and fewer sim elements. For that reason I don't think the insurance system will be too punishing in the end, because it'll disgruntle too many people, especially where real money has changed hands.
I belive they will never take away ships from player accounts that were bought with real money. I find it hard to belive they are either that unforgiving, or want to market that kind of hardcore play.. then again, time will tell
@@Farrister I hear you :) i got lti on mine, so i dont have to worry luckily, but if i had lost any of my ships tbh, id sell off the rest of the ships i had, or my entire account to cut my losses for sure.
My hope is that the ship isn’t lost all together but without insurance that you can’t claim the ship until you can earn the ingame credits to re-establish insurance or have a penalty sub purchase. I also agree there should be a system check when launching a vehicle from bay/hanger as it then allows the pilot the option to agree to the responsibility. On the flip, I feel insurance is gonna reduce griefer tendencies especially if a crime restitution amount comes to verse.
I believe the game should work like this: Without insurance you are forced to salvage with an SRV and bring your ship to a space port to repair it, or pay for someone to do it for you If it gets stolen you have to investigate and get it back, everything you buy should have GPS and be tracked with NikNax
It seems to me that a simple solution is to have any real money purchase that is destroyed in game without insurance remain available on the player's account, but require paying the insurance premium before it can be re-spawned. Basically, give them the option to pay the insurance after the fact rather than in advance only.
In Alpha people seem to think that their ships are a throw away commodity, which I can understand to a degree. However, one the reality of 'lose it and it is gone' takes hold after release out of testing I see people changing their play style or opting out of the game altogether. It is similar to 'the death of a spaceman' where your in game character will eventually die and not be able to be 're-cloned'. I do not play many MMO's, so I do not know if this is unique to SC where a character dies and you have to start over from scratch. Do I feel that it is an issue for the long term gameplay... yes. I do not play in a fashion that puts me more at risk than the average player, but I do see how some would take it as an affront should their character no long exist in the game after they took on too much risk. It is a fine line that the game is taking on between reality and playability long term. I appreciate you bringing it up, as many have on the forums. If I spend more real money on this game my wife is going to take away my privilege's. Thanks just the same though!
In real world insurance you have a monthly fee just to keep it active and then you also have a deductible when you actually need to use your insurance, I bet insurance will have something like that. I'm thinking that CIG will simply say all store-bought ships have insurance a.k.a. no premiums on them and the LTI or X months will be that long for no deductibles
I agree, I hope CIG lays their plans out for how insurance is supposed to work soon. I am honestly not sure how the insurance system can roll out without causing major problems not only for the pledged stuff but also for the game. If it removes the uninsured ship from your inventory, there will be the obvious backlash for pledged ships. If it requires a small fee to get back the ship, it would make insurance a pointless addition. If it requires a huge fee to get back the ship, there is the potential theoretical problem of a player not being able to fly his pledged ship unless he grinded for some credits, which would basically be the same issue as needing to buy the ship again. I could see them making it so insurance on the ship insured the components and decorations on it, and if you reclaimed a ship without insurance everything would reset to the default state, but then CIG has talked about wanting the individual components to be insured too so that can't possibly be their plans for it.
A good solution that doesn't outright raise legal concerns or even worse, lawsuits, is giving LTI and currently insured players their ships with an automatic expedition on the ASOP for free, that way they can't spam the ASOP (no instant ship delivery), and still have the benefit of not paying anything ingame. While other non insured players will have to either pay a hefty expedition fee, or wait a relatively long time (longer than the current setting). This is imo the most optimal solution considering there will be ship repairs and building from blueprints in the future.
I feel for you. You usually make very neutral topic videos on SC. So now that you make a video that is actually a bit critical, or at least highlighting a huge issue, you got the full force of the worst of the fandom at your throat. Thanks for making this video. It is one of the most serious issues in my opinion.
I always figured that eventually Star Citizen would follow in EVE Online's footsteps in that you can purchase a premium currency for real money that can then be spent on cosmetics, account services, and starter packages, and then be sold to other players via an in-game market in exchange for UEC. This would provide a long-term funding system for the game while also offering a way to fight gold farmers. EVE Online has plenty of instances of people buying PLEX, spending it on ships, then losing those ships, so it's not unheard of. But at the same time CIG have shifted away from the more intense hardcore features with total permadeath becoming a clone regeneration system and the introduction of actual in-game skill stats you can train up by doing things, so my personal prediction is that they're going to sell ships for premium currency and introduce a "all ships bought as pledges during the alpha and beta phases as well as those bought directly with this new currency are permanently attached to your account, however insurance will reduce the costs and wait times associated with reclaiming them. Meanwhile ships purchased with in-game currency that are uninsured and are destroyed will be lost permanently".
It might even be illegal to fly an uninsured ship just like in real life with modern vehicles. Shipyards might cut you off from taking off a few days before your insurance expires so in practice most people would struggle to be found in that position. Another trick could be for bed loggers, the ship would be automatically towed to a station a few days prior to insurance expiration. I'm sure the dev team can come up with all kinds of clever ways to save the ship but prevent access until the player does pay for insurance again. That way it's only ever a temporary loss.
I expect every ship purchased with real money or warbonds to all be all lifetime guaranteed but at the bronze tier. Then true LTI ships bought through concept sales or LTI tokens to end up with a silver tier lifetime insurance. And then there will be a temporary gold insurance that we can subscribe and apply on top of whatever LTI insurance we already have. So the golden LTI will allow to reclaim your ship much faster, perhaps further away etc etc etc...
The whole Insurance issue is the reason why I did not start star citizen at all. And with the server wipes that can ruin your progress, what is the point of saving for a big ship via ingame currency... . Now I learned about LTI and registered for getting the newsletter in hope to get a chance to buy something with LTI I can build on. If not, Star Citizen is not for me. I can see a repair cost system (X % of the purchase value ) in ingame currency and some kind of subscription status that sets the repair cost in half.
Here's my suggestion: EVERY ship, whether purchased in-game or with real currency, should have a VIN (GUID). If that ship has insurance and it gets damaged, you should pay a deductible and the insurance should cover anything above that amount. The current system of "claiming a ship" whenever we want to would just go away - the insurance company would issue a contract any SRV pilot could grab to come get the damaged ship and tow it to the closest repair station. All insurance should be "replacement cost" including any components in the ship. If the ship is destroyed with insurance, you should pay your deductible and the ship should be replaced in a short time delay like we have today, while the insurance company salvages any remnant of the old ship (this could also be done via a salvage contract and potentially a security contract to protect the salvagers). Any theft of a component from an insurance-owned ship should be an immediate crime stat in a monitored system. Any time a ship is destroyed WITHOUT insurance, if it was bought with in-game currency, it's just gone, and the wreck and components become fair game for any salvagers. If it was bought with real money, it would be available again (with stock components and weapons) in your hanger after 24h or 48h. This isn't realistic in-game, but would completely prevent any kind of lawsuits or negative press that would hurt CIG or the SC reputation, which is more important. Essentially this model would incentivize purchasing timed insurance separately (with real money or in-game money), stimulate towing, salvage and escort/protection missions, and protect CIG from the ridicule and most likely lawsuits that would come from letting real-world purchases be forever lost in-game.
I think that insurance will become expensive (in game currency) for shops bought with in game currency. Basically it will be designed as an incentive to make players buy the ship with real money and any ship bought with real money will ultimately be protected from complete loss in any scenario. Clarification definitely needed.
Imagine if, like me today, you just made a quick run and your ship randomly blew up by what might have been an invisible asteroid.. but you lose a $600 ship because you didn’t realise it had expired..
I used to be fairly confident that digital goods would be protected, but that doesn't seem to be the case anymore. Haven't game publishers and streaming services like Amazon already removed items such as movies and games from peoples inventories because of some structural change in the company or ToS? I know some countries have consumer protections in place, but as a US citizen, I'm not really sure where I am with digital goods and protections. Buying LTI seems like the best option, and I've had years and years of juggling my hangar around to get it set up. All of my ships have LTI except the f8.
Insurance should always give you the stock loadout only( stock loadout on all ships should be only civilian and industrial components types). Now on top of that, we need the malestrom and engineering systems installed so that killing/disabling a ship (especially large + size crewed ships) is a huge task even if the crew is casual. The biggest change that needs to come is also real consequences for the unprovoked attacker win or lose if you get coms out of their assault there should be little to no safe haven for them.
We all need to remember that the insurance goes by real world months, and that renewing a ship's insurance is supposed to be a trivial transaction. If you have a very large ship, like a hammerhead oe hull E, you should be using it in game in a way that one mission/transaction pays for well over the insurance cost for the next month. Other operating costs like fuel, armament, repairs are likely to be less trivial though.
@@Farrister agreed, CIG needs transparency in this regard. Sadly, I doubt they even figured out the plan on this. Still possible they scrap the insurance aspect altogether. That would probably be the most healthy option imo
In a thread about losing store bought gear a developer said you will never loose money payed assets, but there could be a different timer based on the asset and insurance. So I presume LTI just means better and faster insurance forever and with non LTI ships once the good insurance is off you can claim back the ship in its original state with a very long timer (several days even maybe). but until CIG tells us more its just speculations
I think it should be like that if you have insurance, you can claim your ship for free. But if you don't have one, you shouldn't lose that ship, maybe pay a hefty fine based on the ships UEC value. For example 5-10% of the ships value. You have an uninsured Aurora MR that you lost? Yeah that ship is 184k auec, you can claim it for 10k. You have a Drake Corsair that costs 3million, it was uninsured and you lost it? You can claim it for 150-200k. If they take away ships just like that it'll do no good. The media will notice it, people won't like it, maybe it's even against the law. But honestly i don't know what they'll do with insurances. I bought a Mustang Alpha for $45 with 10year insurance, i don't feel the need for an LTI, 10years is more than enough, who knows where this game, or where i'll be in 10 years. And it's 10 years from release, so it might be 12-15.
My idea for short term insurance (Non-LTI) is; you could restart your character from scratch with 6 months again and loose all reputation and in game earned resources... if you want to reset instead of continue as an existing character
Thanks so much for making this video. There has been a lot of discussion about this on Reddit. CIG needs to open up about what they plan to do about it. Like you, I believe they know what they will do, but are keeping silent specifically so players spend more money out of fear.
They aren't keeping silent so "people spend more money out of fear"...they are silent because they literally don't know yet how it will work as they haven't developed the gameplay systems for the fully fleshed out insurance yet. Stop acting like it's some big conspiracy...
For the future funding model, I'd like to see the same subscription system that's available right now. Meaning it's fully optional, no game-play is locked behind it and you just get some subscriber flair and rental ships each month. So it would just be a way for people who have some extra cash and want to support the game to do so, and people who can't or don't want to pay the subscription still only need a $45 game package to get access to everything.
@@Farrister I have no idea. But I also wouldn't mind if CIG kept selling ships if necessary. As long as the full game is still accessible with just a $45 game package and all other purchases are optional.
Just my two cents: There should be two models of insurance. The first would be the insurance tied to a ship bought with real money. The other would be insurance you can buy in-game to insure in-game bought ships. For the in-game insurance. First off it would be optional. If you don't have it though and the ship is destroyed you lose the ship all together so you'd have to rebuy it. I'd like to think this will help with the much needed money pit the game needs. If you do get the in-game insurance and the ship is destroyed you'll get not only the ship back but any aftermarket components / weapons back. To have a negative to the insurance though you'll need to pay some to get the ship & all back. Not as much as outright buying the ship again but a fraction of it. Say maybe 1/4 of the ship's cost? For the insurance bought with real money if you lose the ship you'll again get the ship & aftermarket stuff back. For those that bought a ship with a limited (say one year insurance plan) after that one is up you'd too would have to pay some money (in-game money) to get the ship & all back. Not as much as the people who bought the in-game insurance just as a nice little bonus for spending real money so say maybe like 1/8.
I would love for this feature to allow you to pick up the hull of your ship and have to rebuild it, maybe it's super cheap in game money but that way you can pick up your lost ship from the junkyard and work on it. There does need to be pain to losing a ship imo.
The devs make it pretty clear that you are not purchasing a space ship, you are backing the project. Its on the store page and you have to check a box to affirm your understanding everytime you back the project. Anyone who thinks they have "bought" something really ought to read that disclaimer. Furthermore I think LTI will be nice but not all that important. They are certain to balance the economy to make it so the insurance you pay is affordable enough to promote a fun gameplay loop. People scrambling for LTI are probably gonna learn that it wasn't the holy grail they thought it was. Whereas people worried about insurance costs will likely be mollified by the fact that the mechanic will not be as painful as they expect. This is an active development process and economic tweaks like insurance prices are sure to be a part of the game as we reach a more feature complete state.
As far as i understood you can now claim your ship with your insurance, after those months it will cost credits to recall your ship from depending where it is. The further away and the more dmged it is the more you pay what now costs nothing
From my understanding reading the ship insurance FAQ in the support thread under “What is Lifetime insurance and How do I get it?” It says it won’t cost the player extra UEC payments to maintain coverage. Not relating to claims and repairs that’ll still cost UEC. By how it’s worded it sounds as if you’ll be able to renew your insurance when it runs out with UEC if you have a non-lifetime plan.
I'm guessing that the devs are also realizing that this is an issue but aren't sure yet what to do. It's a challenge. On one hand, it seems crappy that you can loose any protection when you charged so much for a game. On the other hand, insurance provides a great counter to reckless player actions such as crashing intentionally to grief or any in game pvp which would provide a natural risk vs reward for piracy or traveling without other players support. I like the idea that decisions have consequences in the game for both aggressor and defender, but the large monetary pledges throw a wrench into this. I have no idea what I would do if I were in charge.
I remember CIG saying for those who bought ships with real money, that they wouldn’t have the risk of completely losing the ship. Not much details on that though; but it is on their minds.
It's not confirmed in an official article - there was one post from an employee which got de-yellowed which people reference. But not so much an official statement
@Farrister There is an easy solution to the insurance problem, if your ship gets destroyed: 1) active insurance on ship (LTI or ingame bought): new ship gets delivered in a small amount of time (minutes) depending on size (current solution) 2) ship without insurance: has to be repaired for a long time (hours) but this process can be sped up by ingame money (expensive but then in minutes) (possible gameplay loop with repair done by players with own resources.. faster than waiting and cheaper than autorepair speeding up) 3) ship without insurance and player without money: you have to wait for a very long time (2-3 days?) to get you ship back into action. i have many good ideas... and i'm a developer... CIG if you read this i am open for a job offer :D
At this point even I think CIG doesnt understand what their insurance is doing. There's likely a disconnect between marketing, legal and development when it comes to how insurance would work. The way I think i'd work is that if you modify the ship from the purchased form (from what you first obtained it) you'll have a limit of getting those after market parts back. After that you'll pay a fee but you'll lose all those after market parts. So even if the LTI ends you'll pay a small fee but lose all the modifications. Its oddly weird that they havent fixed a lot of this.
I've seen this issue brought up before, but never seen an official solution. If i was going to throw out an idea to cover CIG's backs, I think they could look at allowing a backer to fully reset their account. Whilst losing all progress in game, it would mean nothing bought with real money was gone forever. Few would want to do it and most would rather insure their stuff. CIG would obviously need to check it covers them legally.
You also have to imagine that even if you buy ships with LTI, CIG could add new intensive CPU functions at any time to the game. That would mean that you could only use your very expensive ship only if you buy a new very expensive computer.
I was under the impression that purchased ships were account bound and you could get back a lost uninsured purchased ship by invoking a character reset. Yes you would lose all of your game progress and have to start again but you would get your lost ship back. I think that is how CIG will get round any legal issues with lost ships. Lose an uninsured ship that you originally purchased, want it back, you have the choice to invoke a character reset and start again or carry on without that ship but keep your game progress..
Imo there should be a basic insurance that always pays out at least partially the lost value, if you didn't fully insure the ship before. Also, there should always be a very big fat warning that tells you that you have no insurance, when you take out the ship.
I always just assumed that players were required to pay a nominal fee when reclaiming a destroyed ship … unless they have LTI. You don’t have enough, it sits in your hangar until you can pay to get it replaced. If someone with an 890 Jump cannot afford the 1000 UEC to get it back, they have to run a few quick missions to get their 890 reclaimed. I don’t think we will LOSE our real world purchase (sorry, I mean ’pledge’) permanently, we will just need to have a few eddies to get the new one delivered.
The solution, to keep everyone happy (fat chance), is to have the insurance you buy with a ship, insure the ship and all its upgraded components and free standard insurance, when it runs out, on every ship that just replaces the standard hull and fixtures. That would work for me.
Seems to me there's an easy way out: insurance is a per-claim cost that you pay on your ship, like we currently do with expedite, and that cost is zero for people who have active insurance from pledges. But then again I have never really had much confidence in the specifics of how the insurance system will work, so other than the usual min-maxing instincts of getting LTI when it is convenient I haven't had my expectations set around it being that much better than anything else.
It's a worrying problem with many layers of considerations, but sticking to the incredibly unlikely scenario of "uninsured pledge ships removed from accounts irretrievably when destroyed" does that a disservice. At the very least, there's likely always going to be the ability to wipe and reset your account, starting from the 'clean slate' you paid for with cash - this is, at least, the standard in modern games with similar insurance models (and many MMOs, though much less-utilized in them for relevant reasons). It's really at that starting line, where there is an option for retrieval, that the questions about what to do start getting both practical and challenging. Ships gone forever is in line with the 12 year old document, but there's both more important things and more up-to-date info to talk about than that.
Having insurance will basicaly return the hull back to you as it was without the upgrades you might have put on, whether you get the money value back from those upgrades you put on is something we will have to wait and see. On the other hand if your insurance runs out you'll more then likely have to pay a heavy fee to get your ship back but it will never be truly gone. These are the points that have been discussed and talked about over the years of Star citizen's ongoing development. In the end all we can do is wait and see.
@@Farrister As i mentioned they have discussed and talked about it over the many years of development what insurance would look like and what we can expect in video's from star citizen. but we can't really confirm untill we actually get it ingame.
To my knowledge, you will NEVER loose the ship you bought with real world money REGARDLESS the duration of insurance. If you have a limited time insurance, after it expires you will need to purchase insurance for your ship which is about 10% of the entire value of your ship. CR said insurance is very easy to obtain ingame, a bunker mission worth should be enough to cover however, for capital class ships I would not be surprised if the 890J will eventually be 100million UEC, having 10Million UEC to cover a months worth of insurance (speculation). So it is worth to have LTI on cap ships to ease the insurance burden on your fleet especially if you have around 50+ ships in one account. You can imagine the cost with insurance, hangar fees, components, wear and tear and so on.
Also to add on, If you run out of insurance and don't have the funds to purchase insurance, your should still be able to fly your ship! However, if something happens > it blows up < then your ship will be gated behind the cost of the entire value. Meaning it's like purchasing a brand new ship from the store at full cost + potential fees for hangar delivery and insurance premium if any.
@ter CIG don't even know how insurance will work at this very moment but they will communicate and make everyone aware eventually when the final game looms closer for release. At the moment it's ok to speculate but I'd imagine insurance for ships will be similarly with RL car insurances. You might have noticed ships have a bunch of letters and numbers, every ship will eventually have a unique set of letters and numbers, similar to a vin number to identify the ship manufacture and model. They did discuss ship naming and the vin numbers for insurance themed purposes in a ISC probably a couple years back. But I remember they did discuss ship vin numbers will be used for insurance claims such as if it was stolen the vin number would be reported to the UEE security/ police.
1:26 While some older articles indeed say you'd just straight up lose your ship if its destroyed uninsured, Azme-CIG more recently commented that you could get back destroyed ships that didn't have insurance, it'd just cost more than if you had an insurance. And then even more recently prefaced that with 'everything being subject to change ofc.' And the post got un-yellowed. Hmm. Anyhow, I wouldn't panic just yet.
@@Farristerlmao sure..... 😂 Your video was literally clickbait to get people to react emotionally to something you have zero sources on. You keep replying to people in the comments and demand proof, but yet you have zero sources yourself for the idea that somehow our pledge ships will be able to get lost forever from our accounts. Bugger off chappie
My assumption is there will be tiers of insurance in game. Some that cost more to cover upgrades or have faster claim times etc. And if you are playing you would be using that. The attached insurance is for the most basic type. Only returns a stock ship. And indeed if you forget to keep it up ship is byebye. I am curious on how it will work in game particularly what happens for someone with a basic account who blew all ingame cash and lost thier ship. Im not bothered either way they want to implement it as i tend to play carefully and adding permanent loss to a game can make the game play feel very different. But im definitely curious what they will do. I'm also wondering if they ever offer a no ship starter pack. Will they implement enough options to make that work?
I’m fairly certain that insurance will simply mean if you run out of insurance whether it’s a ship that you bought with real money or in the game you will lose it. That maybe the games that you bought with real money might still show up just you’re gonna have to buy it straight out so you don’t have to fly to the location to buy it.
@@Farrister I really hope they do…..with LTI being the best bang for your buck… also, that’s why when people buy 890 jump with not lifetime insurance hurts me every time I see it 😂
From how I see insurance it would go like this. If you got the ship in game for in game money, if you loose it uninsured, well that's gone forever like they said. Now with ships that are bought with real life money but have run out of insurance would go if they get blown up, instead of loosing the ship permeantly you have to pay the fine that would cost for that day's insurance. If not your "wreck/title" gets impounded. That means they'll hold on to that ship until you pay the 1 day of insurance cost off but during the time you have it impounded, you simply can't use or interact with it. This would get people to care about the insurance for ships with lowered insurance times from the get go while also not worrying that however much their purchase is, they'll never loose it.
I think policies will be available in game with UEC and likely as a paid extra inc a subscription model. It might even be that you cant release an unisured ship without a disclaimer if at all, that way a player is more likely to get it insured or its a wilful action. In any case its likely a nominal fee with in game UEC will get it back and you wont lose it forever.
Yup, I think most people will just buy insurance in game and it'll be a non-issue. The topics here are more about those edge cases where people end up uninsured for whatever reason, and what might happen then?
There's been a few updates in the past few years on the RSI website about ship insurance. No ship you purchase will be permanently lost. LTI or 2 months. With LTI you will always get the ship back. Non LTI if insurance expires, you can use in game currency to buy the ship back. Even if it's an extremely rare ship. Normal ship insurance is the stock ship, with stock components. If the do goes boom, all modifications and cargo goes with it. They will however be offering in game insurance options to insure the ship with your current modules.
@@Farrister I may be able to find it. I know it was after they released the spectrum forums. But in some circumstances, searches on spectrum seem to only bring up anything posted within the last two years. Will look in the morning for you.
The only stuff I can find is about the little 'scandal' a few years back on selling fps armour and gear To which CIG basically said you cannot lose anything that is in your website hanger (bought for cash basically) but CIG doesn't yet have in game way to replace fps items, and we are still discussing how it would work Many extrapolated from this that it includes ships, as they are in your 'hanger' but CIG avoided answering that question My gut tells me that they haven't figured it out yet and even when they do announced anything it will likely change depending on the player reaction. Remember death of a spaceman? One life and permadeath of a character with no respawns?
@@Ospray3151 Sadly CIG decided to stop people from searching for 2 year or old posts on the Spectrum forums. That's why we can't get them. It was around 2020 that they talked about it on Spectrum. Extremely user / customer unfriendly. Best I can say is "trust me bro, I remember."
Like a say to any newcomers, We don't know much about insurance but there is no way that they can let a player lose a bought ship. I think it will be possible to lose a ship but never permanently, it will just depend on if you're ready to go back to zero by doing a character repair just like now. We already know that there is gonna be a permadeath, basically starting back to zero out of it. Each time you'll get back you ship your own. And then you might argue, that why would you get out a ship you haven't paid insurance for? Don't get a ship out until you can pay the insurance for it. In this view, The player who pledges on 20 ships might want to have some LTI in their fleet to be safe. I'm guessing here but my thought is yes, you'll be able to lose a ship, will it be permanent? No!, Will you have a draw back trying to get back a ship bought as a pledge after losing it, For sure, Reset, restart? Also, in a throwaway line of the last Citcon, they said you will be able to craft a ship if you have the blueprint, this could also be a solution, If you pledge, you have the blueprint, lose the ship, grind for mats to craft it again. So in the end, we don't know and we shouldn't stress about that. StarCitizen is built with player feedback, they went back on the last change of the flight system cause most people hated it (I hope they will not reverse the new flight model when people complain, just tweak it). Do you really think CIG could announce to me that my 1000$ 890 jump is lost permanently cause I forgot to check the insurance and pay it? They can't do this, the players will go ballistic on them with an Ares Inferno! There will be a setback, like you get it back after a perma death when you switch your "kid" for the next character. But, the ship bought in the game won't have this. In any case, people freak out... well dude, just pay your insurance. You can have 10 years of insurance on some packages, what to say that for 1 million in games, you can buy the same. You might even be able to buy LTI insurance in-game. Let CIG do the game and freak out when they actually show or same something that doesn't make sense, meanwhile stop freaking out and realize that LTI is probably not worth that much effort.
I’ve read about solutions like „yh if a ship blows up without insurance the can buy insurance afterwards“ or „Yh we simply won’t let them take off without insurance“ But overall I think hey simply should make every bought ship lti
@@Farrister from what I’ve heard insurance is not supposed to cost that much in game. If that’s the case then they should just make all real money ships lti. Ppl were supporting the game with a ton of money for years, least they can do is give them a small in game money bonus and let them fly their ships with no extra cost for insurance. If they plan to make insurances real money purchases then holy f I’m out of here
Without further information, I'd expect ships purchased with real money that are lost in-game for having no insurance could be restored with a character reset that wipes your inventory, in-game wallet, and reputation.
I've been under the impression that you could never actually fully lose your ship if it's uninsured, just that you could not claim it until you pay for insurance (possibly with a late fee if you let your insurance fully run out).
The insurance debacle is one of the biggest signs that CIG is too busy creeping in new stuff without laying down the groundwork first, and why it feels like the are dragging the horse behind the cart to just keep making money instead of pushing for a release. This is a core feature of the game design yet it isn't even decided yet how it will work. These decisions are the type to be made in early stages or even pre-production design of any game, video or table top or board etc. Basic rules establishment. The lack of clarity on these things is also why I sold 15 of my 17 ships on the Grey Market to make some money back until they can actually tell us how the game works. I'm patient and can understand the 10 years it's taken to make the game, but I cannot accept it's taken 10 years for them to decide what the game will be.
The insurance covers component, weapons & retrieval times/cost only. you will not lose an uninsured ship purchased with real $. you'll have a longer wait time & stock ship at a larger cost to retrieve in AUEC. the ASOP terminal will inform you of insurance status of ships. consumer laws will dictate this.
This would be a simple solution for SC to solve. I like the idea of insurance. It adds another layer of responsibility to your ship and career in the game. My solution to the insurance confusion would be this: All purchased ships (Pledge) never go away. You just can't use them until you purchase more insurance, whether in game or a pledge insurance upgrade offer in the store. All in-game ships bought using UEC can be lost permanently, and like a fuel gauge, it's the pilot's responsibility to keep up to date on insurance. Done. Enjoy your day all. Thanks for the great videos Farrister!
CIG already confirmed that nothing purchased with in game money will be permanently lost. You may have to pay a hefty UEC fee to get it back, but it will never be removed from your account.
Star citizen will be funded by game sales once they game comes out, in fact they said that will be the ONLY way to play the game. Meaning you get your starter ships and then have to work your way to bigger ships. No purchasing packages or ships with real money. It's been a while since they promised that so please correct me if they have changed anything
@Farrister games can and will continue to have purchasing the game as a viable business model. If they change the business model against their word I will start a riot. That's not what I signed up for and that's specifically why I spent so much freaking money on ships. That was the deal they promised. They specifically promised that selling the game would be the only business model they used after launch. No ship sales and no monthly fees. They would also be in huge legal trouble with all the original backers and ship buyers who make SC one of the most funded games. I don't think they will have a money problem.
I think it'll just mean longer claim times or more expensive claims. Possibly lose modification parts if uninsured. Something similar. They'll never take ships from your hangar
Seems like an ASOP retrieval fee to cover installation costs until next time it is stored would solve that problem. Then you are forced to pay a nominal insurance fee to access the ship. Permanent loss prevented.
From the comments, a theme already surfacing: I'm not clear how all of this will work in game, and I'm not the only one... I would love to see more clear and open communication, so at least everybody knows what to expect! For those commenting that "they've already been clear about this", please cite an official source. Lots of people are saying how it's going to be, and disagreeing with each other (that in itself is good reason, I think, for more clarity). I've included below some of the official sources I've seen on the matter - happy to add more if people find some to signpost to me!
I should also add, I still love this game, for what it is and could be in future. A little healthy criticism doesn't detract from that!
Nov 2012: robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/12820-Insurance-FAQ-And-Update
Apr 2013: robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/12968-Customer-Service-Update
May 2013: robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/12986-Lifetime-Insurance-Clarification
Insurance Q&A - support.robertsspaceindustries.com/hc/en-us/articles/360000093467-Ship-Insurance-FAQs
if your not sure how it works.. how about FINDING OIUT HOW IT WORKS before making a video about it and muddying he waters with your conjecture? your fearmongering int eh guise of "criticism" this isn't criticism. this is you making shit up and then just saying "i don't actually know.. so clearly no one knows"
I believe this is a cry wolf moment. I saw it explained a while ago. When your insurance runs out, you pay for insurance in game, and if you have none you pay a “premium” to bring it back. If you lost it in game and that happened you’d just exchange it for cash and buy another.
CiG has stated in the past, thatOnce the game goes Beta or Live, ships may no longer be meltable @charliemcawesome5012
I have backed and followed SC for a long time. This is my best understanding:
In-game UEC (not a UEC) purchased ships may be lost if not insured.
Real money purchased ships will have a period of insurance included. When that period expires, if you lose your ship, there is a policy lapsed fee when you file a claim (payable in UEC) that is much higher than the in-game cost if insurance, if you had purchased beforehand.
LTI ships will have a policy that does not expire. There may still be expedite costs.
There is also the possibility of entering deep Vanduul space which is uninsurable. In game purchassed ships are not covered here, and real money ships will have a very long recovery period due to the 'retreival and restoration' costs of the ship being lost so far out.
This is based on lots of various videos and discussions I have seen over the years. It seems pretty clear, and fair, but of course it may not be accurate.
To critique is to think : WE MUST NEVER THINK. Ironically thanks farrister for being thoughtful.
My feeling is if it doesn’t have at least 10 year insurance, I may as well just buy it in game rather than pay cash.
In game purchase is often a sensible choice
@@Farrister yeah, now the money come fast and easy ingame, wait till a Connie cost 100mil ingame and you spend some weeks to get it.
They will make them very expensive in game, you are correct. They will also lower the payouts. Currently they use cheap prices and high value missions as a way to push testers to use them more. This is so they get enough data before moving on to the next thing that needs the most attention. @ViniciusConsorte
I'm 63 years old so 10 year insurance is lifetime insurance.
@@XquizitRush don’t talk like that, you could still have 40 good years ahead of you!
Just imagine a message in your MobiGlas "We've been trying to reach you regarding your ship's extended warranty!"
haha
Removing a ship from a players inventory is a consumer lawsuit waiting to happen ...
If that's even what happens!
Farrister got that part wrong. They clarified to say that the ships is unavailable until you pay the full insurance for it. The Real Life paid ship is NEVER gone for good, without insurance. it's just unflyable, until you use in-game currency to insure it.
No one at CIG was that stupid to get into legal issues by removing a paid ship just because insurance is gone.
@@Warhammered that's good if true, do you have a link to the article?
Making a real-world purchase unplayable until you pay a fee in game is pushing the boundaries on being legal or not. I don't see that ending well either.@@Warhammered
@@Farristerthey legit say it in thier owm TOS, anything pledged will not be taken from an accounts inventory
One of the big reasons I limit my SC purchases is because I don’t really know how this is going to play out long-term. I’m sure it’ll work out ok… but the fact that they still sell LTI makes me wonder.
A lot of unknowns, in so many elements!
It's not going to work, it's a money pit, stop throwing away your money!
thanks mom
I wouldn't be surprised if at some point CIG start selling LTI on the website for real money to expend your curent insurance.
To some extent I think that's kinda what the extending of attached insurance has encouraged
I am 100% ok with that. Because I get to choose to spend the money or not. These are all issues for cry babies.
I never said i was not ok with it.@@MoragTong_
I'm glad somebody is asking these questions again. This is all stuff that has bothered me since I started playing. We need more up to date details and preferably some concrete answers on where they plan to go with all this.
Would love some more up to date official clarity about it, for sure!
Even the stuff like weapons/armor that has been paid with money. Will there be a claim back terminal that will charge to retrieve them back or will we just get 1 set then if lost we have the ability to craft them again... who knows. Shouldn't take this long considering how much they're willing to sell this stuff.
They should have stopped at ships.
@@dannic8987 Didn't CIG say something about a terminal in your persistent hangar where you'll be able to claim items and armor that are part of your "hangar"?
I asked this same question like 2 months ago on Reddit and got a fuck ton of down votes smh fuckin reddit
@@cowboy6524 Reddit can be the worst of places, its a place where people can be genuinely helpful or insanely hostile. I only read, never write there and only fairly recently started commenting on UA-cam
When I played Eve Online way back, some of the major battles amounted to a combined 100k in real money that players lost on ship destruction.
EVE is just on a scale of its own lol
Holy crap! And they call SC a scam with a lack of logic.
I'm not saying EVE is a scam. If you played knowing what was possible and still did it, there seems to be no hidden agenda from the developer.
I'm just not understanding the scam community when that exists in EVE. But not a word from them on that game. Irony!
Don't even get me started where ED is at. But its from the ED community where I received the most insults for believing in SC. Hypocrisy!
@festersmith8352
The main difference with Eve though is there is a layer of abstraction. You can't 'directly' purchase ships with real money.
Sure, you can buy a PLEX with real money, flip it, and then use the credits to get the ship (only to then theoretically loose it).
However, for some reason that additional layer is deemed 'acceptable' by the zeitgeist, whereas SCs more 'direct' approach isn't.
If I had to guess, if CIG decides to keep insurance as is; at some point in the future they'll offer a subscription tier where one of the perks is full coverage equivalent to the current LTI level for all ships in your hangar, while you're subscribed.
True that one had to buy the PLEX and convert it to isk which is what many did do, including myself at times, but in EVE there is no insurance and a real painful risk of losing your hard earned ship.
Roberts said long ago that SC would not be subscription based and he has big plans to sell advertisement space in SC but like everything else in SC plans can and do change over time.
Whatever.
I'm willing to pay fair price for my entertainment which I'm sure will still be much cheaper than many other big boy hobbies.@@Tiyrant
@@Tiyrantif thats the case, than CIG also has a layer in its very thorough TOS when purchasing a pledge. The one most people ignore.
The TOS states repeatedly "you do not purchase anything, you make a pledge towards the development of the game..."
When you purchase a Polaris pledge for 750USD its not a direct purchase of the Polaris. Which is considered a "virtual goods" situation which then places insurance and ships into the same window as the PLEX subscription, as subscriptions are also a "virtual good" and maintain those same protections.
As far as I recall, the last time they addressed this, one of the few details they knew for certain is that you will NEVER permanently lose a ship purchased with real money, regardless of your insurance length being 3 months or LTI. You might have a long reclaim timer, but you'll never lose it.
You're right you just have a longer timer to respawn your ship. You never lose it permanently. Just like if you buy armor and someone takes it. You'll get it back on the next wipe.
When did they speak about this? There was the unofficial statement that was taken down shorty after being posted. And CIG’s website still states i q people can be without a ship
That sounds good! Do you have the official source?
If there are no more wipes after launch what happens when your armor gets taken?@@dank4dayz
@@Farrister I remember it too. I don't have the official source, but If you had spent at least little time thinking about it, you would have realized you can always melt any item in your hangar and then buy it back for the obtained store credits (no ship disappears from your hangar just because it got destroyed in game). So yep, you have just made a useless video, my friend.
I for one have stopped spending real money on ships until i know exactly how the ship sale model and insurance is going to work in the future, happy to be a backer and support the game as much as i can but they do need to figure these things out and let us know before SQ42 comes out. Great vid, look forward to reading all the comments!
Already lots of interesting comments!
@@FarristerWill be keeping an eye out for a saltemike react too 😉
i got polaris and im gonna stop on that, their stupid limited lti sale doesnt help anyone, they couls just sell lti in their store non stop
My expectation is that uninsured ships will be subject to longer reclaim timers and greater fees, but little more than that.
The reason that there's so little clarity on this (merely a hypothesis) is that if people realize how little impact insurance will really have, they won't chase those LTI tokens.
Maybe!
This. And in game purchased ships will probably just be lost if uninsured.
You forgot to mention the difference between the Hull (the LTI part) vs. Component (not covered by LTI) vs. Cargo (also not covered by LTI) Insurances. Also that the Insurance costs will be lower in Safe Space vs. Wild Space. This is essentially a CREDIT SINK requirement for game play.
Honestly I would just love some more up to date information on how it might all work - everything I could find was very outdated
the old information IS up to date.. jsut because its from a few years ago doesn't mean its changed. @@Farrister
I could have sworn they addressed this but it certainly didn't become common knowledge among the community. I believe they said players would never permanently loose content they were rewarded with a pledge they will just loose the insurance plan and have to pay in game once it expires. if expired in-game you would have to pay a premium to replace the ship without active insurance but you will be able too. I don't have the time to locate these post but they promised the community you won't loose your ships or item they are account bound, without LTI you may have to go through in game hoops to recover them but they will still be there.
Do you have the source?
you showed the sourceand then claimed it didnt count because it was old@@Farrister
Your insight on the need for ongoing funding is spot-on. It certainly makes the case for a subscription / monthly cost for private servers. Folks could pay a nominal fee to have a private server with cost scaling for how many other players could come into that server (i.e. 10, 20, whatever). That would allow CIG to collect for a service that motivated consumers would be happy to fund.
That sounds like a pretty good idea.
Can imagine a lot of people not liking the idea of private servers ;-)
Doesn't sound like the vision of the game. I mean, the server meshing and replication layer stuff indicates against individual servers.....if they get the tech to work.
I see LTI as "you press one less button a month" and that's enough for me to want it on all my ships.
Doesn't hurt that it's very easy to get.
Easy to get? Where?
Convenience factor
Exactly what I thought and started with LTI only with very first ship.
Some in Spectrum want to argue that it’s no big deal and you can do it in game but yeah one less thing to be concerned about.
because thats exactly what it is
Maybe they will remind players when we refuel/repair/rearm … and re-insure.
I just imagine we will have to pay a nominal (in game) fee to get an uninsured ship replaced.
If it costs 1000 UEC to get a destroyed ship returned or 12,000 UEC a year for insurance, (or 1000 UEC for 24 hours’ coverage), players might decide to NOT insure and instead simply pay for a replacement … playing the odds of getting destroyed less than once a month.
A combat ship would be worth insurance, they get destroyed a dozen times a play session, but a Freelancer might risk going uncovered, opting to avoid any conflicts instead.
With a huge fleet, it may be impractical to insure something that they use twice a year.
I cannot imagine LOSING an uninsured ship PERMANENTLY, but being unable to claim it without paying a fee, that I could see.
In November, I melted all of my ships and purchased a multi-ship package with SQ42 and SC games, as well as LTI. The subscriber pack of 3 cutters with LTI was purchased earlier this month. Now, all of my ships are LTI with room to upgrade if I see something that I really want. After the original melt, these purchases, and a few upgrades, I still have over $400 in store credit, so can upgrade to about anything. I will not need more insurance.
Let's hope!
My view on it right now is that literally any insurance right now and for the foreseeable future is all LTI and is unlikely to change anytime soon so I don't really bother trying to find LTI.
That's true, for the short term, and seems to be working well
I was under the impression that LTI meant that you never had to pay additional respawn costs, not that I would never permanently lose my ship. If that's the case, I'm never buying another ship without LTI. It's insane if CIG doesn't protect players' cash bought ships...
You might be right, the problem is I just don't know, and it's not easy to find out!
this would also be literally illegal in EU countries. If it would be a "you lose all access to the ship" kinda deal, well I hope that they've saved some of that billion dollars cause damn is it ever a lawsuit waiting to happen
They have explicitly stated that if you bought something with real money, you will never lose it.
There will be in game insurance when game go live. Not supposed to be to expensive
lti jsut means you dont have to reup your insurance. this guy has NO idea wtf he is talking abotu.(and literally admits it here int he comments) he is spreadignt he same bullshit fearmongering withotu bothering to learn. the sad thing is he LITERALLY SHOWS WHERE IT EXPLAINS INSURANCE and then claims it doesnt show count because.. its old?
Thank you for diving into this topic. I know many (myself included) have questions about how insurance will play a role once SC officially launches.
I just wish we knew the answers, Snaggletoof
This is a very good reality check that is conspicuously lacking in the majority (if not all) Star Citizen ship reviews. All those wishing to purchase ships should take into consideration purchasing a lifetime insurance (LTI) and include LTI in their budget; it's like a hidden tax. Thanks for this wake-up call, Farrister!
The issue for me is that we don't know how important LTI will be - maybe it's gonna be huge, or maybe it's gonna be minor. Nobody seems to know for sure!
I’ve gotten to the point of having one ship that is lti which is the one I would want to fly if all else fails and the rest I just cycle through melting cycles not caring about insurance. Since there hasn’t been any talk about it recently from CIG, it isn’t worth my effort to try and seek out
I just wish we knew
Last time I brought up insurance on spectrum, I got flamed because everyone thought it was too soon to discuss the subject. Switching the monthly subscription to include different levels of insurance without explaining the function of insurance - to me - was a bad move because there is no defined value correlation with subscription cost. However, CIG implies a valuation with the different levels of insurance correlated to monthly subscription cost. This could get CIG into trouble because they are implying longer insurance has a higher value without defining the value for what is called "insurance."
Just wish we had more clarity
sounds like CIG sockpuppets pushing narratives and drowning out topics.
[****rider-CIG throwing a tantrum about this comment]
Was it Nightrider … did he ban you from Spectrum?
Nightrider doesn’t tolerate ANY awkward conversations about Star Citizen.
Here's my idea:
Go HARD on insurance. The insurance that we get via the pledge store only covers the basics, like basic comps. To keep good comps, you have to pay a moderate ingame aUEC price. However, The best components (I.E rare looted ones, or ones unapproved by the UEE that come from criminal systems or something) can not be insured.
Additionally, raise the buying and selling points of components, and add the cost of those components to repair/restocking if they are taken from the ship. This would make looting components valuable, but also impossible to farm.
I don't think claim times should go up, but having your ship destroyed shoyld shorten your insured time. Punishing players for essentially throwing away their ships is very important and could make crucial changes to pvp and pve encounters.
It's a possibility, but I think we need to know for sure. Official communication might help!
One of the issue with insurance is also that, as we see in the current game, it is usually quicker to abandon or destroy a damaged or crippled ship than lose a lot of time going to a station for repairing it. If they introduce repair time and non negligible cost with it, it will get worst. And increasing importantly the time to reclaim would also lead to a new drama.
I think that in the end they will have to give LTI to every ships bought in real currency. But you will have to pay at least a fee in game to retrieve your ship.
Time will tell...
I think graying the ship out on the terminals until you pay it off with in game credits would be the best solution.
Interesting idea!
While i do agree that it would be the best solutions, this comes with it's own problems.
To deny access to something bought with real money until you pay more money is not only morally questionable, but in many countries also illegal. It would also in many countries be illegal to have people loose their virtual objects/properties for any reason
While they're at it; CIG should update the ASOP terminals and have a window for retrieving ships and one for claiming ships. Somebody needs to make the scrolling stop!
For the most of the situation probably is fine... but I think in a situation must be an exception, like what if
- the player has only one ship
- doesn't play that much or for any other reason can't afford to renew the insurance
He still can't access to his ship and he can't make money to renew it because he can't leave the station/planet
Imagine see the "SHIPLESS" people beg in chat to receive some cash to be able to play or worse... buy credits to access your own bought ship.
Can be mitigated tho, like giving out some credits maybe with logins or stuff like that idk
@@Nidvard i Disagree, it's not so different from paying for ingame item that you can't use till you a certain level and such...
purchased ships with rl money should have a lifetime guarantee insurance by default imo
It's a lot of money!
It is good that this topic is talked about so people dont have so much illusions about things.
I have bought ships for little over 1000$ but i havent "bought" ships. I have SUPPORTED THE GAME DEVELOPMENT.
If i lose my ships ingame after the insurance has ended and i have been so ignorant not to buy new insurance ingame then its fine by me that i lose those ships and the money.
In the end you buy these "ships" with money that you are ready to lose.
And btw. This insurance is for the hull only. So things inside the ship and cargo insurances are a thing ingame.
I just wish we had more clarity
When I backed on KS, I got the Aurora LTI package for $45. This past week, now that the game is starting to pick up the pace in development and we're seeing a more functional "game" in existence, I dropped another $45 and got another LTI package. I upgrade my original one to a C1 that now has LTI and can be used for core gameplay loops, and the second one to a better starter that can be used as a quick-claim shuttle.
Not knowing exactly what insurance is going to entail, plus not knowing if there will be premiums to maintain a loadout or internal vehicle cargo like armor, guns, food and supplies, etc... Is a huge pain in the ass, and just made me want to have two with LTI as a baseline just in case, that I can then hopefully shell out in-game money to protect the internal components and inventory of.
In the current state of the game, it sucks that there's no option to retrieve a ship via a terminal vs claiming it, and then losing everything you stowed away that's not in the cargo grid. It makes it hard to want to flow with that "persistent universe" gameplay when you have to jump through hoops to store your ship every session, or risk losing any food or armor/clothes you have stashed away. Gun racks are an awesome QoL feature that see almost no use from me because of the fact that if my game crashes, or I lose my internet connection outside of a 30K, I lose everything I took the time to stock my ship up with for a gameplay session.
My hope is that LTI will cover the ship itself and any internal inventory it has (Food, Personal Weapons, Armor), where-as an in-game premium fee is charged to maintain any upgraded ship components onboard, with a much higher premium to insure any cargo on the grid from the time of your last docking. Not in the form of respawning the ship with that cargo, but maybe a flat, rounded-down payout that covers the lowest estimate of what the cargo might have ended up being worth.
It's not as hardcore as I'm sure some players would like, but the continuous threat of losing anything you take the time to put on a ship that they want you to consider your "home in the stars", only to get ganked by the monthly meta build griefer or pad-rammer, and spend another hour restocking your ship with basics and expending your (possibly limited) time to play in a cycle of busywork seems like a hard punishment for someone who may not even be playing in a combat capacity. I wholly understand cargo not being insurable, but I feel like at the very base, the ships lockers and inventory should be insurable to allow you to get back in the game quickly in the event of a computer crash, griefing, power outage, etc.
Interesting to read - more information from Devs would be good, I think
You will never permanently lose a ship in SC, if you paid cash for it, even if you don't have LTI.
Source?
It is true. Chris Roberts said so . Don't know which show it was. So many years of shows and interviews.
@@Farrister
@@Farrister From the way I understood it was, anything you paid IRL cash for can not be permanently lost. It includes armors, weapons paints/skins etc. There might be some sort of wait time or UEC insurance fee for ships, aspeshaly if your in a fringe/lawless system. Even LTI might not completely cover losses in no security systems, but either added Ins. before going into or a UEC deductible for extra damage claims . It is not completely worked out by CIG yet, but have heard this from CR and devs before . If so SC would certainly be a scam in the highest magnitude. Think of losing a legatus package ... Lawsuits out the ass, plus credibility would be down the toilet = No game/bankruptcy event. It would not make any sense to do it.
@@jedi_drifter2988So to answer the question of, “source?”, you have none. Great.
@@FuhqEwe Do your own research, Call concierge if you want the ans.
I'm not your Mother ...
I know for a fact, in this economy, a large portion of the player base would just uninstall the game and forget about it if they lost their ships that they paid real money for. I only have 7 friends that play the game and they all said they'd just uninstall and play something else if they lost their ship and had to repurchase it with more real money. Those aren't great odds.
If that's what we end up with, who knows!
@@Farrister I certainly hope not. I love playing this game so much. I'm hoping they'll think of a good alternative.
I have backed and followed SC for a long time. This is my best understanding:
In-game UEC (not a UEC) purchased ships may be lost if not insured.
Real money purchased ships will have a period of insurance included. When that period expires, if you lose your ship, there is a policy lapsed fee when you file a claim (payable in UEC) that is much higher than the in-game cost if insurance, if you had purchased beforehand.
LTI ships will have a policy that does not expire. There may still be expedite costs.
There is also the possibility of entering deep Vanduul space which is uninsurable. In game purchassed ships are not covered here, and real money ships will have a very long recovery period due to the 'retreival and restoration' costs of the ship being lost so far out.
This is based on lots of various videos and discussions I have seen over the years. It seems pretty clear, and fair, but of course it may not be accurate.
I think that's my issue, trying to find accurate, clear, and official communication on the subject.
I recall someone explaining that insurance will run out but you won't lose your ship. If you want to get the ship back you need to just buy the insurance again. In game.
I think that's likely too, but don't know for sure ;-)
I have an idea. Make the insurance system similar to real life. Make it a periodic payment.
Per ship. Higher value ships cost more in-game money.
New players will only have to pay little. But as they buy more ships in game and buy higher value ships, the expense becomes a bit bothersome.
Then give subscribers a perk - all ships are insured during your subscription periods.
So, it gives a choice to the players. Either you earn in-game money to insure your fleet, or subscribe and save the in-game money for something else.
So pay to win..
At this point it's the norm. All non-subscription MMO does the similar thing to entice users to pay monthly, so at least it won't be worse than other games..
Clarity would help us know
I think the best balance between letting people keep their ships that they spent hundreds on and not making it pay to win is a system where you pay for a certain tier of in game insurance upfront when buying the ship (with in game credits) and there are no periodic payments. And these insurance tiers define how many times we can respawn the ship after destruction.
So let’s say I saved up a bunch of credits and wanted to buy a starrunner, the cheapest option would be to buy an uninsured one that I’d lose if I ever died with it. For a considerable amount more, I could buy one with ‘bronze tier’ insurance which means I can respawn my ship after destruction the same way as in the current PU, but after 3 respawns I’ll lose it. The tiers increase and you get more respawns with each but they cost exponentially more, so perhaps the most expensive tier could be platinum that would get you like 20 respawns or something, and for a considerable fee you could renew the insurance so if you’ve got like 1 respawn left you can pay to go back to having 3 or so, and while paying is an inconvenience it would cost less than buying a whole new issue of the ship. And you could upgrade so you could buy an uninsured ship and then pay for insurance later, you’ve just gotta hope you keep the ship safe in the meantime.
With this system the people who spent real money on ships can keep them permanently without having that much of an advantage (besides avoiding the insurance cost) so it’s not really pay to win and lawsuits are avoided
@@evildude2135 that sounds ok from players perspective, but how can CIG keep make money?
Palworld dev recently revealed they spend about $500K a month for the servers.
While Star Citizen may not have as many live userbase as Palworld when it releases in the future, the amount of computing resources that need to be handled in server side means they have to pay A LOT for AWS. CIG needs to generate revenue continuously to pay devs and server or Star Citizen will not last very long.
I know myself. I'm going to take long breaks, don't want to think about insurance. So.. Get LTI while it's easy.
If it's important - who knows!
The thing is, CIG clearly tells you with every purchase that these are, in fact, not a purchase but a support donation. The ship we get in return is a "thank you" gift and is not regarded as the purchased item. While there might be legal consequences to that, I don't think it binds them to protect or keep your ships under any circumstances (even though we all agree that would be the correct thing to do regarding backers)
extract from the RSI website : "When a pledge is made for any item on the store, the money is contributed towards the development of the game. In return for helping fund RSI’s operations, you receive the items listed within the pledge."
This is why they have the "pledge" terminology
I think it's more complicated than that lol, CIG isn't a charity, it's a business, and it's not a charity hub, it's a store. In some places maybe it's enough to say that, in some places probably not. It doesn't excuse not being clear about what insurance means, in my opinion
Fundraising doesn't apply only to charity (e.g. kickstarter) and I didn't say their fundraising activity was an excuse for being unclear.
I only said (because you mentionned personal responsibility and legal aspects) that in my opinion, they are protected by the fact that all the items (including the insurance that may go with it) that you can get through a pledge are delivered in good faith and best effort by CIG (as the T&C states). If you lose your ship after the insurance expires, it doesn't change the fact that the insured ship was indeed delivered (and kept for as long as the insurance runs) when you contributed.
Even then, we can't really define what counts as "well informed" ourselves because, as you mentioned in your video, while it might seem clear to me, it might not be for others.
My first ship was an avenger titan with 6 months insurance. When I found out it would be possible to lose that ship permanently, if it wasn’t insured, it made me super uncomfortable. I melted it and since then everything I’ve bought has LTI.
LTI should come with all ships bought with real money. Packages already bought should all be upgraded to LTI and previous insurance levels should translate to a percentage discount on services at your home location.
Maybe it isn't possible, I just don't know!
@@Farrister you're right though, that there hasn't been recent, clear communication about insurance from CIG. Generally I think there's a lot of confirmation bias going on when people speculate about the game. Some people want the game to be very sim-like, including the insurance system. Ultimately I think CIG are going to make game design decisions that appeal to a wider audience than the space sim niche (for longer term success). This means more gamey mechanics like we have with the capacitor system and fewer sim elements. For that reason I don't think the insurance system will be too punishing in the end, because it'll disgruntle too many people, especially where real money has changed hands.
I too have made a lti purchase out of the uncomfortable fear of forever losing your purchase
I belive they will never take away ships from player accounts that were bought with real money. I find it hard to belive they are either that unforgiving, or want to market that kind of hardcore play.. then again, time will tell
I certainly hope not to lose any of my ships!
@@Farrister I hear you :) i got lti on mine, so i dont have to worry luckily, but if i had lost any of my ships tbh, id sell off the rest of the ships i had, or my entire account to cut my losses for sure.
I don't think they will take em away, I think you might (< keyword) be unable to fly them until a fee of some sort is paid (ingame or otherwise)
My hope is that the ship isn’t lost all together but without insurance that you can’t claim the ship until you can earn the ingame credits to re-establish insurance or have a penalty sub purchase. I also agree there should be a system check when launching a vehicle from bay/hanger as it then allows the pilot the option to agree to the responsibility.
On the flip, I feel insurance is gonna reduce griefer tendencies especially if a crime restitution amount comes to verse.
Could have a big impact on how people play
I believe the game should work like this:
Without insurance you are forced to salvage with an SRV and bring your ship to a space port to repair it, or pay for someone to do it for you
If it gets stolen you have to investigate and get it back, everything you buy should have GPS and be tracked with NikNax
Interesting idea - I just wish we knew what will happen!
It seems to me that a simple solution is to have any real money purchase that is destroyed in game without insurance remain available on the player's account, but require paying the insurance premium before it can be re-spawned. Basically, give them the option to pay the insurance after the fact rather than in advance only.
That could be a fix - but we don't know if it's the case!
In Alpha people seem to think that their ships are a throw away commodity, which I can understand to a degree. However, one the reality of 'lose it and it is gone' takes hold after release out of testing I see people changing their play style or opting out of the game altogether. It is similar to 'the death of a spaceman' where your in game character will eventually die and not be able to be 're-cloned'. I do not play many MMO's, so I do not know if this is unique to SC where a character dies and you have to start over from scratch. Do I feel that it is an issue for the long term gameplay... yes. I do not play in a fashion that puts me more at risk than the average player, but I do see how some would take it as an affront should their character no long exist in the game after they took on too much risk. It is a fine line that the game is taking on between reality and playability long term. I appreciate you bringing it up, as many have on the forums. If I spend more real money on this game my wife is going to take away my privilege's. Thanks just the same though!
Haha I feel you on the wife budget!!
In real world insurance you have a monthly fee just to keep it active and then you also have a deductible when you actually need to use your insurance, I bet insurance will have something like that. I'm thinking that CIG will simply say all store-bought ships have insurance a.k.a. no premiums on them and the LTI or X months will be that long for no deductibles
An interesting idea
I agree, I hope CIG lays their plans out for how insurance is supposed to work soon. I am honestly not sure how the insurance system can roll out without causing major problems not only for the pledged stuff but also for the game. If it removes the uninsured ship from your inventory, there will be the obvious backlash for pledged ships. If it requires a small fee to get back the ship, it would make insurance a pointless addition. If it requires a huge fee to get back the ship, there is the potential theoretical problem of a player not being able to fly his pledged ship unless he grinded for some credits, which would basically be the same issue as needing to buy the ship again. I could see them making it so insurance on the ship insured the components and decorations on it, and if you reclaimed a ship without insurance everything would reset to the default state, but then CIG has talked about wanting the individual components to be insured too so that can't possibly be their plans for it.
Agreed - so many of the unknowns could be solved with a new statement on the matter. Or a community Q&A!
A good solution that doesn't outright raise legal concerns or even worse, lawsuits, is giving LTI and currently insured players their ships with an automatic expedition on the ASOP for free, that way they can't spam the ASOP (no instant ship delivery), and still have the benefit of not paying anything ingame. While other non insured players will have to either pay a hefty expedition fee, or wait a relatively long time (longer than the current setting). This is imo the most optimal solution considering there will be ship repairs and building from blueprints in the future.
That might work too - I'd love if we had more official communication about it though
I feel for you. You usually make very neutral topic videos on SC. So now that you make a video that is actually a bit critical, or at least highlighting a huge issue, you got the full force of the worst of the fandom at your throat.
Thanks for making this video. It is one of the most serious issues in my opinion.
Yeah, in hindsight I probably should have expected it! Still, like you, I think it's an important issue where more clarity would really help
its not critical its is simply wrong. they are not the same
I always figured that eventually Star Citizen would follow in EVE Online's footsteps in that you can purchase a premium currency for real money that can then be spent on cosmetics, account services, and starter packages, and then be sold to other players via an in-game market in exchange for UEC. This would provide a long-term funding system for the game while also offering a way to fight gold farmers. EVE Online has plenty of instances of people buying PLEX, spending it on ships, then losing those ships, so it's not unheard of. But at the same time CIG have shifted away from the more intense hardcore features with total permadeath becoming a clone regeneration system and the introduction of actual in-game skill stats you can train up by doing things, so my personal prediction is that they're going to sell ships for premium currency and introduce a "all ships bought as pledges during the alpha and beta phases as well as those bought directly with this new currency are permanently attached to your account, however insurance will reduce the costs and wait times associated with reclaiming them. Meanwhile ships purchased with in-game currency that are uninsured and are destroyed will be lost permanently".
I just wish we knew what the plans were
It might even be illegal to fly an uninsured ship just like in real life with modern vehicles. Shipyards might cut you off from taking off a few days before your insurance expires so in practice most people would struggle to be found in that position. Another trick could be for bed loggers, the ship would be automatically towed to a station a few days prior to insurance expiration. I'm sure the dev team can come up with all kinds of clever ways to save the ship but prevent access until the player does pay for insurance again. That way it's only ever a temporary loss.
An interesting idea - I just wish we knew for sure!
I expect every ship purchased with real money or warbonds to all be all lifetime guaranteed but at the bronze tier.
Then true LTI ships bought through concept sales or LTI tokens to end up with a silver tier lifetime insurance.
And then there will be a temporary gold insurance that we can subscribe and apply on top of whatever LTI insurance we already have.
So the golden LTI will allow to reclaim your ship much faster, perhaps further away etc etc etc...
Wish we knew
The whole Insurance issue is the reason why I did not start star citizen at all.
And with the server wipes that can ruin your progress, what is the point of saving for a big ship via ingame currency... .
Now I learned about LTI and registered for getting the newsletter in hope to get a chance to buy something with LTI I can build on.
If not, Star Citizen is not for me.
I can see a repair cost system (X % of the purchase value ) in ingame currency and some kind of subscription status that sets the repair cost in half.
Here's my suggestion: EVERY ship, whether purchased in-game or with real currency, should have a VIN (GUID). If that ship has insurance and it gets damaged, you should pay a deductible and the insurance should cover anything above that amount. The current system of "claiming a ship" whenever we want to would just go away - the insurance company would issue a contract any SRV pilot could grab to come get the damaged ship and tow it to the closest repair station.
All insurance should be "replacement cost" including any components in the ship. If the ship is destroyed with insurance, you should pay your deductible and the ship should be replaced in a short time delay like we have today, while the insurance company salvages any remnant of the old ship (this could also be done via a salvage contract and potentially a security contract to protect the salvagers). Any theft of a component from an insurance-owned ship should be an immediate crime stat in a monitored system.
Any time a ship is destroyed WITHOUT insurance, if it was bought with in-game currency, it's just gone, and the wreck and components become fair game for any salvagers. If it was bought with real money, it would be available again (with stock components and weapons) in your hanger after 24h or 48h. This isn't realistic in-game, but would completely prevent any kind of lawsuits or negative press that would hurt CIG or the SC reputation, which is more important.
Essentially this model would incentivize purchasing timed insurance separately (with real money or in-game money), stimulate towing, salvage and escort/protection missions, and protect CIG from the ridicule and most likely lawsuits that would come from letting real-world purchases be forever lost in-game.
To some extent, we already have some of that! I think a dev statement would go a long way on this issue
Good to talk about this subject. It took a while for me to understand what insurance meant.
I still don't understand!
I think that insurance will become expensive (in game currency) for shops bought with in game currency. Basically it will be designed as an incentive to make players buy the ship with real money and any ship bought with real money will ultimately be protected from complete loss in any scenario.
Clarification definitely needed.
Maybe - agreed on clarification needed part!
Imagine if, like me today, you just made a quick run and your ship randomly blew up by what might have been an invisible asteroid.. but you lose a $600 ship because you didn’t realise it had expired..
Just imagine!
I used to be fairly confident that digital goods would be protected, but that doesn't seem to be the case anymore. Haven't game publishers and streaming services like Amazon already removed items such as movies and games from peoples inventories because of some structural change in the company or ToS? I know some countries have consumer protections in place, but as a US citizen, I'm not really sure where I am with digital goods and protections. Buying LTI seems like the best option, and I've had years and years of juggling my hangar around to get it set up. All of my ships have LTI except the f8.
Yeah, lots of people been chasing that LTI
Insurance should always give you the stock loadout only( stock loadout on all ships should be only civilian and industrial components types). Now on top of that, we need the malestrom and engineering systems installed so that killing/disabling a ship (especially large + size crewed ships) is a huge task even if the crew is casual. The biggest change that needs to come is also real consequences for the unprovoked attacker win or lose if you get coms out of their assault there should be little to no safe haven for them.
We all need to remember that the insurance goes by real world months, and that renewing a ship's insurance is supposed to be a trivial transaction. If you have a very large ship, like a hammerhead oe hull E, you should be using it in game in a way that one mission/transaction pays for well over the insurance cost for the next month. Other operating costs like fuel, armament, repairs are likely to be less trivial though.
I hope that's true :) but wish we knew for sure
@@Farrister agreed, CIG needs transparency in this regard. Sadly, I doubt they even figured out the plan on this. Still possible they scrap the insurance aspect altogether. That would probably be the most healthy option imo
In a thread about losing store bought gear a developer said you will never loose money payed assets, but there could be a different timer based on the asset and insurance.
So I presume LTI just means better and faster insurance forever and with non LTI ships once the good insurance is off you can claim back the ship in its original state with a very long timer (several days even maybe).
but until CIG tells us more its just speculations
Yup, an official clarification would go a long way
I think it should be like that if you have insurance, you can claim your ship for free. But if you don't have one, you shouldn't lose that ship, maybe pay a hefty fine based on the ships UEC value. For example 5-10% of the ships value.
You have an uninsured Aurora MR that you lost? Yeah that ship is 184k auec, you can claim it for 10k.
You have a Drake Corsair that costs 3million, it was uninsured and you lost it? You can claim it for 150-200k.
If they take away ships just like that it'll do no good. The media will notice it, people won't like it, maybe it's even against the law. But honestly i don't know what they'll do with insurances. I bought a Mustang Alpha for $45 with 10year insurance, i don't feel the need for an LTI, 10years is more than enough, who knows where this game, or where i'll be in 10 years. And it's 10 years from release, so it might be 12-15.
Lots of options, ultimately we need clarity from the developers on this, I think
My idea for short term insurance (Non-LTI) is; you could restart your character from scratch with 6 months again and loose all reputation and in game earned resources... if you want to reset instead of continue as an existing character
That could work - I just wish we knew!
Thanks so much for making this video. There has been a lot of discussion about this on Reddit. CIG needs to open up about what they plan to do about it. Like you, I believe they know what they will do, but are keeping silent specifically so players spend more money out of fear.
Agreed!
They aren't keeping silent so "people spend more money out of fear"...they are silent because they literally don't know yet how it will work as they haven't developed the gameplay systems for the fully fleshed out insurance yet. Stop acting like it's some big conspiracy...
@@ChristoffRevanthan they need to stop selling lti. It’s as simple as that.
my understanding of in game insurance is we will have to pay to repair the ship if it gets destroyed, it wont be about having to rebuy the whole thing
Ultimately we just don't know
For the future funding model, I'd like to see the same subscription system that's available right now. Meaning it's fully optional, no game-play is locked behind it and you just get some subscriber flair and rental ships each month.
So it would just be a way for people who have some extra cash and want to support the game to do so, and people who can't or don't want to pay the subscription still only need a $45 game package to get access to everything.
Would that be enough to fund the servers etc., do you think?
@@Farrister I have no idea. But I also wouldn't mind if CIG kept selling ships if necessary.
As long as the full game is still accessible with just a $45 game package and all other purchases are optional.
Just my two cents:
There should be two models of insurance. The first would be the insurance tied to a ship bought with real money. The other would be insurance you can buy in-game to insure in-game bought ships.
For the in-game insurance. First off it would be optional. If you don't have it though and the ship is destroyed you lose the ship all together so you'd have to rebuy it. I'd like to think this will help with the much needed money pit the game needs. If you do get the in-game insurance and the ship is destroyed you'll get not only the ship back but any aftermarket components / weapons back. To have a negative to the insurance though you'll need to pay some to get the ship & all back. Not as much as outright buying the ship again but a fraction of it. Say maybe 1/4 of the ship's cost?
For the insurance bought with real money if you lose the ship you'll again get the ship & aftermarket stuff back. For those that bought a ship with a limited (say one year insurance plan) after that one is up you'd too would have to pay some money (in-game money) to get the ship & all back. Not as much as the people who bought the in-game insurance just as a nice little bonus for spending real money so say maybe like 1/8.
Interesting ideas - I only wish we knew for sure!
I would love for this feature to allow you to pick up the hull of your ship and have to rebuild it, maybe it's super cheap in game money but that way you can pick up your lost ship from the junkyard and work on it. There does need to be pain to losing a ship imo.
Assuming there's a hull to pick up!
The devs make it pretty clear that you are not purchasing a space ship, you are backing the project. Its on the store page and you have to check a box to affirm your understanding everytime you back the project. Anyone who thinks they have "bought" something really ought to read that disclaimer. Furthermore I think LTI will be nice but not all that important. They are certain to balance the economy to make it so the insurance you pay is affordable enough to promote a fun gameplay loop. People scrambling for LTI are probably gonna learn that it wasn't the holy grail they thought it was. Whereas people worried about insurance costs will likely be mollified by the fact that the mechanic will not be as painful as they expect. This is an active development process and economic tweaks like insurance prices are sure to be a part of the game as we reach a more feature complete state.
Time will tell, I suppose
As far as i understood you can now claim your ship with your insurance, after those months it will cost credits to recall your ship from depending where it is. The further away and the more dmged it is the more you pay what now costs nothing
Right now, none of this matters in game. Everything is insured, and you can just claim your ship. The unknown is all about what happens in the future
From my understanding reading the ship insurance FAQ in the support thread under “What is Lifetime insurance and How do I get it?” It says it won’t cost the player extra UEC payments to maintain coverage. Not relating to claims and repairs that’ll still cost UEC. By how it’s worded it sounds as if you’ll be able to renew your insurance when it runs out with UEC if you have a non-lifetime plan.
I read that Q&A too, and probably left with more questions than answers lol
@@Farrister I hope I’m right…I don’t wanna lose my Raven it only came with a 2 month plan😢
I'm guessing that the devs are also realizing that this is an issue but aren't sure yet what to do. It's a challenge. On one hand, it seems crappy that you can loose any protection when you charged so much for a game. On the other hand, insurance provides a great counter to reckless player actions such as crashing intentionally to grief or any in game pvp which would provide a natural risk vs reward for piracy or traveling without other players support.
I like the idea that decisions have consequences in the game for both aggressor and defender, but the large monetary pledges throw a wrench into this. I have no idea what I would do if I were in charge.
It's a conundrum
I remember CIG saying for those who bought ships with real money, that they wouldn’t have the risk of completely losing the ship. Not much details on that though; but it is on their minds.
It's not confirmed in an official article - there was one post from an employee which got de-yellowed which people reference. But not so much an official statement
@@Farrister ah, cool. Thanks for the clarification. Hard to tell what's what sometimes.
@Farrister There is an easy solution to the insurance problem, if your ship gets destroyed:
1) active insurance on ship (LTI or ingame bought): new ship gets delivered in a small amount of time (minutes) depending on size (current solution)
2) ship without insurance: has to be repaired for a long time (hours) but this process can be sped up by ingame money (expensive but then in minutes) (possible gameplay loop with repair done by players with own resources.. faster than waiting and cheaper than autorepair speeding up)
3) ship without insurance and player without money: you have to wait for a very long time (2-3 days?) to get you ship back into action.
i have many good ideas... and i'm a developer... CIG if you read this i am open for a job offer :D
Lots of potential solutions - the most important part is to actually come out and set fresh expectations for players, I think!
At this point even I think CIG doesnt understand what their insurance is doing. There's likely a disconnect between marketing, legal and development when it comes to how insurance would work.
The way I think i'd work is that if you modify the ship from the purchased form (from what you first obtained it) you'll have a limit of getting those after market parts back. After that you'll pay a fee but you'll lose all those after market parts. So even if the LTI ends you'll pay a small fee but lose all the modifications.
Its oddly weird that they havent fixed a lot of this.
There's certainly a disconnect in the community expectations!
I've seen this issue brought up before, but never seen an official solution. If i was going to throw out an idea to cover CIG's backs, I think they could look at allowing a backer to fully reset their account. Whilst losing all progress in game, it would mean nothing bought with real money was gone forever. Few would want to do it and most would rather insure their stuff. CIG would obviously need to check it covers them legally.
I just wish we knew
You also have to imagine that even if you buy ships with LTI, CIG could add new intensive CPU functions at any time to the game. That would mean that you could only use your very expensive ship only if you buy a new very expensive computer.
How do you mean?
I was under the impression that purchased ships were account bound and you could get back a lost uninsured purchased ship by invoking a character reset.
Yes you would lose all of your game progress and have to start again but you would get your lost ship back.
I think that is how CIG will get round any legal issues with lost ships.
Lose an uninsured ship that you originally purchased, want it back, you have the choice to invoke a character reset and start again or carry on without that ship but keep your game progress..
Interesting idea - I wish I knew for sure!
Imo there should be a basic insurance that always pays out at least partially the lost value, if you didn't fully insure the ship before. Also, there should always be a very big fat warning that tells you that you have no insurance, when you take out the ship.
I just wish we knew for sure
I always just assumed that players were required to pay a nominal fee when reclaiming a destroyed ship … unless they have LTI.
You don’t have enough, it sits in your hangar until you can pay to get it replaced.
If someone with an 890 Jump cannot afford the 1000 UEC to get it back, they have to run a few quick missions to get their 890 reclaimed.
I don’t think we will LOSE our real world purchase (sorry, I mean ’pledge’) permanently, we will just need to have a few eddies to get the new one delivered.
I hope you're right :)
The solution, to keep everyone happy (fat chance), is to have the insurance you buy with a ship, insure the ship and all its upgraded components and free standard insurance, when it runs out, on every ship that just replaces the standard hull and fixtures. That would work for me.
Could work, if they came out and said that was the system!
Seems to me there's an easy way out: insurance is a per-claim cost that you pay on your ship, like we currently do with expedite, and that cost is zero for people who have active insurance from pledges. But then again I have never really had much confidence in the specifics of how the insurance system will work, so other than the usual min-maxing instincts of getting LTI when it is convenient I haven't had my expectations set around it being that much better than anything else.
To be honest I think the easy way out is to clearly publish the long term plans for insurance!
It's a worrying problem with many layers of considerations, but sticking to the incredibly unlikely scenario of "uninsured pledge ships removed from accounts irretrievably when destroyed" does that a disservice.
At the very least, there's likely always going to be the ability to wipe and reset your account, starting from the 'clean slate' you paid for with cash - this is, at least, the standard in modern games with similar insurance models (and many MMOs, though much less-utilized in them for relevant reasons).
It's really at that starting line, where there is an option for retrieval, that the questions about what to do start getting both practical and challenging. Ships gone forever is in line with the 12 year old document, but there's both more important things and more up-to-date info to talk about than that.
A fresh new Q&A or official statement might help, I think
Having insurance will basicaly return the hull back to you as it was without the upgrades you might have put on, whether you get the money value back from those upgrades you put on is something we will have to wait and see.
On the other hand if your insurance runs out you'll more then likely have to pay a heavy fee to get your ship back but it will never be truly gone.
These are the points that have been discussed and talked about over the years of Star citizen's ongoing development. In the end all we can do is wait and see.
Do you have an official source for this?
@@Farrister As i mentioned they have discussed and talked about it over the many years of development what insurance would look like and what we can expect in video's from star citizen. but we can't really confirm untill we actually get it ingame.
To my knowledge, you will NEVER loose the ship you bought with real world money REGARDLESS the duration of insurance. If you have a limited time insurance, after it expires you will need to purchase insurance for your ship which is about 10% of the entire value of your ship. CR said insurance is very easy to obtain ingame, a bunker mission worth should be enough to cover however, for capital class ships I would not be surprised if the 890J will eventually be 100million UEC, having 10Million UEC to cover a months worth of insurance (speculation). So it is worth to have LTI on cap ships to ease the insurance burden on your fleet especially if you have around 50+ ships in one account. You can imagine the cost with insurance, hangar fees, components, wear and tear and so on.
Also to add on,
If you run out of insurance and don't have the funds to purchase insurance, your should still be able to fly your ship! However, if something happens > it blows up < then your ship will be gated behind the cost of the entire value. Meaning it's like purchasing a brand new ship from the store at full cost + potential fees for hangar delivery and insurance premium if any.
I just wish we knew for sure
@ter CIG don't even know how insurance will work at this very moment but they will communicate and make everyone aware eventually when the final game looms closer for release. At the moment it's ok to speculate but I'd imagine insurance for ships will be similarly with RL car insurances. You might have noticed ships have a bunch of letters and numbers, every ship will eventually have a unique set of letters and numbers, similar to a vin number to identify the ship manufacture and model. They did discuss ship naming and the vin numbers for insurance themed purposes in a ISC probably a couple years back. But I remember they did discuss ship vin numbers will be used for insurance claims such as if it was stolen the vin number would be reported to the UEE security/ police.
1:26 While some older articles indeed say you'd just straight up lose your ship if its destroyed uninsured, Azme-CIG more recently commented that you could get back destroyed ships that didn't have insurance, it'd just cost more than if you had an insurance. And then even more recently prefaced that with 'everything being subject to change ofc.' And the post got un-yellowed. Hmm.
Anyhow, I wouldn't panic just yet.
No intention to panic!
@@Farristerlmao sure..... 😂 Your video was literally clickbait to get people to react emotionally to something you have zero sources on. You keep replying to people in the comments and demand proof, but yet you have zero sources yourself for the idea that somehow our pledge ships will be able to get lost forever from our accounts. Bugger off chappie
My assumption is there will be tiers of insurance in game. Some that cost more to cover upgrades or have faster claim times etc. And if you are playing you would be using that. The attached insurance is for the most basic type. Only returns a stock ship. And indeed if you forget to keep it up ship is byebye. I am curious on how it will work in game particularly what happens for someone with a basic account who blew all ingame cash and lost thier ship. Im not bothered either way they want to implement it as i tend to play carefully and adding permanent loss to a game can make the game play feel very different. But im definitely curious what they will do. I'm also wondering if they ever offer a no ship starter pack. Will they implement enough options to make that work?
The issue for me is a lot of this is assumption, we just don't have clarity
That's why Its the "pledge" store.
You didn't buy a ship, you pledged money to development and got a ship as a thank you.
With a wink and a nudge
I’m fairly certain that insurance will simply mean if you run out of insurance whether it’s a ship that you bought with real money or in the game you will lose it. That maybe the games that you bought with real money might still show up just you’re gonna have to buy it straight out so you don’t have to fly to the location to buy it.
Maybe - an official announcement might help to manage expectations
@@Farrister I really hope they do…..with LTI being the best bang for your buck… also, that’s why when people buy 890 jump with not lifetime insurance hurts me every time I see it 😂
From how I see insurance it would go like this. If you got the ship in game for in game money, if you loose it uninsured, well that's gone forever like they said. Now with ships that are bought with real life money but have run out of insurance would go if they get blown up, instead of loosing the ship permeantly you have to pay the fine that would cost for that day's insurance. If not your "wreck/title" gets impounded. That means they'll hold on to that ship until you pay the 1 day of insurance cost off but during the time you have it impounded, you simply can't use or interact with it. This would get people to care about the insurance for ships with lowered insurance times from the get go while also not worrying that however much their purchase is, they'll never loose it.
I just wish we knew the answer!
@@Farrister only thing we can do is theorize and hopefully cig will implement a system where it’s fair and gives you chances when you need it
I think policies will be available in game with UEC and likely as a paid extra inc a subscription model. It might even be that you cant release an unisured ship without a disclaimer if at all, that way a player is more likely to get it insured or its a wilful action. In any case its likely a nominal fee with in game UEC will get it back and you wont lose it forever.
Yup, I think most people will just buy insurance in game and it'll be a non-issue. The topics here are more about those edge cases where people end up uninsured for whatever reason, and what might happen then?
There's been a few updates in the past few years on the RSI website about ship insurance.
No ship you purchase will be permanently lost. LTI or 2 months. With LTI you will always get the ship back. Non LTI if insurance expires, you can use in game currency to buy the ship back. Even if it's an extremely rare ship.
Normal ship insurance is the stock ship, with stock components. If the do goes boom, all modifications and cargo goes with it. They will however be offering in game insurance options to insure the ship with your current modules.
Do you have some links? I haven't found much on the official channels
@@Farrister I may be able to find it. I know it was after they released the spectrum forums. But in some circumstances, searches on spectrum seem to only bring up anything posted within the last two years.
Will look in the morning for you.
The only stuff I can find is about the little 'scandal' a few years back on selling fps armour and gear
To which CIG basically said you cannot lose anything that is in your website hanger (bought for cash basically) but CIG doesn't yet have in game way to replace fps items, and we are still discussing how it would work
Many extrapolated from this that it includes ships, as they are in your 'hanger' but CIG avoided answering that question
My gut tells me that they haven't figured it out yet and even when they do announced anything it will likely change depending on the player reaction. Remember death of a spaceman? One life and permadeath of a character with no respawns?
@@Ospray3151 Sadly CIG decided to stop people from searching for 2 year or old posts on the Spectrum forums. That's why we can't get them. It was around 2020 that they talked about it on Spectrum. Extremely user / customer unfriendly. Best I can say is "trust me bro, I remember."
@@Farrister Links unavailable. Can't search beyond 2 years and it was around 2020 that they did a big post about it.
Like a say to any newcomers, We don't know much about insurance but there is no way that they can let a player lose a bought ship. I think it will be possible to lose a ship but never permanently, it will just depend on if you're ready to go back to zero by doing a character repair just like now. We already know that there is gonna be a permadeath, basically starting back to zero out of it. Each time you'll get back you ship your own.
And then you might argue, that why would you get out a ship you haven't paid insurance for? Don't get a ship out until you can pay the insurance for it. In this view, The player who pledges on 20 ships might want to have some LTI in their fleet to be safe.
I'm guessing here but my thought is yes, you'll be able to lose a ship, will it be permanent? No!, Will you have a draw back trying to get back a ship bought as a pledge after losing it, For sure, Reset, restart?
Also, in a throwaway line of the last Citcon, they said you will be able to craft a ship if you have the blueprint, this could also be a solution, If you pledge, you have the blueprint, lose the ship, grind for mats to craft it again.
So in the end, we don't know and we shouldn't stress about that. StarCitizen is built with player feedback, they went back on the last change of the flight system cause most people hated it (I hope they will not reverse the new flight model when people complain, just tweak it). Do you really think CIG could announce to me that my 1000$ 890 jump is lost permanently cause I forgot to check the insurance and pay it? They can't do this, the players will go ballistic on them with an Ares Inferno!
There will be a setback, like you get it back after a perma death when you switch your "kid" for the next character. But, the ship bought in the game won't have this. In any case, people freak out... well dude, just pay your insurance. You can have 10 years of insurance on some packages, what to say that for 1 million in games, you can buy the same. You might even be able to buy LTI insurance in-game.
Let CIG do the game and freak out when they actually show or same something that doesn't make sense, meanwhile stop freaking out and realize that LTI is probably not worth that much effort.
And that "we don't know for sure" is a tough line, I think.
Spectrumpost in 10 years: I logged back after 5 years break only to find out someone sneaked inside my base and blew up all my ships ..
Insurance!
I’ve read about solutions like „yh if a ship blows up without insurance the can buy insurance afterwards“ or „Yh we simply won’t let them take off without insurance“
But overall I think hey simply should make every bought ship lti
Do you think people would be cool with that?
@@Farrister from what I’ve heard insurance is not supposed to cost that much in game. If that’s the case then they should just make all real money ships lti. Ppl were supporting the game with a ton of money for years, least they can do is give them a small in game money bonus and let them fly their ships with no extra cost for insurance.
If they plan to make insurances real money purchases then holy f I’m out of here
Without further information, I'd expect ships purchased with real money that are lost in-game for having no insurance could be restored with a character reset that wipes your inventory, in-game wallet, and reputation.
I just wish we had that further information
I've been under the impression that you could never actually fully lose your ship if it's uninsured, just that you could not claim it until you pay for insurance (possibly with a late fee if you let your insurance fully run out).
You may well be right, I'd love to see a clearer official statement about how it will work!
@@Farrister yeah I think it's about time we get some clarity
The insurance debacle is one of the biggest signs that CIG is too busy creeping in new stuff without laying down the groundwork first, and why it feels like the are dragging the horse behind the cart to just keep making money instead of pushing for a release.
This is a core feature of the game design yet it isn't even decided yet how it will work. These decisions are the type to be made in early stages or even pre-production design of any game, video or table top or board etc. Basic rules establishment.
The lack of clarity on these things is also why I sold 15 of my 17 ships on the Grey Market to make some money back until they can actually tell us how the game works.
I'm patient and can understand the 10 years it's taken to make the game, but I cannot accept it's taken 10 years for them to decide what the game will be.
I agree, I'm quite forgiving on timescales for everything, but feel this is one of those key elements we should know more about
The insurance covers component, weapons & retrieval times/cost only. you will not lose an uninsured ship purchased with real $. you'll have a longer wait time & stock ship at a larger cost to retrieve in AUEC. the ASOP terminal will inform you of insurance status of ships. consumer laws will dictate this.
You might be right, I just wish we knew!
This would be a simple solution for SC to solve. I like the idea of insurance. It adds another layer of responsibility to your ship and career in the game. My solution to the insurance confusion would be this: All purchased ships (Pledge) never go away. You just can't use them until you purchase more insurance, whether in game or a pledge insurance upgrade offer in the store. All in-game ships bought using UEC can be lost permanently, and like a fuel gauge, it's the pilot's responsibility to keep up to date on insurance. Done. Enjoy your day all. Thanks for the great videos Farrister!
CIG already confirmed that nothing purchased with in game money will be permanently lost. You may have to pay a hefty UEC fee to get it back, but it will never be removed from your account.
Source?
@@Farrister Azume (Concierge Support Rep) in Conceirge forums a few years back.
Star citizen will be funded by game sales once they game comes out, in fact they said that will be the ONLY way to play the game. Meaning you get your starter ships and then have to work your way to bigger ships. No purchasing packages or ships with real money. It's been a while since they promised that so please correct me if they have changed anything
Ultimately that may not be a sustainable model though - if everybody pays just once, that money won't last forever!
@Farrister games can and will continue to have purchasing the game as a viable business model. If they change the business model against their word I will start a riot. That's not what I signed up for and that's specifically why I spent so much freaking money on ships. That was the deal they promised. They specifically promised that selling the game would be the only business model they used after launch. No ship sales and no monthly fees. They would also be in huge legal trouble with all the original backers and ship buyers who make SC one of the most funded games. I don't think they will have a money problem.
I think it'll just mean longer claim times or more expensive claims. Possibly lose modification parts if uninsured. Something similar. They'll never take ships from your hangar
That might be good - I just wish we knew for sure!
Seems like an ASOP retrieval fee to cover installation costs until next time it is stored would solve that problem. Then you are forced to pay a nominal insurance fee to access the ship. Permanent loss prevented.
Lots of potential solutions, I just wish we knew