Interesting query on insurance..

LTI or otherwise.

Saw a thread on reddit (sorry Hamma) where someone asks what happens if you get your insured ship stolen, planetside or boarded in space and stolen?

If its destroyed it gets replaced like EVE, but if it's taken from you, then does it get replaced? It wouldn't in EVE, as you get paid out when a kill mail is created documenting the ships destruction.

The issue isn't so much whether you "get paid" for your loss, but rather; if I had two characters, what's to stop me "stealing" my own ship over and over again. Because until the cost (even if it keeps going up after subsequent thefts) to insure becomes greater than the cost to buy the ship, it's worthwhile doing it to gain free/cheaper ships. You could essentially take an Idris (most expensive ship currently), have it "stolen" re-insure, rinse, repeat until you have a small fleet of ships.. Might be the kind of thing you can only do in pirate space, but still, that'd be a hell of an exploit for anyone who wanted to pull it off..

Never mind what it'd do to the economy if those ships could eventually become sellable.

 

I'd say it's likely automated, this is a FPS with space ships, so lots of people will be getting blown up, and that'd be too big an undertaking to put customer service people on. As for fraud, as long as you allow people to board a ship and essentially steal it in space, AND have that trigger a reimbursement through LTI or any other kind of insurance; you're creating free ships.. Quite frankly, scrubbing them or not, it's not the guys from IR or some other law abiding organization I'd be worried about as much as pirates slowly creating a small fleet of Idris' at a fraction of what they cost to buy.. All it takes is a couple alts and some time.

If there's a way to skirt around the system people will take advantage of it, if anything, games like EVE are proof it'll happen.

IMO, I'd say insurance shouldn't cover losses to theft. If your ship is docked or landed, you should be able to lock it to keep people out. If you're in space, unless the ship gets to a crippled state where it's only salvagable, not stealable, you get no insurance claim. In the case of boarding, auto destruct takes the ship from flyable to towable-crippled, and then you get an insurance claim. Otherwise, if you bailed and left your ship for anyone to pilot away, no claim.

 

I have no issue with ships being taken after basically being wrecked, which takes work on the attackers part to retrieve what they can.. Then insurance should be fine to invoke, so long as you're pushing that big red button, as it were, to prevent easy capture..

Much like in EVE though, getting out of your ship while it's still space worthy and letting someone drive off with it, should quite simply void your insurance, no claim.. So don't let anyone that you absolutely don't trust get behind the wheel of something that belongs to you.

The Bengals are supposed to be pretty rare though, I don't think they'll let you completely destroy it, and you wouldn't be able to insure it either.. It'll either get boarded and seized, or crippled and seized by group after group.. CRs comment in that last interview i posted had him saying there's only ONE Bengal out there, which I'm thinking may have been misspoken.. Because if that's the case, you might as well just name it the UEE "Goonswarm" and be done with it, because only a group with huge numbers would be able to hold the thing.

 

Doesn't suck for us thankfully, because in reality if the Goons could field enough people to take one from the military, then they can take several from the military, and that wouldn't be good for the meta game at large..