[Spaceships] GURPS EVE, and related ideas . . .

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by SuedodeuS

I'm only moderately familiar with the setting, but from the other comments I suspect the lack of pod-killing doesn't have much to do with honor. The fact of the matter is, you gain nothing by destroying someone's pod - all you do is cost them money. An action that does nothing but cost someone else money (and might cost you a little bit, on account of ammo) is not economically feasible and is senseless beyond feeding your own bloodlust. Thus, pod-killing is looked down upon because, if it were not, it would simply cause everyone to burn through more money. Destroying an enemy ship insures it will not bother you again, and also yields some salvage that can be used to pay off repairs and restocking (and probably have some more besides). Destroying an enemy pod? No gain there.

That said, some EVE-style spaceships in GURPS might make for a rather interesting setting/campaign.

EDIT: So far as war goes, I suspect the policy on pod-killing will depend on how long the concept has had to become corrupted. Assuming the concept was originally purely economic (not abhoring pod-killing leads to an all-around loss of money), it would be dropped in times of war. This is because part of the strategy for winning a war is to deplete your foe of resources - and making them constantly replace clones and cybernetic enhancements would help on this front. However, if the concept has had enough time to become corrupted (into a sort of Gentleman's Code of Honor, or "What seperates us from the murdering pirates"), it would probably be maintained during time of war. The fact that it's perfectly legal (or at least was the last I read) to pod-kill sufficiently abhorred pirates indicates that the policy maintains its economic roots, thus meaning it would likely be abandoned in war time. The exception made for dread pirates may instead be due to it being considered part of a gentleman's code of honor - it does not apply to those who are not gentlemen (thus it doesn't apply to pirates). If the default assumption is that the individuals on each side of a war are, in fact, gentlemen, the ban on pod-killing would remain.

Well, I wonder how to make it a cultural thing, much like paroles of the napoleonic era.

This is even more important if the setting doesn't have mind-transfer clones.

And it's even more interesting when most pirates consider themselves honorable enough to avoid podkilling - and aren't podkilled in exchange.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Molokh

1. I remember a piece of fluff that told how the new pod-tech allowed reducing the crew to one, because that one pilot could see from the ship's 'eyes', feel how engines work etc.

Whether EVE Online's ships are crewed or not is hotly debated on CCP's forums. I personally don't care, except for thinking that it would expand the scope and complexity of the game, if ships were given Crew Slots that had to be filled with special Crew Modules, such as Regular Crew, Elite Crew, Enslaved Crew, Robotic Crew or Pirate Crew, each giving its own advantages and disadvantages, such as mutiny risk, bonuses, and how much pay they require.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Molokh

Well, there are insurances. Although I can't figure how to insure actual subsystems within a ship (weird if it isn't possible). Conversely, GURPS Spaceships allows insurance for the whole ship, and not just the frame, which seems more logical.

In EVE Online, ship modules and ship rigs cannot be insured, and one reason for that is that it is possible to spend insane amounts of in-game money pimping you ships with super-expensive modules (Caldari Navy-grade modules, for instance, or even better ones called DeadSpace-grade modules) and very expensive rigs (Tech 2 rigs). If that can be insured, there's no loss, and thus no risk (especially for mission runners who won't engage in PVP).

Also note that the insurance system is criticized, because griefer players abuse it. The root cause of the problem is that ship insurance values are based on fictional raw material costs, which real raw material costs are no longer at all "in tune" with.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

In EVE Online, ship modules and ship rigs cannot be insured, and one reason for that is that it is possible to spend insane amounts of in-game money pimping you ships with super-expensive modules (Caldari Navy-grade modules, for instance, or even better ones called DeadSpace-grade modules) and very expensive rigs (Tech 2 rigs). If that can be insured, there's no loss, and thus no risk (especially for mission runners who won't engage in PVP).

If insurance corps can make money from insuring hulls, they should be able to do so by insuring systems too. And Your last sentence I couldn't understand at all.

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

Also note that the insurance system is criticized, because griefer players abuse it. The root cause of the problem is that ship insurance values are based on fictional raw material costs, which real raw material costs are no longer at all "in tune" with.

How is it abused?

[tshiggins]

Originally Posted by Molokh

If insurance corps can make money from insuring hulls, they should be able to do so by insuring systems too. And Your last sentence I couldn't understand at all.

I think it's a data resource problem for CCP, the people who make the game. As it currently works, you purchase insurance for your ship, for a certain amount of time. If, during that time, something bad happens to it, you get compensated for that loss, based on a rolling average value of the minerals used to create that ship, at the time you purchased the policy. Moreover, if you decomission and package the ship up for movement by freighter to a different system, it drops from the "active" list, and the insurance gets immediately nullified.

They do that because, while mineral values can and do fluctuate (which is why miners can make a go of it, in Eve), they don't change much, in the general sense. For instance, if the price of tritanium goes from 3.25 isk to 4.00 isk, that's a large percentage per unit. But, you're still talking only 0.75 isk, in a game where millions of isk get made and lost every day by people who take very few risks, and tens of millions by people who risk a bit more.

However, the costs of finished goods can fluctuate a lot, especially if they significantly improve offensive or defensive capabilities, and there's nobody around who can supply them regularly.

Ships are ships are ships. But a Sansha's Dark Blood Defensive Wotzit that gives you an extra two percent shield strength per level of your shield skill is a Big Deal. Especially if the only way to get it is to run through pirate-infested low-sec space, evade patrols for PC warlords who control a section of null-sec space, penetrate the Level 5 Sansha's Dark Blood Complex that spawns the Wotzit, successfully complete the complex without getting blown to hell, and then make it back to a neutral station with the loot in your cargo hold, so you can use the shipyard to fit the bloody thing.

Finally, of course, should you decide to remove the SDBDW from your ship, you can do it easily, and replace it with an item that uses nearly the same materials and provides less defensive bonuses, but is readily available on the market because three carebear industrialists have the blueprints to make them, locally.

All of which is to say, the insurance system can easily assess a "reasonable" rate for the most commonly available active vessels, based on known material costs, because those vessels don't fluctuate a great deal in price. The system would require a lot of tweaking to allow it to take into consideration such factors as rarity and desireability, and even more to constantly reassess the value of the ship based on its current configuration.

That said, even some rare shiptypes don't offer a fair, "market-price" payout, for the same reason. If the regional market situation is such that certain ships just aren't around, and the market price is therefore much higher than the material costs, the insurance system can't really deal with it.

Part of that is also meant to act as a brake on abuse. For instance, should someone come up with a blueprint for an item which is useful, rare, and extraordinarily valuable due to that scarcity, what's to stop him from whipping up a batch of them, insuring them, fitting them on a cheap ship flown by a neutral alt character, and then blowing them all up to collect the payout?

What stops insurance fraud in the Really Real World is the possibility of investigation, apprehension, trial, conviction and incarceration (or, at least, heavy fines). Unfortunately, a computer model has no way to determine the existence of that type of fraud.

Think of it this way -- given the wide-open nature of New Genesis space, and its dramatically hostile nature, fitting modules just flat aren't insurable. So, no insurance company covers them, under any circumstances, ever. You take that risk, yourself.

Originally Posted by Molokh

How is it abused?

You jump through a 0.0 system in your Raven-class battleship, fitted with your nifty new SDBDW. You see that, according to local chat, the system has one neutral you don't know. A quick look at directional scan in 360-degree mode shows that it's another Raven-class ship and, even though you could outlast it with your new widget, you decide not to linger. You're here to make some easy isk, not PvP, so you jump to the next system. There, you see that local chat is empty, scan shows bunches of PvE targets, and you run to the first asteroid belt so you can kill some for bounties and loot.

Suddenly, two other neutral ships pop into local, and you decide you don't like the possibilities. You start to maneuver to warp to a previously defined safespot (or just a planet or vacant moon), until those guys leave. However, before you can move, two pukin'-fast interceptor-class frigates warp to your belt, kick on the afterburners, close to within 20 km, and scramble your ability to form a warp-tunnel. As they do so, three more neutrals appear in local chat. Within another 20 seconds, three megathron-class Gallentean battleships fitted with close-range, high-damage blasters arrive within 20 km of you (they jumped to their buddies), and they proceed to lock your Raven-class battleship with its nifty SDBDW. As they start to fire, a short message appears in local chat:

"Pay or die."

The PvP pirate griefers won't stop shooting until you quickly type, "Pay." Then, based on their scan of your ship, they'll assess the level of coercion.

Then, once you pay, they may decide to kill you, anyway.

(Please assume the use of the word "you" follows the impersonal sense, in the following example. I don't think anybody, here, is really an idiot. :) )

(By the way, just so you know: 1, you're an idiot for flying solo into 0.0 space with an incredibly expensive fitting, just to shoot belt-rats, even if said fitting makes you all-but-immune to anything they can do to you; 2, the first neutral was a scout for the kill-squad; 3, you're an idiot for flying solo into 0.0 space with an incredibly expensive fitting, just to shoot belt-rats, even if said fitting makes you all-but-immune to anything they can do to you; 4, the presence of the scout and the two interceptor-class frigates demonstrates two truisms in Eve -- it's a team game, and all ships are useful in some circumstances; 5, bet you can guess this one; 6, the presence of the three megathron-class battleships demonstrates another Eve truism -- there are no uber-ships, and even the biggest vessel can go down to enough smaller ones. Besides, megathrons are pretty tough, even without fancy fittings. Points four and six demonstrate exactly why points one, three and five shouldn't need to be said, much less repeated.)