Spaceship Insurance: Star Citizen and EVE Online

I've put on many hats in my time writing at The Nosy Gamer. Texas space lawyer, interstellar economist and amateur corporate account are just three. But I don't believe I've ever stepped into the role of internet spaceship insurance agent. But after watching a video about insurance in Star Citizen, I had a couple of thoughts I wanted to get off my chest.

First, from what I gather players in Star Citizen are really risk averse. They want insurance on everything. Their ships, their weapons, any customizations done to the ships, even their cargo. From reading the Ship Insurance FAQ, insurance "ensures that your ship will be replaced should it be destroyed or stolen." Currently, I don't think players can permanently lose their ships.

Currently, on the Alpha and Public Test Universe (PTU), all ships and vehicles are given a basic insurance plan that does not expire to facilitate testing.  At this time, it requires no upkeep or fee for players to acquire basic ship loss coverage.  There may be a fee to file a claim or expedite a replacement, however.

Remember, Star Citizen is only set 900 years in the future. I mean, they use Newtonian physics and engage at visual ranges. A very primitive game! And to go along with the primitive nature of the Star Citizen universe, players have to manually submit insurance claims.

Should your ship or vehicle be destroyed, stolen, or stranded halfway across the 'verse from you somehow, you will need to file a claim to replace it.  Alternately, filing a claim on a ship can function as a work around to resolve some ship-related bugs, such as the doors not working for some reason.  Be aware that doing this will carry a UEC cost for the service!

To file an Insurance Claim:

• Visit an ASOP terminal.
• Browse through the ship list to find the vehicle or ship you need to file a claim on. Remember, file a claim on your vehicle first, ship second.
• Click Claim.
• On the next screen, you should see the location and status correctly.
• Click File a Claim. A claim is entered!

Players can purchase insurance in game or when purchasing a ship from the cash shop. Players who purchase the game during the alpha (and presumably the beta) have the opportunity to purchase lifetime insurance for their ships.

Lifetime Insurance, or LTI as it is commonly referred to, is a special insurance policy that will cost the insured player no extra UEC payments to maintain their coverage.  Only those specific pledges that are noted to include LTI will have this "free" coverage once the game goes live. 

Players will still need to cover the cost of insurance claims and repairs, regardless of if their ship is covered by LTI or some other standard, finite-length plan.

LTI is offered rarely with certain pledges and promotions.  These may include past Kickstarter pledges, Concept Promotions, and extremely high value pledges like the Idris. 

Once Star Citizen is released, "the plan is for insurance policies to be purchased on an individual basis for each ship using UEC." One little important item isn't mentioned. What happens if a player lets their insurance lapse? Considering the hundreds, if not thousands, of real world dollars players spend on their ships, a pretty big detail. And with that much money on the line, I can see why players are risk averse.

While insurance in Star Citizen is, like much of the game, a system still subject to many changes, the developers of EVE Online have run ship insurance for over 20 years. Ship insurance works much differently in modern day New Eden compared to the ancient days of the United Empire of Earth. Instead of handing over objects to insurance claimants, Pend Insurance pays out claims using the in game currency, ISK.

Despite all the stories implying EVE players purchase their ships with real world currencies as is done in Star Citizen, the EVE cash shop does not sell ships directly. Instead, almost all ships are built by players in the game. Most of the rest that are not are either starter-level corvettes given out for free, ships given out from career agents, or those purchased from NPC corporations for loyalty points.

Insurance does not cover all losses in an incident. According to the EVE Online insurance support page: 

Insurance is a service available to players in certain stations in New Eden. This allows for a more favorable compensated amount of the ISK invested in the insured ship upon destruction. Insurance contracts are valid for up to 12 weeks, and only compensate for the ship hull, not any modules, rigs or assets in the various holds.

The insurance payout is a pre-determined amount for each ship hull, mainly based on the estimated value of the materials required to construct the ship, with other factors playing into the final value to a lesser extent, such as ship type itself. The estimated market value of the ship hull itself is not considered to determine insurance values. The insurance value for all ships is regularly being recalculated to account for market changes in the material markets.

Basically all insurance does in EVE is help replace the hull of the ship a player just lost. And by help replace, I mean buy the materials to rebuild the ship. But players can choose to not even cover that amount if they think they will not die over the next 12 weeks. The game will automatically pay out 40% of the value of the ship hull unless the ship is destroyed by CONCORD, the NPC police force patrolling the high security space of the NPC empires. Players have the option to buy 6 levels of insurance, from the basic plan that replaces 50% of a hull's loss up to the platinum plan that pays out 100%.

I should add the insurance does not necessarily last for 12 weeks and is voided under the following conditions:

• If the ship is repackaged
• If the ship exchanges owners, whether this is by trade, contracts or boarded in space
• If the ship is placed in a corporation hangar.
• If the ship was used to engage in activities which result in it being destroyed by CONCORD

Now, while New Eden is a harsher place than the United Empire of Earth, EVE does have an advantage due to its modern technology. Players get their insurance claims settled without having to submit a claim. Pend Insurance knows when a ship is lost and pays out quickly. I want to say instantly, but within 15 minutes at the latest.

Something Star Citizen players may find interesting is the ability for player groups in EVE to insure ships.

Ships can also be insured by corporations, rather than individuals, allowing the members of the corporation to utilize the ship, whilst still covering the potential losses upon its destruction.

This works in the same way as insurance does for individuals, with some minor exceptions, which are as follows:

• The desired ship to insure must be in a corporation hangar
• The corporation will pay for the insurance, as well as receiving the insurance payout, if the ship is destroyed.
• If the ship is boarded by any character not part of the corporation, the ship is insured by, the contract becomes void.

While the insurance system in EVE does not cover cargoes, the courier contract system does provide some protection against loss if a player hires another to transport their goods.

Courier contracts are created to formalize the moving of items between locations by other players. The items selected during contract creation will be packaged into a "Plastic Wrap" package, which will be given to the contractor to be delivered to the target location. To prevent the contractor from simply keeping the package for his own, a collateral should always be set on a courier contract, which has to be paid by the contractor upon accepting the contract and will be returned to the contractor upon successful delivery. It the contract fails for any reason, the creator of the courier contract will receive the collateral instead.

I imagine any Star Citizen player who reaches this point in the article is asking, "What about cash shop purchases? You don't just lose items purchased using real world cash, right?" The answer is yes, players can and do lose items purchased with real life cash. CCP makes losing some items, like PLEX, ship SKINs, and clothing difficult, but a determined player can lose them all the same. And as for ships and modules purchased with ISK purchased with real world money through the PLEX mechanics, EVE has an old saying: Don't fly what you can't afford to lose. If you can't afford to lose $25 worth of ISK, don't buy the PLEX from the cash shop.

As I mentioned at the beginning of the post, I am not an internet spaceship insurance agent. All I know about insurance in Star Citizen I gained from watching YouTube videos and reading support articles. And while I have personally received payments from Pend Insurance in EVE, I only went into the developer created insurance system in this article. The player-run ship replacement programs run by corporations and alliances to reimburse players for losses incurred in official operations would require a separate post. But I figure a look at insurance in the two games would help point out just how different the two games really are.