Here is a diagram from reddit explaining it better
View attachment 26016
My questions pertaining to this is, IF a player pays to improve their insurance level, say from a 1 to 3, how long will that upgrade last? Will that cost be only in UEC or will CIG possibly offer the upgrade to last the length of its warranty / insurance if paid with RL currency? IF the later, I have a few ships that I'll definitely be upgrading to Tier 3 insurance with RL funds, because those will be the vehicles that I plan on fully decking out. Such as my BMM, which in lore they are generational ships that the Banu endlessly upgrade to the best of their abilities generation after generation. It also has a special sentimental value to me.
If LTI = Warranty + Level 1 insurance, we won't need to renew either of those. That's still far better than facing the risk of losing an entire ship and starting with nothing. And for those with many ships, it is still far better than having to lose sleep over whether insurance on many ships is up to date. As someone in that category, I'm just all for them keeping insurance as simple as possible so its less to manage. But I get now that warranty is basically about ship replacement, and insurance is basically about item level replacement. And I can see how that benefits the ship component crafting economy. I'm swayed that its a good thing, but as an 'LTI investor' (the 'I' in LTI meaning insurance), a little skeptism remains that LTI is taking a hit.
This is basically why I haven't bothered upgrading most of my fleet beyond its base / OEM components. Until recently, if it gets destroyed or you encountered a dreaded 30k, all that effort was wasted. Instead, if I need to upgrade a ship & I have the component I want to use from another I already own, I borrow it for the time being.
The best way would be to have a way to improve the ship with in-game resources. Say it takes 500k to create a particular T1 ship 1m for t2, 2 mil for a T3, 4 for T4 and 7 for a T5. Would it not make sense for a big shipyard to be able to tear down a T1 ship and then improve it to a T5 for 6.5m to 7m.
Do you think it might be good to retain the goodwill of a bunch of whales who have pored 1000s of USD into the game to support it? Especially if one of the ways you continue to monetize the game is to keep selling new ships for RL cash?
More Importantly, how does CIG prevent others from undercutting them on starship sales? CIG prices the Connie Phoenix at 350 IIRC. How do they stop XYZ manufacturing from selling T1 Connie Phoenix for 300 usd and putting it up on the web?
I know CIG said they would not sell ships after 1.0, but I have yet to see a way for them to monetize SC without ship sales. UEC sales would just put a price cap on it from the gold sellers, they have just killed their own ship sales unless they can add value…such as lifetime warranties. BUT, if you don’t allow people to upgrade ships to higher tiers in-game, no one will buy them, lifetime warranty or not.
Yeah, it would be a massive mistake to make a decision that truly alienates the space whales that have invested the lion's share of the project backing. I know that CIG plans to sell or lease the tech they've been working on through the years to other studios for other games after official launch, which will help some if not a large chunk of the future funding, but unless my sense of business is critically flawed, it never hurts a business to have additional sources of income from those happy to pay into. Especially if CIG plans to continue to innovate & improve as many aspects of the game for as long as possible. Look at Blizzard, for all its massive flaws, WoW is now celebrating its 20th anniversary, mainly because they periodically bring in changes to provide interest to its player base. Many years ago, they also started selling various mounts, pets & transmog items to draw in additional revenue.
