Welcome back, citizens! For those of you in the USA we hope you had a relaxing holiday weekend and that you were able to take advantage of the grace period for pledges.
That is now over. Anyone that joins going forward will have to pay slightly more for the base packages and won’t have lifetime insurance. The limited-time add-ons such as the Retaliator Bomber have been taken down.
Existing backers will still be able to upgrade to any of the original packages at the original prices for the next 12 months. As an added bonus for all backers that purchased a ship before November 26th any additional ships you purchase for your account during the next twelve months will have lifetime insurance.
We’re looking forward to sharing more about the game and the team in the coming months. For now, we are going to address several issues of immediate importance to Star Citizens.
Stretch Goals
It’s almost unbelievable, but we’re now to almost to $7 million in pledges! Thank you all for the incredible continued support. We’ve had a lot of questions about adding additional stretch goals. What will hitting $7 million or $8 million add to the game? Things have moved so fast that in the short term we don’t feel comfortable setting them: we listed everything we wanted to add, figured out what it would cost and you earned that. The honest truth is that additional money from crowd funding means adding an ever-increasing amount of detail to the game… More unique locations in a system, more NPCs, more varied animations and so on. More dollars allows us to hire more artists, programmers and designers to flesh out the universe of Star Citizen. When things have calmed down we may be able to quantify this, but for now, know each extra dollar goes to making a richer game on release.
Customer Service
One issue we’re having trouble with is keeping up with the volume of customer service requests for corrections on billing, unlinked accounts, adjustments to packages and add-ons in players accounts. We’re a very small company and never expected to have almost 100,000 customers this early in the process. Luckily the fact that we’ve done so well in raising funds allows us to invest in the area of customer service to better serve you all. We are actively looking to hire people for customer service, but this will take time to complete the interview and hiring process. In the interim our small staff has been wearing multiple hats during the campaign to help. We do need to get back to the task of building this game so please be patient over the next few weeks while we bring on dedicated customer support team members.
The good news is that we’re not under the gun: there’s no campaign deadline looming and so hopefully we can take everything a little more slowly. We’re sorry for the delay, but there are thousands of messages still to sort through. Users have become accustomed to contacting us through Kickstarter, Intercom and even through personal e-mail accounts. For now, we would ask that everyone who needs support switch to using one of these general e-mail addresses accessible to multiple team members:
- [email protected] – questions about your account or billing; missing pledges, incorrect charges and the like
- [email protected] – questions about the game itself; features, design plans and so on
- [email protected] – questions about Cloud Imperium or general questions not about the game itself
- [email protected] – employment inquiries
- [email protected] – media requests
One other change: in the past we’ve been manually changing pledges, tiers, add-ons and the like. Instead we’re switching to a system that will let you make these changes yourself. If you’d like to change a Hornet for a Cutlass, a Make Mine a Double for a Constellation or trade your Wingnut pledge for the digital one and an additional add-on you will be able to do this yourself in the near future from the “Your Account” section. Until then, please hold tight while the web team adds this functionality!
Insurance
One major issue we’ve seen come up time and again in the past week is that of ship insurance. What does it mean, how do you get it, who is eligible and so forth. We’ve put together the following short FAQ document to try to explain the topic:
What is insurance?Pilots in Star Citizen can purchase insurance policies for their ships, modifications and cargo. This ensures that your ship will be replaced and/or its modifications and cargo will be subsidized should you be destroyed in a fight or accident. As in real life, insurance policies must be maintained: you must pay a regular fee in galactic credits (the in-game currency) or your policy will lapse and you will not receive a payout or a ship replacement when your ship is destroyed. Will this Insurance cost a lot?Like in real-life insurance should be a relatively small part of your regular in game expenses which will also include paying landing fees, trade tariffs (if in a system with lots of infrastructure and law and order), fuel (if you don’t collect it yourself from a gas giant), buying cargo to trade, hiring help, making upgrades to your ship or even buying a whole new ship. Some of the additional policies like upgrade or cargo insurance will be rated based on risk levels. Risk level 1 being the safest systems and risk level 5 being the most dangerous system that is insurable for cargo or upgrades. Any risk level over 5 is un-insurable. A risk 3 policy for cargo will cover you for all cargo losses in a risk 3 system or below. The higher the risk level of the policy the more it will cost. As with the base insurance this will not be crippling financially but instead be a reasonable running cost that relates to the risk / reward profile of the systems flown. How do I get lifetime insurance?Anyone who pledged for a copy of Star Citizen before November 26, 2012 automatically has lifetime insurance on their pledge ships; this protects the investment you made in the game in perpetuity. Anyone who pledged for a copy on or after November 26th starts with a finite insurance package for their ship. This can be anywhere from 2 months to 12 months depending on the ship and policy type. Lifetime insurance does not exist for modifications or cargo. What happens if I don’t have insurance?Your character will have to buy a new ship with any credits he has, or if he doesn’t have enough credits fly missions for a third party (both NPC and player) until he’s earned enough to buy his own ship again. Will ships I add to my account have lifetime insurance?Users who registered and bought at least one ship before November 26, 2012 can purchase additional ships with lifetime insurance for the next twelve months of development. Users who registered on or after November 26, 2012 can purchase additional ships with variable length starter insurance policies ranging from two months to twelve months. Can I trade my lifetime insurance ship?Yes. The lifetime insurance will follow the ship hull when it is legally sold or gifted. If the ship is stolen or otherwise captured, the policy will not transfer. Will my insurance carry over to ships I earn in the finished game?No, and you cannot transfer insurance policies from one ship to another. Can I use my insurance as an excuse to simply ram other ships to death knowing I will get my ship back?You can, but this will be a very bad idea as it is inconvenient and time consuming in getting your replacement ship ready to go again. Additionally there will be an increasing delay in replacing your ship every time you make a claim within a certain period of time. Can I insure alien or one-off ships?No. The only exception is the limited number of Vanduul fighters sold through the RSI site during the pledge campaign; these ships do have lifetime insurance included. What will you do to combat insurance fraud?A ship cannot be sold without a legitimate hull id code. Claiming on the insurance policy invalidates the hull code on your previous ship, so if it was captured or stolen the new owner will be unable to sell the ship at a regular ship dealer. Additionally if you have claimed on a policy and someone is flying the stolen ship in a well policed system, the hull id will mark it as a stolen ship, the law will be after you and landing privileges will be denied on any lawful planet. You will be able to fly a “hot” ship to the less savory parts of the Star Citizen universe, where you will probably be able to land and may be able to purchase a fake hull id code, but it will take effort and not necessarily be cheap. Finally the Advocacy takes insurance fraud very seriously. If it can be proven that a player has colluded with another player to defraud the insurance company, that hull’s lifetime insurance will be invalidated and the player may have to pay a large amount of credits to keep their record clean and not be marked as a wanted criminal. |
The Coming Weeks
We will continue to bring you in game fiction as we have previously, the schedule is Monday for Kid Crimson, Wednesday for various info bursts from the Star Citizen galaxy and Friday for the latest Cal Mason episode.
We will be sharing development updates as they happen, and will also give all our backers a “Weekly” report
We hope to have the new forum software integrated with the old forum content by next week, so you can be using a much more friendly and powerful forum system,
We also plan to bring a live webcast for our subscribers on a weekly basis, making this available to the rest of the community afterwards via our YouTube channel. Wingman, the Lamp and Sandi will all feature, as well as questions from the community about the game and interviews with various team members. We will start this webcast once we moved into our new office space in Austin next month.
Finally once all the Kickstarter Star Citizens are integrated, which will take a couple of weeks as we await final data from Kickstarter, we can bring up a “backer wall” and switch on things like Galactapedia, Engineering and the Holo-Viewer.
A lot to do, but it will be fun and we’re glad to have you all on the journey!
thanks !
I love the way insurance will work. I really hope they don’t allow someone to re-instance with you for a day, after they get killed in your instance. It would be lame to be out mining, defend yourself from 3 players, go back to mining and 10 minutes later they are after you again.
Also, there is still the fraud question of what happens to upgrades/weapons that were transferred from a pledged ship to another (or sold). Then the ship is destroyed to recreate those upgrades/guns.
I think an easy way to deal with that is to say that insurance will only replace equipment that was installed at the time of the ship’s demise.
I’m pretty sure it said, that if a ship is destroyed, and you do have insurance, that your ship would return but with base parts.
Your not really seeing what he means. Johnny Lawless is asking “What if i take the mods i get free with my pledge ship, removve them, place them on another ship, then destroy the pledge ship to claim insurance and replace the mods i originally removed”
I obviously dont have an answer for this, but a good solution might be to only replace those weapons if they were on the ship when it was destroyed. If not, the slot is left empty.
Nyteblade:
Typicaly the base items (starters) are not sellale or have any value in any market. Every ship comes with them, so why should you bother to “fraud” it that way.
It will take longer and longer to get a new ship for nothing. So you will then have after a year or so 50 pulse lasers? Value 0
It probably insures the individual modules, not the ship fit. So when you buy insurance it insures each component separately: ex: 1 ship, 1 engine, 1 turret, blah blah. With insurance cost next to it. If you use the module on a different ship and it blows up – you get the insurance for that module. if you put the module on a different ship, then replace it with a different one, then fly the initial ship and it goes boom – then youll get a payout based on the ship and for each module that was insured it had on it.
That makes sense right?
It will probably have no selling value, but it might still be usable if traded.
What would solve that is to make the pledge ships base add-on so that you can’t trade them, but if you buy new add-on, you replace the old pledge add-on. If you remove the newly bought add-on, the base pledge add on is there again.
No actually, because lifetime insurance is only on the ship. Modifications and weapons can be insured, but it’s not included in the free lifetime insurance.
So if your pledge ship is destroyed and you haven’t bought additional insurance for upgrades/weapons/cargo, you don’t get any of those things.
The problem with that, is, the ship is given to you with the base mods; engine, weapons, and such. To replace it without those items, just gives you an empty hull. Not much of a help when buying a new ship would probably include those items. Also, it would not be accurate to say “this protects the investment you made in the game in perpetuity”, when in reality your getting less back than what you pledged for.
Okay,
as written above, the base items has no value . so why should the ship not be equipped with it?
second point: Why do you believe, that the ship that you pledged for comes with high sophisticated modules? It is not stated anywhere what modules will be in. So I assume, the same as after insurance … base modules without any value.
the default guns. dont worry about that the only place they be going is the trash.
Your pledge ship doesn’t come with any mods so not really an issue.
The Cutlass comes with a few upgrades: docking collar, tractors, and probably a jump drive. The Caterpillar comes with quite a few addons also, probably what drives its price to $225. The Gladiator comes stock with 4 turrets. These are just a couple of documented ships coming with decently valuable weapons and upgrades.
Can we just NOT HAVE MINING AT ALL?? Granted, my main experience with mining was with in EVE… but how does anyone enjoy sitting around for hours mining? I don’t care how interesting you try to make it, it’s never going to be as fun and exciting as space combat. If I have to grind at this game, it’s going to suck (but I’m prepared, bracing myself). However, if I have to grind by mining?… I don’t even want it to be an option. I don’t ever want to contemplate whether I should mine or not because it might be profitable. Screw that! (can everyone tell I’m jaded? lol)
Earth and Beyond had the best mining mechanics ever. It was really enjoyable, and could be exiting/dangerous as well. I recall spending hours enjoying mining, vs EvE where I try not to fall asleep. Sadly, no other game even came close to have a mining system as interesting since then :/
This. EnB was actually fun for mining, but I think that was more from the community of it really. There was such a great community in that game.
I was in the waaaay early beta before they had any kind of nav buoys in place yet. You literally had to steer by the stars in the background, engage warp, reorient, engage, and such until you reached your destination.
seriously, I played EnB on free servers after they closed down the original ones just so i could mine. Every now and then you could get a cool drop by *mining/salvaging* space debris which also included a fair chance of spawning a dam tough mob to fight so totally not boring and super worth it. To this day I swear I knew of nodes no one else ever saw
muahhahah no you can’t have my star map notes its mine – oh want to trail me to it well that is why my ship cloaks, has HUGE scan range, and is super fast
also forgot to mention I played all Jenquai explorer, defender, seeker
the Jenquai Defender is by FAR and away the best stealth class ever made in an mmo
I actually reinstalled EnB emu and started playing againt after posting this
I never played EVE long enough to mine, but I don’t mind if this is an option. Just so long as it’s not required. Given that Chris said he doesn’t like grinding, I don’t think it will be. If someone really wants to mine their hearts out for profit, then that’s up to them. I’ll be waiting to turn their hard work into my gain Mwahahahaha!
Part of the issue is that most games dont have the budget to make mining fun. They have to spend money on other stuff.
If mining were made into an interesting minigame (maybe where you take direct control of the laser and cut the rock, collect it, and maybe find some other goods like rare minerals or gems) then I could see myself doing that for a few hours. Autopilot mining is why it gets boring.
I actually liked Ultima Online’s mining. Most of the best items you could get were craft items, and it was definitely very profitable to mine ore. You could also be killed or attacked at any point while mining, so it became a treacherous task. If mining were zero risk, little reward… yeah, snooze fest.
They just need to make sure it feels risky, daring, and profitable, and that when you’re attacked you have a chance of surviving if you’re a good pilot with a good ship.
Hmm,
I mined a lot in Eve, and it is all about the right skills and the right equipement.
You could easyly make 20M in an hour, if you do it right.
The best thing was, sitting in a corp in an ICE belt, creating ICE qubes and jabbering all along
Most granted way to create lots of funny bullshit 
^^^^
Then here’s a suggestion for you – if you don’t like mining, don’t do it. But, don’t suggest limiting the in game options for someone who might enjoy resource farming just because you don’t (and I guess don’t want to be tempted.)
Oh? And what about the people who enjoy mining and trading but hate fighting, should we just remove combat completely?
The solution isn’t to remove something you don’t like, but to make the thing you like just as viable. This was something covered quite a bit when I was working on a Freelancer mod. All other things equal (skill level/location quality/situation/ship tier/equipment tier/risk level/whatever) you should be able to make roughly the same profits whether you’re mining, trading, or killing. Something other than the method was the main thing that determined exactly how profitable you were. Whether that was piloting skill, market prediction, prospecting ability, or just time and willpower, was up to the player.
I hope that mining means raw materials to use to sell and trade, and build stuff with it. Mining is the back bone of the EVE economy. Everything is priced based on how hard these minerals are to get.
As said in other comments, mining hasn’t to be boring! Especially in a space game with that degree of freedom.
The cloud empire just has to let you decide wether you want to mine by yourself and make a minigame out of the mining process and total control over the ship in case some pirates appear. Or(!) buy mining ships an hire NPCs (or players) that do the mining for you. It is important to say, that one should be able to advise the NPC miners or players, how they shall handle different situations. Like if they should sacrifice cargo to be able to make a hyperspace jump (if the ship is well enough equipped) and save the ship thereby but lose the cargo, or fight or try to escapce with cargo and let the NPC try to hire some nearby bountyhunters or mercenaries to handle the attackers. So the NPC should be able to offer money up to a set maximum to pay mercenaries in case they defend the mining ships.
Just imagine how cool all this could be! Building your own (guild) company that is specialized on mining with a fleet of ships. OH MY GOSH, NERDGASM!! … have to to stop here.
Believe it or not I actually enjoy mining in eve. I know it sounds stupid but sometime I just wanted to sit back, talk to some of my coprmates and relax. I know that it may have not been all that exciting if you did it alone, but the possibility was there and it was the time when I got to know my corp the best. Eliminating that just because it isn’t all action all the time I belive would be a loss to the game.
If you don’t like mining then don’t, but also don’t demand that an aspect of the game (one that makes a lot of sense in a space based game with any kind of resourfce system) be excluded. Some people enjoy gathering and playing that market.
Rather you should demand that each aspect of the game should be separate and not dependent on one another. That someone who prefers to be a combat pilot can be just that, a combat pilot. Someone who prefers to be a miner can be just that.
I’ll be upgrading my pledge to include some better combat options, but my primary interest in this game goes way beyond simple combat. I am wholeheartedly looking forward to doing the explorer/entrepreneur thing and maybe a little combat on the side. To be honest, I’m tired of combat heavy games in general (particularly PvP).
Ideally you can be the crack Ace pilot that I hire to protect my cargo, or you can be the crack Ace pilot who steals my cargo… whoever offers you the most money, and I can be the business mogul who secretly controls large portions of the galaxy via my vast credit reserve. We both win.
It doesn’t have to be one or the other
I run a corp in EVE Online and we have players who actually like mining. We live out in a C5 and they thoroughly enjoy going out in Retrievers/Hulks/whatever with their Orca/Rorqual support lawling about in the Mining channel of our Teamspeak.
Just because you dont like it doesnt mean others dont find it interesting. I personally prefer shooting sleepers/players, but thats me.
Two types of mining…even from what little they’ve posted so far.
1. You collect raw material to transport to a refinery
2. You refine it yourself
I’d think the 2nd option the real ‘grind’ but more profitable. If you just want a taste… collect the rock and deliver to refinery.
Or you can pirate it from someone else.
Really Good
Hey thanks for the update on this! This answers a lot of questions!
Indeed thanks for the update, hope you had a good thanks giving.
Love it. “Trust Chris” really was the best route.
Agreed. It was.
Agree.
Thank you so much for the update! I definitely have the feeling, that you are on the right way. Maximum respect for your work.
Absolutely
Love the insurance fraud system!
Was there any doubt. Nup! In Chris We Trust! The movement.
I agree 100%
In Chris we Trust
Exactly. Yet again he exceeded my expectations!
After innumerable let downs with other development companies it’s such a breeze of fresh air!
Yay! In [Chris] we trust… Apud Chris nos confídimus.
Now if we can all just agree that we will not reply to any of the new posts about the fraud. JUst let them sit there and whither away.
I totally agree!
agree
Agreed. In Lamp we trust.
Roll on every Friday for the next instalment of Cal Mason.
Great explanation. Makes good sense too. (I´m I still first after reading through =) )
Yay the lamp will feature.
This whole project sounds great!
I will look forward to seeing LAMP commander in action once again!
I bet ya do!
Now off to the Synth world! I think they make a great disco ball!
Yay Sandi will feature!
I don’t think I could have thought of a better way to handle insurance. Awesome
I agree, that’s great way of dealing with possible fraud and troublemakers
I really like the fact that stupid players who wanted to ram others will be penalized for doing so.
I really like the idea, that it is still possible to ram your hardearned 300i into some rich kid´s Constellation.
My only way to board them
truely a great plan for insurance… very well thought out addresses all of my issues……
IN CHRIS WE TRUST!
This doesn’t seem like the type of game that attracts the “rich kids”. At least I really hope not.
Thanks Chris and team! Look forward to working with you too over the next 2 years.
Thanks for the update!
Does the replacement ship you get from insurance on the lifetime insurance come with the same starting equipment it originally had, or is it literally just the hull?
And I assume there are no issues with purchasing insurance on your ship’s equipment/cargo for lifetime insured ships, i.e. these are separate packages not specifically bundled with the hull insurance.
this was all explained in this update.
Actually, not entirely. Up to this point they keep referring to fitting capability as well as the DEFAULT fitting, implying that the “stock” model of the ship (i.e. “the hull”) comes with those particular fittings. So it is still somewhat up in the air whether it’s the STOCK ship that has lifetime insurance or the NAKED (zero fittings, not even the listed stock fittings in all those descriptions) hull.
Overall it looks like they followed the models that myself and others put forth to combat insurance fraud and make things work (including the “ship ID” numbers; basically title papers.) Looks pretty nice.
One thing I’m not a fan of, though, is that it looks like hull insurance is always full-replacement. I’d rather actually have tiers to it, with correspondingly increased price. Cheaper insurance, partial value payout, higher premium and get the ship replaced (this obviously would only apply to non-pledge ships.)
The idea seems to be that the ships are produced by these large space ship companies for mass sell. Then the replacement ship would be a factory stock ship the same as the first you were supplied with. (i.e. you get a replacement car it comes with factory tires at the least not missing it’s rims) There has never been any mention of striped ships, not even the idea of them at least from any “legal” source of ships anyway. Your replacement should be able to fly and shoot at it’s basic level.
I loved the update btw. Well done on all accounts.
For striped ships you will need a ship skin
Sorry couldn’ t resist.
Anyhow, providing lifetime insurance on the hull only (i.e. a stripped basic ship) makes far more sense and is what I would prefer to see as well.
When you can exchange weaponsystems and modules between your ships, the pledge-ship weapons will be a huge pain, unless they can only be mounted on the ship they came with.
Just think what possible things could happen when someone takes off all weapons and modules, and puts them on another ship, or worse yet on different ships.
a) The pledge ship could get blown up, and possibly get its pledge weapons/modules as well. Now theres an issue because it would allow for duplication, which can only be countered by keeping track which pledge ship weapons are still in the game, and there’s a lot of pledge weapons/modules.
b) A pledge ship with different modules/weapons coming from another pledge ship is destroyed…. results?
c) A non-pledge ship with pledge ship weapons/modules gets destroyed… results?
d) A non-pledge ship with pledge ship weapons/modules get sold/captures… result?
All in all this type of tracking of modules/weapons of pledge ships will require a significant database with references, requiring the original ship hull VIN/ID number to be on all its weapons too for example.
So thats why in my opinion:
1) Preferably pledge ship insurance should not cover the basic weapons/modules
or
2) Pledge-ship weapons.modules should not be interchangeable with other ships, at most be allowed to be stored in a generic garage inventory for later use on the same ship
Indeed that was the question. On a related note, I wonder if the P52 fighter for the Constellation counts as “equipment” or as a “ship”. If I lose the fighter in combat would it be replaced? If I lose the entire Constellation would the replacement come with a P52 as well? I suppose we shall see when the time comes.
Personally, I find this question more interesting as it concerns an individual part of the ship. Generally, I look to how our insurnace would cover things for guidance here because that appears tobe the logic applied by Chris. In this regard, I would think that the base ship with weapons would be covered. The work around regarding Boraxx’s concerns is that a player must submit an insurnace claim. If a player doesn’t have the weapons that came with the base model on his ship then he can’t claim to losing them. It would be much the same with me buying a car. Whatever came with my car on purchase is covered by the insurance. If I add spinner rims (which I wouldn’t lol), then those won’t be covered should my car be totalled. If a player wrecks his ship and doesn’t have the base guns on it when he does so, then should he claim those weapons as being lost then he would be committing insurance fraud which would entail the penalties mentioned above (should he be caught).
Regarding your concern, I think the question is more interesting because in real life you could submit a claim for certain elements of a vehicle that are damaged (like engine repair) but not others (flat tire). In this regard, is the P52 more like a tire or more like an engine? Regardless, I doubt that insurance will cover engine repairs resulting from combat. I actually think this insurance, in a way, would more mirror life insurance vs health insurance for a person. As such, the insurance would cover if the whole ship is lost (analogous to death) but not cover basic repairs (analogous to going to the doctor). The other route that could be taken would be to apply different levels of insurance (noted in the “Will this Insurance cost a lot?” section above) to the ship as a whole and to part of the ship needing repair. For example, the insurance could cover the ship as a whole at all levels of risk but may only cover damage to the ship and its parts in systems with a risk level of 2 or below (upgradable to higher levels at an additional cost and requiring a deductable, time for repairs, and potential increases to the premium if you’re deemed a higher risk, which would be incentive not to abuse the system). This would then mirror real life. Certainly, riskier people pay more for insurance. I believe these methods could then be used as a model to answer your and Boraxx’s concerns.
I can’t seem to edit my comment. Let me be more clear in this statement: “Generally, I look to how our insurnace {edit: in the real world} would cover things for guidance here because that appears to be the logic applied by Chris.”
I’ve had a similar question for the pirate ship, because the description of the package makes it seem that the Cutlass comes with upgraded engine and tractor beam, and whatever that docking collar. I hope those are also included in the insurance.
theres nothing in there i didnt like
fantastic, never had a problem with customer support when i had issues, they got back to me within 5 hours which i’ve never had with any other site
looking forward to more Kid crimson every week
I agree, customer support has been amazing. I got a reply on a Saturday regarding my question. On a SATURDAY. After Thanksgiving! And they apologized for the delay!
My hat’s off to you guys. Congrats and keep up the good work.
And I apologize in advance for getting grumpy at some point in the future, because I want to play NOW!
We will surely take insurance fraud tests into our testing efforts during alpha and beta. As mentioned before I’m happy its totally on your radar.
Also love the fact that we will apparently be getting one-off ships somewhere in the game!
That’s exactly what the alpha and beta are for, glad you realize that
A lot of the people on here that complain act like the final release is just around the corner. I wonder how much of this is actually subject to change in the coming years.
Thanks.
Finally, the update. We believe in you, guys. Only you can create the game of our dreams.
Very nice! Thanks for the update.
Darnit DARNIT DARNIT!! Vanduul ships acquired ingame will be un-insurable?!
I KNEW I should have got one of those…. ACH!
Still, great info and thanks for letting us know!
Argh… the more I think about this the more it bums me out.
Silly, I know… but I didn’t get a Vanduul because I was looking forward to capturing one in the wild, as Chris described. However, I had no idea you couldn’t insure them normally. I was expecting to pay high insurance costs and not have lifetime insurance… but none whatsoever? Ach.
If I knew that, I would have added one ASAP while they were available.
Oh well. One can only hope that between now and launch there will be one last chance to acquire them. If so, I’ll be the first in line.
i’m sure that most who bought a Vanduul also bought at least one other fighter. So chances are that one will eventually sell you his/her Vanduul including insurance.
Best of luck for that.
Yeah… but they’ll be so rare that I wouldn’t be surprised to see people asking thousands of real dollars for one when the game actually comes out.
I like that ROI.
Yes I have a Vanduul.
I might sell it after I fly it a few times. lol
You could try to buy one in game i guess.
I agree that fully un-insurable captured fighters seems a bit restrictive, but it does make some sense in some regards. If you captured a unique alien fighter and it is later destroyed – where will you get the replacement? The only thing an insurance could give you, would be money (and I think that should be possible, it is after all possible to insure unique items in the real world at some perceived value and cost).
I was getting ready to rip you a new orifice and then I saw you cover exactly the correct point: how do you replace a ship for which the only way to get it is to steal it from a race we don’t trade with?
I agree about monetary insurance, though. The trick then, however, is how to calculate its value, since it’s effectively priceless.
Only problem with Monetary insurance then becomes what would stop you from getting the ship blown out from under you just to get a fat paycheck that you then use to beef up your main ship more? Seems fraudulent to me…
Wait, actually, that should be possible – if only cause it IS fraudulent. Hmmm…
Indeed that is one very possible situation:
Get out “there” capture one and then get it insured to just blow it up to cash in and then do it again.
Of course, this would mean that they are “easily” captured, which in turn will mean that they are not that “exclusive”, as soon everyone will have one.
On the other hand if it is difficult to get one (as I believe it would be), it would not be more profitable to just sell it to another player than to try insurance fraud?, who knows…
But if you buy then you will have a price (value) for the item which can be insured.
On the other hand, what will happen if you pair up buyer/seller and:
1) Sell it at an extremely high price?
(Maybe an average of all prices for this item would limit it as the insurance company will provide the market value of the item)
2) And then destroy the item after the transaction and both end up with money actually duplicating the amount without doing much more.
Well that all so far,
Frank out
@Ravennus
Let’s think about this real hard for a minute. Would you buy insurance from a pirate?
More correctly, would you -sell- insurance to a pirate?
*grins*
If you stop and think about it though… where precisely would a replacement Vanduul Fighter come from? Even the ones that have lifetime from the add-on make me wonder how that works in game. Some hidden source that funnels a few through to make sure they can be replaced?
Some things just require suspension of disbelief in order to treat your user base well for supporting the game before having anything to show for it
So yeah, spot on, secret space/time funnel for the select few
With all the Vanduul fighters being destroyed I am sure there is no dearth of Vanduul fighter parts – and once you have an intact Vanduul fighter it does not take much to reverse-engineer it. So if you lose your Insured Vanduul fighter you are getting a scratch built replica replacement. In addition, just because the Vanduul is not commonly used by the military that does not mean they do not exist in the military – the best way to train new pilots in fighting against Vanduul fighters is to have them go up against, or even fly, Vanduul fighters during their training so they know their strengths and weaknesses first hand.
Sweet! +1 vote for the weekly updates being ship stats/pictures every time.
Thx for this update,
nice to hear some detailed facts about the mechanics behind the insurance.
Maybe i´ll add another ship under this conditions.
I´m looking forward to have a look into the Galactipedia in a few weeks, need more detailed information to make my plans for ruling the universe grow! *huehuehue*
Thx a lot and everyone out there – have a nice week!
Awesome, thanks for the details. Looking forward to more and more as the days wear on. I’m so stoked!
Outstanding, Chris and Co!
Nicely done with this explanations about the insurance and the whole system around it
Thx, and keep up your awesome work
Wish you well
The Doc
So, early backers still have a MASSIVE advantage compared to others players. I think it’s very unhealthy for the game and you should make lifetime insurances purchasable ingame (even if it should be at an expensive price). Being able to loose your ship without caring is really powerful and really change the way you play.
Another question : what happens if you loose a lifetime insured ship in a system with a risk status of more than 5 ? You loose your lifetime forever ?
He only said that upgrade and cargo insurance will be rated 1 to 5.
It sounded like the basic hull insurance will be available no matter what system you get blown up in.
>Another question : what happens if you loose a lifetime insured ship in a system >with a risk status of more than 5 ? You loose your lifetime forever ?
Good question. But i totally like the “risk classification” stuff.
I imagine that lifetime insurance is an exception, and applies even in risk 5+ systems. However, if not… the solution is never to fly your life time insured ships into a risk 5+ system. But yeah, they should clarify that.
The rating system is only for Cargo and Modules from the post. Ship insurance is always available it seems. It makes sense from a game play standpoint. In newbie friendly areas of space you can insure the full or majority value of everything you carry and have a replacement ship as well. You can do this cheaply in the most safe systems only with insurance getting more expensive as risk (and reward) increases until it becomes no longer available.
In the more dangerous areas you are only guaranteed the replacement of your basic stock ship to play with, meaning in more dangerous areas you can only insure a fraction of the total value you have at risk. I expect there will be quite a few pieces of equipment and cargo that are worth more then the ship by far.
“Another question : what happens if you loose a lifetime insured ship in a system with a risk status of more than 5 ? You loose your lifetime forever ?”
All this information and I’m left still asking questions I to really wish to know this.
I can understand your viewpoint but who is insuring us if the game does fail to get made (worst case scenario I know). Like with most crowdfunded games you get a lot by supporting the game so it has enough money to be realized at all
What if the downtime waiting for a replacement ship is one or two days, maybe even longer? Like OP said, if you loose your ship for whatever reason too frequently, the downtime will go up.
Say someone gets a 12 month policy. When it lapses they renew it. Then they have paid for two insurance policies. We early backers only paid once. Not much of a difference.
So the only real advantage is not having to renew the ensurance on your hull, ever.
Oh and read the two sections “Will this Insurance cost a lot?” and “Can I use my insurance as an excuse to simply ram other ships to death knowing I will get my ship back?”.
In the first he says the risk level thing is only for cargo and upgrades.
In the second one he talks about if you ram your ship into someone elses. If you can get your ship replaced after doing that totally on purpose, why should the risk level have anything to do with the hull insurance?
To sum up:
* The only advantage to lifetime insurance over regular ones is that you don’t need to renew it.
* If your insured hull (no matter if it’s lifetime or not) blows up, you get a new one, after some downtime.
* If you insure your cargo/upgrades/ect. you have to considder risk levels. Insure with level 3 and get blown up/have to jettison cargo/whatever in a level 3, 2, or 1 system, you’ll get reimbursed. If higher, you loose your stuff.
Does anyone disagree with me?
Heki thanks for clearing this up I’ve read this through again and this does make sense now. Thank you!
“Some of the additional policies like upgrade or cargo insurance will be rated based on risk levels.”
But hull doesn’t fall under a risk level so if you have insurance it will be protected.
Glad I could help, Deliverence
Sounds corect
Okay, so everyone will have full insurance on the ship, in every risk level, and only cargo insurance changes? So no one will be afraid of loosing it’s ship? Might be interesting in PvP, but I think it’s bad for the game to be able to do fighting risk-free. I understand cargohold won’t be insured, so trade won’t be without risk, but fighting/piracy when you’re insured looks like to be.
But maybe I’m wrong : ships only come with basic equipment, and if you want to be efficient, you’ll have to buy some more and it won’t be insured (at least not lifetime). And maybe yes, upgrades insurance will be risk level dependant yes.
I’m still not sure having an advantage no one can buy ingame for backing early is healthy for the game, and it could create some big resentment between new players and early backers. Even if it’s a small amount of money, I think lifetime should be purchasable ingame (for a really big amount, since it would be more about prestige than utility if insuring for decent durations isn’t too costly).
I’m still unsure about the risk-free flying in your ship. And unrealistic insurances policies : if you loose ships, your insurance company should charge you higher. Something close to the EVE online insurance system might be healthier for the game : you can insure a given ship, you earn some money when it blows up, but you need to insure the next one again. This makes sure that flying your ship is NEVER totally risk-free, which is for me good for the “dark and dangerous” space feeling and the “there is stakes” player versus player.
Just the hull. If you can manage it with the stock fittings (read: half the slots empty and zero upgrades) more power to you, but I think you’re going to want to upgrade.
As to the rest, I agree, it’s better to have varying levels of coverage with a cost correlation. I also agree about having to renew whenever you blow up.
As to the OP wanting purchaseable lifetime insurance in-game, that’s a simple “no.” If you do that, then it’s the only insurance worth offering, as it’s the only insurance anyone will buy; people will just consider it part of the cost of a new ship and not undock it until they can afford it.
i don’t think making lifetime insurance buyable in game is a good thing, even when it’s very expensive. at some point everyone is going to have lifetime insurance which would pretty much invalidate the whole insurance system. or at least half of it. only upgrades and cargo insurance would have any impact on the game.
those who are concerned about a lot of people having lifetime insurance from the beginning should take into account that it’s only a minority of players that have bought more than one ship in the campaing. it’s just that those people who pledged for more are those who are mostly involved in forum discussions. this creates a inaccurate picture of how many people actually have multiple ships. it’s not that bad. it’s not like 90000 individuals will have 5 or more ships all with LTI.
Perhaps there’ll be an excess to pay or something. But risk free? It’s never risk free. There’s indeed less risk though. Maybe there won’t be a monetary penalty for crashing your ship with lifetime insurance, but there will still be the downtime, which will increase if you crash again.
Also think about if someone is destroyed within a policed system. I’d think the police would intervene in some way. Remember you can’t insure your stuff in high risk systems – only the hull. The pirate guy with lifetime can’t do that either. He’ll loose his weapons, upgrades, and cargo if he crashes. The police will come get him if he’s sighted in a policed system.
Finally, the ships with LTI are the few models we’re able to pledge for at the moment. There’ll be many more later on, which can’t get LTI. Atleast I really hope there’ll be more. What I’m trying to say is that it’ll be a small number of ships in the long run. I’m going to get a Lancer and an Aurora. I doubt I’ll be flying those all the time, cause what I really want is a big transport – which I will have to get regular insurance for.
I’m sure they have given the insurance thing a lot of thought. There’s probably more to it than we’re told. I’d really like to see a draft of a LTI policy btw
The thing you have to keep in mind, is that the game isn’t much fun without a ship. That’s why you have complete hull insurance rather than partial. Sure, partial (multiple levels of coverage) is more realistic, but being without a ship isn’t fun and if someone’s ship keeps getting destroyed (because they’re just young kids or really aren’t good or whatever) then they stop playing.
At least this way, you’ll always have a ship to fly in, and thus a reason to keep playing. I think that that trumps “realism”.
Now, to partially offset that, having to pay for cargo/component insurance will cater to your desire for cost/risk equations, since if you continually engage in risky behaviour you’ll have to pay for it one way or another.
Only question I have…. who would still want to be shot down if they were guaranteed to get everything back? I don’t need to have the threat of losing my ship to make me NOT want to get shot down.
There are plenty of other ways that risk enters into it. The whole point of this is to give a little something back to those of us that got on board early. I don’t and never will see any problem with that. The system as it exists looks perfectly fine to me.
@ gorg-graggel and Heki
I guess both of you have missed this part of the announcement:
Will ships I add to my account have lifetime insurance?
> Users who registered and bought at least one ship before November 26, 2012 can purchase additional ships with lifetime insurance for the next twelve months of development. <
ie. if I choosed any package with a ship as first pacakge and then added another ship .. lets say the 300i ..both would be covered by LTI as long as the first ship was bought before Nov 26. and if I would continue purchasing ships on a monthly turn the next year, thanks to income by work, those would have it, too.
best regards
McConn
@McConn
That doesn’t contradict what anybody said. They won’t be releasing any more pledge ships, and you’ll never be able to get lifetime insurance on any ships besides the pledge ships. So… only backers of the crowdfunding campaign previous to Nov. 26 will get lifetime insurance. And only on pledge ships. Never on any other ships ever.
Let’s not follow the footsteps of EVE especially where insurance is concerned.
The way I see it, when we begin the game in 2014 we will begin with x number of ships where the constellation will be the coolest, hornet will pack the most punch etc etc. But give it 6-10 months, and I’m sure the content guys will be releasing Mark II versions of the ships that EVERYONE will want to upgrade to when they have the chance and finances, leaving their original pledge ships to mostly collect dust in the garages or possibly to be sold off to newer players in the universe. Like anything in life, the new awesome, uber model you just purchased will soon be out of date…
Remember though, that player supplied/designed ships will have a cost, and also have to pass a vetting process. I have faith they won’t allow a ship that’s best-in-class to be sold or it’ll invalidate everything they’re doing with regards to ship design.
Chris’s desire isn’t to see everyone gravitating to the “Best of Show” ship, but to customize their ship to the gills with newer/better gear to make it conform to how they want to play the game. There needs to be trade-offs, so that no one ship becomes the only ship in the galaxy. To that end, I expect that some of the content additions in the future will be upgraded components or new ‘discoveries’ which will “evolutionize” ship design and continue to make ships better though upgrades, rather than just better hulls.
I can see your concern, however that’s a small advantage in the grand scheme of things (with a small exception: I did have concerns about the pledged Corvettes which could be a very strong force-multiplier). 100k pledgers is not that many when you think of the hundreds of thousands or even millions that will play the game when it’s released.
Also you have to keep in mind the key idea here is to pledge a good amount of money from the average person to support the development and these small perks are way to say “thank you!” which is perfectly understandable.
I sure hope your prediction of hundreds of thousands or millions turns out to be true. Nothing like having an empty universe!
Given that – generally speaking – only a small subset of people would ever be willing to jump into the risk pool that is crowdfunding, I don’t think it’s at all unfair to believe we could top a million people, with 10 percent of that already in with pledges now.
Only time will tell, obviously, but the multitudes wouldn’t want to get in this early and instead would wait to jump on the finished product, I believe.
I’d venture to say this is necessary. Reason being, the part that mentions (paraphrased) that if you’re out of credits after being blown out of the sky, you need to go into 3rd person (ie, crew another ship) to make money.
To sustain that system you’d need a fleet of replaceable ships to keep people flying.
Think whole insurance system should be scrapped as it’s just unneeded and troubling in the long run. We will have kiddies of all kinds running and crying about it. But that’s just my opinion about it.
if you respawned instantly with your ship, cargo and upgrades then it wouldn’t be an issue. considering how long it’ll take to get the ship you want (assuming it’s different from your pledge ship) and get it fully tricked out will take a lot of time, insurance is a good thing to have. think of it as a “save game” feature…what if every time you played a single player game, when you died, you have to start all over again? that’s not fun, nor is losing your ship that you may have spent weeks or months building up.
^
Absolutely agree!
plus, i know i might be wrong, but this community doesn’t seem too childish to me.
sure there will be some trolling (as this is fun not only for kids), but i thinks we’re far away from a “omg noob rtfm while i have sex with your mom”-mentality here.
“what if every time you played a single player game, when you died, you have to start all over again?”
I must have been playing too much hardcore mode minecraft, because thats just sounds like a riot
In all seriousness though, if you are the kind of person who wants to play without insurance on YOUR ships, just don’t buy/pay for it (or the upgrade/cargo insurance on your pledge ship). You can have an advantage on the insured players in a financial sense, and if you can make it eek out, then maybe even be able to just outright save the difference until you have the savings to buy a new ship. If you lose your current ship while setting that up though…
My main issue with the whole insurance system, altho it’s quite nice to get something back, is that with the way the insurance system is now, it will be very easy to grief people. Personally I am not a fan of “do a mistake lose all” mentality, nor do I like the “so you made a mistake, take a cookie, nothing happened”. I prefer balance between these 2. And there will be griefers unfortunately.
Trolls/Griefers will be a problem if you are literally forced to start over again in the same place/system and the exits are blocked/camped by them.
Having an actual choice where you ‘respawn’ exactly would make it very difficult for trolls/griefers to keep your assets locked up indefinitely.
Except you won’t be getting back exactly what you lost. It will take time and money to upgrade your ship. All of these upgrades are uninsurable and will no be replaced upon the loss of your ship.
Incorrect, it says quite clearly that modifications and cargo will be insured but separately and on a risk scale. So if you put out the insurance money you WILL get back what is lost, but only if you insure to an appropriate level.
I was talking about the lifetime insurance, not the insurance that can be purchased separately.
I played that game system… it was called the NES
This game isn’t meant for “kiddies”. It’s meant to be a hardcore simulation.
I’d be more worried about the “kiddies” finding ways to circumvent/exploit the system. I like the idea of how the game itself can handle that capability, without outright banning people.
Sorry, but no; it’s meant to be a videogame. One that people will enjoy playing.
I’m excited that we got all the insurance information sorted out. That seemed like a pretty touchy subject with some people. I feel proud to be a part of something so different from your run-of-the-mill development blogs; the abundant personal aspects of the communication between the developers and the community is encouraging. Can’t wait to be here for the coming months.
Thanks for the update and clarifying the insurance issues!
Puh – a lot of stuff – I think I print it out and read it when I have more time… But did I understood it right – buying a Freelancer in October I get the lifetime inscurance but only for this ship? So I am glad, that I have upgraded from the 300i…
read it, then ask questions.
Beg your pardon Cyco Dude – I wrote, that I will read it… but for a foreigner it is a lot of stuff – and at this time I had to work for my money
You got your Lancer before 26th. Then whatever extra ship you get within the next 12 months (or until further notice I assume) will also get lifetime insurance. So don’t worry
Read the section “How do I get lifetime insurance?” for source.
Yes, since you had already purchased you Freelancer before the campaign ended, your ship will have lifetime insurance. However, since you -have- already purchased a ship, any ship you buy in the next 12 months will -also- have lifetime insurance.
You still get lifetime insurance for the next 12 months on everything.
“Can I insure alien or one-off ships?
No. The only exception is the limited number of Vanduul fighters sold through the RSI site during the pledge campaign; these ships do have lifetime insurance included.”
My God I’m happy I bought a Vanduul now!!!
Wow guess that $300 was worth it. 500 alien ships eva in the universe with LI.
Thanks for defining system security levels (and getting away from EVE terms) RL5+ is the lawless space and then RL 3-5 is probably mostly policed and RL1-2 will most likly be highly policed systems
i guess that rl1 might be reserved for planets of origin (like earth for the terrans) and systems of highest economical or/and military importance (think like coruscant or kuat of the sw-universe).
anyway, im curious how the different levels actually play.
The big take-away for me here is the things not directly addressed. Mentions of harvesting yoru own fuel, doing third party jobs, etc. The complexity proposed here is staggering and I very much hope to see it!
So…Many…tidbits…
The harvesting your own fuel has been mentioned before, something about skimming the atmosphere to collect nitrogen. But the rest….well I’m as excited as you!
Yeah, they mentioned hydrogen harvesting on gas giants when the Starfarer Tanker was announced
Ah yes it was hydrogen not nitrogen, thanks for the correction!
Yes the Starfarer Tanker,
https://www.robertsspaceindustries.com/starfarer-unlocked-and-sunday-afternoon-updates/
it was mentioned that you could fit some modules to harvest or refine your own fuel and even sell it.
“their massive tanks allow for both the collection of space borne fuel from gas giants and extrasolar sources as well as the transport of active fuel from refinery stations to the primary market. Though the stock model lacks refinery equipment, the Starfarer does have docking mechanisms allowing it to conduct in-flight refueling operations with most spacecraft classes.”
I was very excited at the prospect of doing jobs without using your own ship. Hiring players to man turrets and fly the constellation fighter for you has been talked about by the community and it seems the team plans to make it an organic part of the game. Plus, if you can do jobs without your ship, it’s a sure thing you’ll be able to do jobs with your ship.
Thanks for keeping us informed!
well, i like the insurance way. but, for the lifetime insurance “This ensures that your ship will be replaced and/or its modifications and cargo will be subsidized should you be destroyed in a fight or accident.” this mean that pilots will be able to grief any player even in level 1 system with out any matter as the ship and module will be totally refund. I was scare to find the same high sec ganking system as eve online. But now, it’s sure, it will be. Well, Star citizen wont be as fun as it should be but more a stressful experience. I hope, am wrong.
The option to host alternative servers by groups who have a common playstyle or view on the game will allow a bit of variety in how this is handled. Just edit the settings on the server
I read that as a description of Insurance in general. Lifetime insurance was later addressed and still seems to apply to the hull alone. Expanding the policy to cover mods and cargo would still be necessary and cost additional funds from what I can tell.
If you read it, it clearly states that lifetime insurance only covers the hull.
Players that attack people in high security areas will be gunned down by military/police and have their citizenship revoked. Griefers will be forced into fringe space where they are as big of targets as anyone else.
Yep and this is the reason why I’m not particularly bothered by early griefers.
It’s utterly idiotic to risk your citizenship getting revoked and being forced into the lawless space, not to mention the fact that they get increasing handout times on their insurance payouts.
As it should be… just don’t be that new or inexperienced player that finds his way into the 5+ risk zone because I’m sure there will be no mercy out there.
It looks like replacing your ship will be a long and boring process at best, that will get longer and longer the more you use your insurance in a short period of time, with the possibility of having to repeat the process for your ship’s upgrades and cargo, that don’t get lifetime insurance.
There aren’t many specifics as to how the criminal system will work, but from what we have heard until now you’re looking forward to having to bribe/work your way to a clean slate instead of resetting with death, and you’ll have to face law enforcing NPCs and players looking to collect your bounty. Another tidbit from this post describes stolen ships being denied landing rights in lawful planets, so there is the possibility that all criminals will get the same treatment(in Kid Crimson the titular character had several fake IDs to avoid capture).
Also, don’t forget that there will be matchmaking for instances, so you probably won’t have too many experienced players trolling unrelated newbies, even with all of these measures in place.
Even from the few tidbits we have so far, it seems all of this is pretty well thought-out, with a lot of innovative thinking. No reason to go all QQ already.
Yaay, awesome job RSI.
webcast every week starting in a month and regular weekly story updates… this is so awesome, much content every week!
Now… I’m suddenly longing for a Retaliator I may never see. SIGH!
Considering we are acting as investors, the insurance seems to be an extremely nice honor and great return. There may end up being some game play issues, but as time progresses and new ships get added that will probably wash away. Its neat that they may end up being collector items in this new virtual world, even years from now. Historic ships with the hull numbers to prove it. Very cool!
That’s actually a cool idea: all the pledge ships should have readily identifiable hull numbers as “first-runs” that seperate them from the other ships of the same make/model in the game universe.
Sounds interesting. It would be nice to see some sort of identifiable art, paint skin, or anything that puts you on the very first group of players.
Re: Buying more ships over the next 12 months and getting free insurance: when you say “registered”, you can track when we pledged and will tie this into our accounts also, yes? As I’ve just registered here about 10 mins ago (on the 27th), but pledged a couple of weeks ago.
I’m in the same situation, did not occur to me to register here before that mail told me to – I pledged via Kickstarter, so hopefully when that gets integrated, they will use that pledge date to determine insurance policies.
I’m sure you can work something out with customer support.
quote one:
“Finally once all the Kickstarter Star Citizens are integrated, which will take a couple of weeks as we await final data from Kickstarter.”
Quote two:
“Anyone who pledged for a copy of Star Citizen before November 26, 2012 automatically has lifetime insurance on their pledge ships”
All kickstarter accounts will be integrated with the RS site. If you pledged on kickstarter before the 27th they will give u the insurance.
I’m curious about one thing, though:
I pledged on Kickstarter for the most basic package with a ship (Digital Scout), but I have the intention to upgrade to either the Rear Admiral package with an additional Freelancer or Hornet ship (if a digital-only version of the Rear Admiral tier is released in the next 12 months) or else to the Digital Freelancer tier with an additional Constelation ship.
Since my current package does have a ship (the lowly Aurora), do I qualify to extend my lifetime insurance to those other ships if I upgrade my pledge in the next 12 months, or am I out of luck since I didn’t purchase an additional ship, apart from the pledge one, beforehand?
I would expect the “purchased a ship before November 26th” bit to include pledges with a ship, but the way it’s worded seem a bit ambiguous to me.
Understand what your saying.
but sinds they say they will “integrate” the accounts from kickstarter and not “add” the accounts from kickstarter you can, in my opinion, see that as a conformation that u can indeed upgrade ur package and have the insurance.
Also, talking about ambiguous, it would be strange that if you pledge early on RS site you get to upgrade with insurance but if u pleged early on kickstarter you dont get the insurance.
If you pledged a couple of weeks ago, AND your pledge included a ship, you’re covered for lifetime insurance on that ship and any others you purchase over the next 12 months (or so).
Considering that up until the last day of the campaign there were 40,000 accounts or so on RSI, and that there’s now almost 100,000 accounts, there’s a lot of accounts to manage. KS will provide them with a database of all pledgers so it’s a matter of combining the KS database with the RSI database.
So don’t worry, you’re covered.
If you pledged on the kickstarter, you’re in, don’t worry.
“that hull’s LIFETIME insurance will be invalidated and the player may have to pay a large amount of credits to keep their record clean and not be marked as a wanted criminal.”
It looks like there will not be enough Corvette’s after all:)
You can buy them in game, they just won’t have lifetime insurance on their hulls.
I had purchased a Corvette, but got a refund because I realized the money was better spent elsewhere. Now that I know you can gift ships and the lifetime insurance follows the hull, maybe I should have held onto it and actually sold the ship to someone and made a profit.
Oh well.
This is fantastic! Thanks, Chris & the rest of the team, for being so thorough on this topic.
yay, nice newes keep it up!
Great update! Thank you for your wonderful customer support
Wow,it’s very complicated and REAL!
I now know what you mean “create world” better.
You’re creating whole Eco-system!
Have anyone know such a realistic, enterprising game?
I really love to see game released
Another fun thought to consider… these are going to be historic ships. The actions of their pilots can be a neat bit of history to go along with it (and make them more desirable), or can be a rather ugly stain that you never can quite get rid of (if you find random ramming as enjoyable and the ship quickly becomes notorious). Some persons Vanduul fighter with a known record of honorable kills and actions will probably be worth a heck of a lot more than a griefer-turd one. Maybe there will be a way to watch for that.
I like your thinking…
This makes me wonder if we can name our ships? Also if the Hull ID’s are user viewable, so if you’re trying to sell me the famous “Dark Bounty” (viewable of course on the side of the ship in blood red against the custom green and black paint job) I can verify it’s the real deal. So yeah, they also need custom paint shops. :>
Excellent thought!
@BH I’m sure there will be many custom paint jobs for ships… after all that is the business model for the post release of the game (micro transactions that will not affect the balance of the game). “Some in-game items may be available as microtransactions, but we will NEVER sell anything that can’t be acquired through honest (and fun!) gameplay.”
thanks for the update. This clarifies some thoughts about the ship insurance
Long live Lamp!!!
Thanks for this informations about the insurance system. Very good.
Thanks for the update, as always awesome
So, with my KS pledge, I will get the RSI Aurora.. I didn’t buy a ship separately in the KS but got one as part of my reward tier.. does that mean I qualify for the lifetime insurance on that ship and any additional ships I purchase through the RSI website before the game release?
I only ask because the wording in the FAQ seems to suggest/imply that you had to buy a separate ship on top of your pledge…
Yes, but limited to the next 12 months, not 24 until the game comes out
Ok good.. not that I can really afford to buy another at this point but I might next year..
Because of your pre-26th pledge you also get a repair-bot and 1500 ingame creds for free in addition to the first ship
Thanks!
Thanks for clarifying all of this.
My friend actually asked me what would happen if I were to just ‘lose’ my better ship, claim the insurance and he were to ‘find’ it. Guess that counts as fraud.
Well.. not so much fraud as piracy.. and so the ship will be marked as stolen
So if you’re friend was happy to stay in low security zones, I’m sure he could do that and none would be the wiser..
The individual ship ID will allow tracking of all actions regarding a ship. And yes see it as a game feature too :p
In that case, they could track his friend with the ‘found’ ship and if they were running together after Segolia ‘lost’ his old one and got a brand new replacement, that could be considered fraud.
The question is: It was mentioned that it is possible to get the hull ID replaced in some locations. Do the developers also have an internal (unseen for the players) ship ID to track just such behaviour?
Most likely yes, there should be either an unseen ID, or else ways for the devs to track the ID changes a ship goes through.
From the post, though, I would expect the devs to actually want to make such “fraud” kinda legitimate when it comes to the game – legitimate as in, no issues with customer support – but with in-game consequences similar to if someone tried to pull out an insurance fraud in real life.
My assumption is that -everything- will be tracked and it’ll all be stored in a DB.
Hot dang!
They are actually going to invalidate hull codes and make the ship go “hot” when the claim to replace it is made. Then make it only safe to fly in lawless space. THEN provide a method (probably costly and some work) to legitimize the ship again.
I don’t know what’s more awesome. That CR picked one of the most complicated and fun ways of handling it, or that he’s so darn confident that the team can pull it off and make it work.
Loving it. Keep it up! We’re looking forward to as many awesome game mechanics such as this one as you guys can manage!
http://www.robertsspaceindustries.com/forums/topic/solution-to-balance-insured-ships-and-pirates/
Nice! I really like that part about hull ID codes… That sounds pretty sweet! I love the idea, and look forward to trying to obtain some fake ones
Oh! And I’m really liking that you’re extending the lifetime insurance period for additional ships for those of us who pledged before the deadline… I was a bit disappointed when I was thinking that addon ships after the crowdfunding didn’t get lifetime insurance, but that’s pretty sweet that they will now! I might just have to come up with some more money to throw at this game
Exactly my thoughts, I hope I’m going to have enough to purchase an additional ‘lancer and a Constellation. Shut up and take my money!
Im curious why you would need a lancer and con. The con seems to be better in all aspects.
I can’t speak for UseTheForc3 but constellation is a big girl and will need more than one to service her properly, so if your buddies are offline you may want to leave her docked and take out your lancer… or if your wanting the more maneuverable ship.
Thanks for the update guys
Chris for President!!
Thanks for the update guys! The lifetime insurance looks awesome, and I’m glad I will get it
I expect the lifetime insured ships will become extremely expensive along the way, which is a great thing for us early pledgers.
The next 12 Month i´ll buy as many ships i coud, just to sell them after Release. Ill bet the Prices for Liftime Insuranced ships will be extremly high
Thank god ive pledged so much before Nov 26.
IF u want a lifetime insuranced ship after Release gimme a call and ill reserve one.
SpawnSC
Commercial Ship Dealer
I think you misread how insurance works. If you sell your lifetime insurance ship you completely lose it. You don’t receive a revolving door of ships. If that ship is destroyed after sell it you don’t receive a new one, the new owner of the ship receives the replacement hull, not you.
Keep in mind that this game is not even in the Alpha stage of testing and things are subject to change. I have no doubt that we will be looking back at this in 2 years and laughing at some of the predictions we have made.
Apparently you misread him.
I know this, thats why i buy as much ships as i coud. Single Ships stay in my garage rest will offered for ingamecredits. So i´ll sell 3 Vanduuls with LI for ingamecreds
I want to become a rich Industriel Magnate ingame
Regards
Sounds like a plan.
Great updates. Thanks.
Got to say that it wasn’t completely obvious that the tanker and the other ship upgrades would go away. According to their descriptions there wasn’t anything that said limited time only.
If you read the cutlas add-on info it appears that it would be limited time only.
So now i went and bought that one last night just cause i thought it would go away, feel a bit tricked to be honest.
I’m positive that all the final-day add-on ships had a large banner over them saying that they were for the final day(and grace period) only.
No, they didn’t; it -was- mentioned in the livestream and as well in the Commlink update that they were for “One Day only”. When you went to purchase them, however, they just said “NEW”.
Awesome news, thanks for the update and I hope everyones turkey day was delicious!
Great News
I for one hope you do not necessarily come up with new stretch goals at all not before release anyhow as lines should be drawn so the goal posts dont keep moving and instead use the extra money to as you say hire more to flesh out the universe better and perhaps even offset what you have to borrow from the angel investors somewhat
Keep it coming !!!
Harb
Loving how Insurance Fraud will be handled in game! Also, I hadn’t heard about running missions fro 3rd parties to earn capital before being able to afford a ship before. I like the sound of that too
I find myself hoping that when you first start out the game (Assuming you didn’t pledge) you have to work for someone else before you can buy your own rig. I can’t help feeling like that’d be pretty sweet.
I think if you didn’t pledge you will start the game with the Aurora, but if you lose it and you didn’t pay for Insurance then you have no Ship, and then you would have to work odd jobs to gain Money for a new Ship.
Excited as a teenager on the first date!
So, you’re anxious and terrified? *grins*
Love the insurance thing – sounds exactly like my suggestion, in better wording though …
How about this idea to keep things in-game: if your ship is destroyed you’re ejected from it with an emergency beacon that signals other players where you are.
If no other players come to you then eventually an NPC will arrive after a certain period – this could be tied into the wait period for an insurance claim. New claimants get picked up pretty quickly by the system, whereas those who have lost their ship for the umpteenth time have to wait longer for the system to send rescue.
Now during this waiting time you’re literally just floating around in space – maybe your space-suit has limited thruster ability for you to go places (slowly), or maybe you can watch/listen to some in-game news channel on your suits intercom.
Now if another player does come along then a rescue is possible. Maybe a communication exchange between the player and the rescuer could take place, where the player can decide to be rescued or not by the ship in question.
If the player agrees to the rescue then the rescuer you will collect a reward (from the insurance people – for saving them the effort), which could start a new in-game player/career type: Deep-Space Rescue. Maybe rescues from some of the riskier systems will prompt greater rewards?
The player that was rescued is then left at whichever station/system the rescuer goes to next, and their new ship is waiting for them (if they have insurance).
If the player decides not to be rescued by the current ship, then they have to wait for another player (or the system sent NPC) to turn up.
An interesting spin on this would be piracy/slave trading. If the rescuer is actually “a bad guy” then they wouldn’t collect a reward for the rescue, but have the opportunity to try and sell the rescued player as “goods” in some lawless system somewhere.
No doubt the above needs embellishing somewhat, and creases will need ironing out, but it could keep players firmly in the game whilst adding realism and risk (“is that ship here to rescue me or not”).
What do you guys think?
I don’t like the slave trade part. What does the ‘rescued’ player do then? Sit and wait? If he doesn’t have any money?
I wouldn’t want anything that breaks the flow of gameplay. I can understand a 2 hour bench time if you’ve lost your ship one too many times, too often. But if you’re a working, family man (most of the backers seem to be) and have 2 hours to play the game… you won’t want to float in space for long. Or wait until a pirate decides on your fate.
Think of it as a hard-core mode
If you’re picked up by a constellation (or something bigger) though, you could actually be on the rescuer’s ship couldn’t you? Maybe under armed guard, if the rescuer has bad intentions…
All blue-sky ideas, but this is up to others to embellish or make better…
well. you could also fake that you need rescue and when some player do come and let you inside his ship..you can hijack his ship.
That’s a great idea!
Some black-market items like a fake distress transmitter for pirates to buy (high-cost though) would be great.
On the flip side, have custom items for Deep Space Rescue players to purchase: a radar for showing close distress beacons, “Emergency Response” ship skin, etc.
All of this would certainly add new dynamics to the roles players could adopt in game…
Well….
Slave trade was there in Privateer anyway, illegal and of course it will not be possible or at least easy in policed systems.
I agree is not nice, especially for the slave, but all those movies about roman times sure look interesting now, hmm… But it is one constant through human history, is always there.
The decision can be made and take it out on grounds of human rights and trying to avoid problems down the road, some nut head might come and say that in encourages slavery and violence…. but for playability is great.
I bet that if this is in the equation, everyone will really be worried about being capture, losing a battle, or just venturing alone into dangerous systems, as it should be, space is cold and dangerous.
Now the capturing player, must invest in guards, holding cells, and even be there 24/7 to watch the prisoner…
You might even call your friends to attempt a boarding and rescue operation.
Imagine the spin off and possibilities this would encourage, good and bad. Everything makes the universe richer. imho.
I will get back to you on this one if I find myself behind bars in a few years in someones cargo hold trying to escape.
It’s a good idea and like the possibilities opened by this and the additional tension it creates. It would also give a chance to create diverse relationships to other players, like jumping for a rescue if he has saved your life before, think of Chewbacca/Solo style of friendship.
I could see the game offering an anti-tractor-beam device for space suits to prevent getting easily slaved which needs a bit of time to be hacked by the ‘slavers’. Or a cloaking device for space suits
This would also make boarding actions a lot more intense
*I like the possibilities…
Great ideas!
At the end of the day – anything that enables players to get more involved in Star Citizen so it feels real to them (it is a simulation after all) is good.
Obviously only CIG can determine how tricky some of this stuff is to implement – but the more roles a player can adopt in the game, then the broader the appeal of the whole game?
Yes I think so too. Technically this is not that much work to code
- ECM against tractor beams for space suits
- Cloaking device for space suits
- Com functions
- Allow ejecting from a space craft – players ejects with his ‘flight chair’, it has its own engine that lets you make basic maneuvers
- Player is still able to chat with others through com channels but can also send a call for help
- Others can spot you with their scanners (if not jammed)
- They will earn some credits by rescueing you (maybe at a standard payment)
- You could make the player getting rescued by a NPC controlled ship with a jump drive (so within seconds after sending a distress call). Maybe even a robot controlled vessel that acts like a drone and will fight
- Make something like a ‘Military ambulance service’ available ingame that allows mercenaries to get you out of such situations. Pay a monhtly fee and they get you out of this situation
And to capture other players you must use stun guns, and it takes several hits to take down a person. FPS elements are already coded and should be easily adepted
Floating around in space isn’t fun. Not when you can be flying instead.
Good to see people thinking of new ideas though!
It’s not fun – but that then makes battles more tense if losing is a pain!
Plus it keeps the player in-game so no suspension of disbelief if automatically/instantly appearing at a star-base after losing your ship.
Perhaps a feature where the insurance cost is less if you wait for rescue (by a player) instead of insta-rescue by an NPC (which the player can activate with a command)?
Depends on how much people want a game versus a sim I suppose…
Can I still defraud non lifetime insurance without penalty? =)
This really makes the game universe more realistic.
It really does! And this is only the first update. Imagine if all updates contain this amount of information or more. We’re in for quite a treat!
Cool i love it. Now the ships and stuff has a value. No stupid value less spawning and dieng like in all other casual and shitt boring games.
Thanks Chris !
The german version of the News can be found at
http://werde-star-citizen.de/news/show/89
Die deutsche Version findet ihr hier:
http://werde-star-citizen.de/news/show/89
WOW The LAMPs own live show!
Going to form an in game religion .. Deciples of the Lamp!
Focus the cult on light and make Lamp the first prophet!?
Like in “Let there be light, and there was light.”
Or ‘Bring light to those in the darkness of the universe’
Great update!
I like the part with the “fake hull id”
I am so very glad that there is a consequence to death in this game. So tired of amusement park babysitter games. Life is a harsh place and that is what makes it exciting. There is no greater game-fueled adrenalin rush than fighting for the life of the ship you forgot to renew the insurance policy on…
LOL, horrible time to remember that you forgot to renew that insurance!
i would like a timeline so we can follow the progress that you’re making in the production of the game
+1
Yes, please.
Thats nice! keep up the good work!
Love it!
Great system to tweak. If done right, it can reward risk but still prevent exploiting. Good work!
Godd decision on the stretch goals, love to see the universe growing richer und more detailed! This game will become awesome and unique! No one will ever be able to establish a worthy competitor
Agree to the decission concerning the stretch goals in any case. Allthough i must admitt,that looking fo goals and reaching them was one of the remarkable issues of this campaign…sigh
Maybe one more goal, like signed photo of the team to be included in the collector’s boxes when reaching 10.000.000$,or whatever….hmm?
Thank you, more information is good information and the sooner the better! Gives us time to whine about what we “The Entitled” don’t like.
Just don’t take us too seriously or lightly.
Hmm, just realized what I wrote. I don’t envy you your labors. But, please, never lose sight of what we all supported, that dream of a Space Sim.
yay 12 more months to get ships! now i can save and get the pack i really wanted! thanks dev team.
here is a german translation:
http://star-citizen-hq.de/topic/137-lebenslange-versicherung-faq-uebersetzung/
This is going to be most excellent, cannot wait until things start rolling out. All the updates are like candy!
I wonder if we can sell stolen ships on any outlaw system or strip clean(dismantle) a ship and sell the parts.
I like what i read, but its not enough XD
I’m loving the developer involvement and attention to user issues. Keep up the great work RSI.
Oh man I missed it.
Is there any point to buying your ship now (as oposed to buying nearing the games release)?
That’s a good point – perhaps CIG need to sweeten the deal a little to bring in pre-release purchasers (as they are still contributing to building the game)?
Perhaps ships will be even more expensive after release – so there is still a cost-saving getting them now (even though there’s no lifetime insurance)?
I do hope so.
I guess one “perk” you get now is that maybe you can make a better informed decision further down the line as more infos about the ships become available.
Another question is, will I still be a “backer” that recieves the Squadron 42 missions from the stretch goal when I pledge soon-ish?
You don’t have a pledge yet? Then you probably won’t get the mission disk. You can still buy it, but it’s free for people that backed SC during the campaign
Stretch goals for additional game content should be available to everyone, I believe. Only goals that specifically mentioned being backers-only, such as the repair bot and additional credits, will be limited to backers.
Some of the tiers still give you alpha and beta access (which those who don’t purchase until the games’ release obviously won’t get). Also, you’ll probably be paying ~$60 for the game with a starter Aurora at that point, with no option for other ships except to acquire them in-game.
thank you for the update it was tasty and filling. Looking forward to the next few weeks of updates
Most cool
Wow the insurance system really sounds thought through and promising. I cannot wait to see what else you’ve got and am looking forward see the concept transform into an awesome game (and be part of the process).
Big “Thank you” for making all that happen.
Thanks for the info..I love it when my trust in someone is justified
This here is just another example to me that Chris is going to protect his game.
3 cheers from me!
“… Instead we’re switching to a system that will let you make these changes yourself. If you’d like to change a Hornet for a Cutlass, a Make Mine a Double for a Constellation or trade your Wingnut pledge for the digital one and an additional add-on you will be able to do this yourself in the near future from the “Your Account” section.”
AWESOME!
That’s all, I’ve got to say – for now…
Thanks for the update…
I like the implementation of the Insurance system.
Can’t wait to see what is in store for us in the next few months.
Can we get a multi-line discount?
I mean, I have 11 ships. I won’t use them all the time, but when I do, I’d like to know their mods are insured…
http://memegenerator.net/instance/30883320
Sorry, couldn’t resist
So if a pirate blows up my ship I can get a new one but, if he captures it I can’t?
Not sure why I wouldn’t get theft insurance?
You get a new ship, you get to keep your insurance. The pirate does not get the insurance, and the ship he stole is marked as stolen and therefore cannot do much in secure space.
Very nice update! One thing would like to say though: it’s great that you’re going to use the extra $$ to add more detail to the game, but with respect to NPCs that doesn’t simply equate to “more NPCs”, in my opinion. I guess what I’m trying to say is, I’d rather see deeper, more diverse and more interesting NPCs rather than a cast of thousands, each of whom is only slightly different than the others. As a mere human I can’t even keep track of more than a couple dozen of NPCs anyway, so a limited number of really colorful and fun characters would have more value to me.
I know we’re months away even from alpha, and I’m nitpicking about a handful of words used as an example in passing… but I want this game to blow everyone away, including me!
As a pirate I want to be able to hijack peoples and npc ships, take them somewhere not to far way and sell them for credits, and take them back to my base and cut them up and sell the parts. I also want to capture bigger npc ships (like the destroyer) with a few mates and claim it for our own. As long as I can do that i’m happy
“As a pirate I want to be able to hijack peoples and npc ships, take them somewhere not to far way and sell them for credits, and take them back to my base and cut them up and sell the parts”
Ships AND people?!
Every update from you guys is like a mini-Christmas! Great stuff. I’m so glad to know that I have a year to buy more ships with lifetime insurance. Funds are a little tight right now, so thanks for thinking of us that still want to pledge more, but just can’t do it all at once.
Also, the insurance layout is PERFECT. When you make fans happy over a feature that is very debatable in the community, then you know you’re doing well. I love the Hull ID (VIN #) concept, and that you can buy fake codes (hooray pirating!).
Thanks for all you do! (And all hail Lamp!)
I want to know will the Military (squadron 42) be like the real one where they pay for everything; food, housing, ships, uniforms, insurance, etc…and we get to keep the money we earn and can spend it the way we like at the end of our tour?
I believe they mentioned that when you muster out you’ll have some credits.
Very nice
… so let us fold up ouer sleeves and go to work.
I have pledged exactly the 26th November, i didn’t know anything about this though, please, tell me, do I get cover by lifetime insurance? or I’m just another bad luck Bryan ??
In YOUR ACCOUNT you can check the exact date (servers are in the US). If you pledged on the 26th for the first time you won’t get the life time insurance
There was also an offer of ‘several months of free insurance for your ship’, depending on the amount you have pledged, during the last days so maybe you got that instead. But I’m not sure on that, sorry
While its cool to have high expectations, I think a good number of us need to step back and realize this wont be an MMO. Even with the persistent world they are trying out. Nice update in all regards though.
Backers can no longer buy additional ships outside of the original packages? Anyone that is a backer that wanted a higher level or more than one ship of the origional 6 ships had 30 days to during the campaign to make changes. The chances of somebody wanting to upgrade to an original 6 ships is smaller than the number of people wanting to upgrade to one of the 2nd set of ships. It seems counter intuitive to get rid of the newer ships. If they wanted to maintain excitement they should have ended the old collection of ships and keep the newer (and maybe swap those out for another 6 new ships in the future).
I didn’t buy any of the original because I didn’t like any of them. I only bought the 300i towards the end so that I could pick up a retaliator later when I had the cash. Guess that’s not happening.
The ‘NEW’ ships were only supposed to be available for the last 24 hours of the campaign. It’s only because of the problems people had trying to purchase those ships or make any sort of pledge at all on the RSI site that they instituted the grace period and extended the duration that you could purchase them. They were ‘down the homestretch’ items to raise excitement as the campaign drew to an end.
Also, they weren’t meant to be upgrade ships that you had to have. In fact, they specifically said don’t buy the ships just to buy ships, but to help raise money for the campaign, since the ships would be available through other means in-game. They were just highly incentivized items to encourage people who had the means to pledge more to the project and help achieve some of the high-level stretch goals.
It was stated all over the place that the final-day ship add-ons are just that – final-day. They extended them for the grace period for people who couldn’t access the site that last day.
Another VERY good reason to look forward to fridays!!! Cal is my Wingman
Sounds exciting. Hope it all goes well and RSI can settle in the new studio without technical problems. Looking forward to all the news, updates and webcasts.
Wait a second.. you mean to tell me its going to be possible for someone to still my pledge ship?!!!!!
I hope you will consider changing that.. I will be very unhappy if that happens in game.
Of course someone can steal your pledge ship, if they disable you and successfully board.
You have lifetime insurance, though. You’ll get a replacement, and the stolen hull will be marked stolen and won’t have the insurance.
Don’t worry, you can’t actually LOSE your pledge ship — unless you commit insurance fraud and your lifetime insurance is revoked of course.
Oh.. ok.. I thought you could only use the insurance if the ship was destroyed.
Wow ! – That is some crazy drill-down forethought to the insurance system!, amazing!, this game…. wel it almost feels criminal to call it a game….. but this ‘game’ – this ‘experience’ is going to be soooo immersive!. Its going to be just like living in the SC universe!.
Very wise re: further stretch goals! – I approve! – and also great news about the webcasts and youtube channel. I can’t wait to see The Lamp’s updates! – I’m sure they will be illuminating! – (lol)… but then again I am easily L.E.D. ^^
Customer service has been fantastic so far, and considering its been handles do far with a hodgepodge of a temp-system it makes this even more astonishing. Massive credit to Sandi and the rest of the team there across all departments.
I love the idea of a backing wall! – would it be possible for a monument in-game somewhere, perhaps at the site of and in with the lore of the launch of perhaps The Artemis? (2232 AD) and you click on a plaque and you get up all the names of the backers portrayed as a team that worked on The Artemis project. THAT would be beyond cool!.
Looking forward to joining you all in the stars pilots!.
.o>
Wow ! – That is some crazy drill-down forethought to the insurance system!, amazing!, this game…. wel it almost feels criminal to call it a game….. but this ‘game’ – this ‘experience’ is going to be soooo immersive!. Its going to be just like living in the SC universe!.
Very wise re: further stretch goals! – I approve! – and also great news about the webcasts and youtube channel. I can’t wait to see The Lamp’s updates! – I’m sure they will be illuminating! – (lol)… but then again I am easily L.E.D. ^^
Customer service has been fantastic so far, and considering its been handled so far with a hodgepodge of a temp-system it makes this even more astonishing. Massive credit to Sandi and the rest of the team there across all departments.
I love the idea of a backing wall! – would it be possible for a monument in-game somewhere, perhaps at the site of and in with the lore of the launch of perhaps The Artemis? (2232 AD) and you click on a plaque and you get up all the names of the backers portrayed as a team that worked on The Artemis project. THAT would be beyond cool!.
Looking forward to joining you all in the stars pilots!.
.o>
love the insurance implementation
. Guys do you think things like mining, fighting etc should roughly give the same profit with the same amount spent so you can either do everything so as not to get bored doing 1 thing or just do 1 think that you enjoy the most and still get the same result:) what do you think???
crap, can’t edit my grammar mistakes:(( to tired after work…
nice idea how the insurancesystem will work. should keep the eco on a balanced base and give the player some option in style of play. who want’s it save pays and those who like it risky don’t.
in addittion i very satisfied to see that the eco picks up those in “Privateer”.
Thanks Chris. And Thank you for the chance to buy more ships with insurance over the next 12 month.
I approve.
I like the insurance system, but I am not sure it will have teeth. So obviously having insurance will save time and money if your ship is destroyed since you will not have to earn it back, but how much would it hurt to have to do that? Are ships expensive enough that it would take a good long while to get enough credits doing odd jobs to buy one? What if you decided to take a dangerous odd job since there is more reward to be gained and you died? But let’s say that you did have insurance. The cost for insuring someone at a risk 1 system would be understandably low since there is low risk. But there should be a large increase in cost with increasing risk. I am not a hardcore player where if you die you are dead forever, but there should be a system in place so that people better think very hard before taking a risky mission or going into a riskier system. And trolls or pirate who kill people in systems where there is law, it might be beneficial to immediately put their “wantedness” by the authorities up so that they are targeted and hunted in any place that has the law. What I am getting at is make people feel the risk and take the punishment if they fail when they decide to take it.
“Users who registered and bought at least one ship before November 26, 2012 can purchase additional ships with lifetime insurance for the next twelve months of development.”
So to clarify, I bought Early Adopter (Digital) before this grace period ended. Am I entitled to lifetime for any ships I purchase now? Or is this line saying that I needed to purchase an additional ship before the grace period ended?
I’m not 100%, but I would guess that having pledged during the grace period should make you an original backer that’s entitled to the lifetime insurance on your pledge ship(s). It would only make sense considering the purpose of the grace period.
I would suggest contacting CGI at [email protected] just to be sure, though.
You bought one ship before the pledge period ended.
Then it means that any ships (add-ons) you buy from now up to 12 months down the road will be insured.
Chris Roberts for President.
Oh my gosh!
This is madness! I have always dreamed about this kind of multiplayer experience. All these news do sound so incredible awesome. Fake Hull-IDs, ship theft, ships that can be destroyed… BUT how do you want to solve the human death, when the ship got destroyed? Cloning with brain backup? Or recovery of the body like in the beginning of Mass Effect 2? Therefor the body has to be collected by some NPC droid drone, or your body get also insured and because of maximisation of profits the insureance companys are having a huge bulletin board for bountyhunter like people that are able to accept the recovery of the body and hand it out to the insurance companys to make some money.
The are some many possibilities to make the best, most realistic and dynamic game out there.
Would be nice if one could be able to make so much trouble that players or even companies can set a bounty on someones head.
Also it would be gorgeous to be able to create guild but to name them companies or clans depending on the orientation of the “guild”. Moreover it should be possible to hire also NPCs not just players and thereby build a huge mining company that is able to automatically send mining ships to asteroids and planets and hire some mercenaries to defend the minig ships.
The last and very important point I will write is, that you should not make a strange world where electromagnetic waves aren’t existing. So please build in the ability to hack other ships or even space stations. (Ship-AI like in Mass Effect 2) and Robots!! Send information to remote servers about the ships that are attacking you. After that hack the Hullcode scanning stations at various positions like jump points fuelstations etc. to search where the attacker went by and hunt him. It’s endless, I think I am going crazy!
I love the idea for in-game punishments for insurance fraud instead of out of game punishments, like account suspensions. I hate to draw comparisons to Eve Online but that sort of realism is much more compelling to me.
Does anyone else feel a little overwhelmed by TMI about this fairly complicated game being put together? I just want to fly my assigned ship for the mission and shoot down Kilrathi while being the ace pilot on the Tiger’s Claw. Is that too little to ask?
Nothing about this prevents you from doing that. But it’s awesome stuff that’s necessary to have a persistent online universe.
If you REALLY don’t want to deal with any sort of complexity and just want to fly around by yourself popping NPCs, you can play on your own private server rather than the public, persistent one.
Its just sounding complex on paper IMHO. Of course it will be a pain to build too..but to play…meh, i think it will be fairly simple to play, difficult to master.
Anyone else unable to buy any add-ons?
Wow the Journey have finally started
I just want to hear about dev
No more talk about $$$$$$$$
You have enough to go forth and build it…so dot it …do it now
Already Frustrated
Can some part of the stretch goal surplus include a commitment to launching with Linux and Mac support? I’ll build a Windoze box for alpha, but it’d be oh so much fun to have every machine in the house running SC for Constellation parties and such come launch time
Oh, and btw: Sandi rocks!
I’m like addict waiting for info, very nice data pile, good job RSI, waiting for more ….. pls my body in pain.
I do like the idea that if and when you sell your pledge ship, the lifetime insurance goes with it, witch means the resell value will be higher than a new ship.
and since I will be able to buy the other ships within the next 12 months, and they will have lifetime insurance, I will be loading my garage up with maybe 2 of each ship. maybe more.
I personally am of the opposite opinion.
When we pledgers sell our pledge ships, the lifetime insurance should extinguish. Over time, the ‘initial advantage’ pledgers have will fade away unless we consciously attempt to garage our pledge ships (with associated costs).
You make a good point about resale value though.
Awesome policy…
See I had problems buying the ad- ons ships, there where little to none info on what they looked like, or what gear they had on. like the tanker, would it only transport fuel, or could it refuel ships on the go, or even harvest fuel from gas giants or clouds of gas….
I really hope the add-on ships is relunched when there is more info in them, mayby when there is new stretch goals to reach, and that pladgers still get the life time insurance.
On the insurance thing, do you get it replaced if your ship is boarder and taken over ???, I know that the ones boarding won’t get the insurcan but will I get a new ship with life time insurance on ?, that could be an exploit.
Why not hunting the theft with another Ship. So you get youre LI Shipshull back? And if he didnt log on or fly it for longer than maybe 24 hours the Ship explodes in his garage, so you get it back Eventually the time for non log in will count towards 24Hours every time hes logged off or he didnt fly this ship.
Regards
Thanks, insurance will be as i previously wrote in RSI forum. Happy about that. We share the same “perspective”
Thanks for the update.
Well, insurance is and has always been prone to fraud. And in a game in particular, where the real justice comes not as vigilant law-abiding Star Citizens, but in the form of game masters — if they find the time. Judging from how it went in EVE Online I would say there is a rough ride ahead of Star Citizen on that front. Not necessarily bad. Just saying it may be bumpy.
Im glad you guys put this info out, I was tired of rehashing this information. Excellent update, I look forward to the coming months!
nice i like how the justice system works and with the life insurance thing. I’m really looking forward to th complete version even more now xD
please, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE with sugar on top, sort the comm-link postings into seperate categorys!
clicking through everything makes me feel like “meh. too much effort!”
Primero disculparme por escribir en español , es el unico idioma que entiendo .
Segundo :
Espero que mi aportacion como ciudadano ayde en parte a la creacion de este juego .
Tercero :
Gracias por este fascinante mundo que nunca crei poder disfrutar , lamento no haberme podido enterar antes de la promocion ya que por solo 3 dias he perdido la obcion del seguro a perpetuidad , en españa mi pais de origen no hay un soporte informativo sobre este juego que nos haya podido poner al tanto de esto ( o al menos que yo conozca ) .
Cuarto y ultimo :
Espero y deseo que este juego sea traducido y doblado al español o vere tirado mi dinero no sin saber al menos que he aportado un poco de ayuda a la creacion de este fascinante juego .
Gracias Gracias Gracias
Traducido seguro. Ya han confirmado el idioma español. Doblado, con voces, no podría aseguralo.
Pásate por la página de ciudadanoestelar. Allí estamos formando una comunidad de habla hispana.
Saludos.
http://www.ciudadanoestelar.com
I think the insurance system is an outstanding idea, one question though, is there any possible way to get lifetime insurance AT ALL after the 26th, if so how, if not that sucks cause I just heard about the lifetime insurance today(29th), If I saw this earlier I would have pledged weeks ago. -_-
You´ll be able to get LTI from another player who wants to sell his ship when the game starts.
Those ships with LTI included obviously.
The lifetime insurance will follow the ship hull when it is legally sold or gifted. If the ship is stolen or otherwise captured, the policy will not transfer.
Ok But will the ships be very pricey compared to a ship with limited time insurance.
Anyone else having a problem with not being able to insure a Vanduul Fighter you have earned the hard way through exploration/boarding?
Especially when the pledge Vanduul Fighters have LFI (only 500 around and no word about no insurance for later acquired versions)?
What is the bad excuse/bending of the story for that?
I love how in-depth the game is going to be, great work on everything I’ve seen so far.
So… what about fast PvP like in Freelancer clan wars?
Is this still possible, even with the insurance system?
Unfortunately I just bought my first ship today. No Lifetime insurance for me, which would really suck if I was not able buy hull insurance in-game. Since it’s stated that insurance isn’t meant to take up a huge portion of my budget, I presume I’ll be able to compensate by just buying insurance in-game at no disadvantage other than a slight financial one. Have I got this right?