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' Wrote:From an Rp point of view Interspace has got his ship insured he's out of pocket by two mil, not four.
So an insurance company is going to cough up 110 million credits to replace an Advanced Train that a Trader had destroyed by refusing to pay a pirate 4 million credits?
Nuts.
No insurance company in this galaxy or any other would ever write a policy allowing any such thing. If they did in Sirius, they'd be insolvent inside of a week due to all the traders who get themselves blown up.
In real game terms, if an Adv Train is destroyed you lose the cargo, equipment, and bots and bats that aren't nailed down...so maybe a couple to a few million lost.
In roleplay terms, you lose a 110 million credit ship, and have to fill out a mountain of paperwork. Additionally, buying a 100 million credit transport isn't like buying a used car. In other words, you couldn't possibly lose one, make it back to base, and launch with another one on the same route within 60 seconds.
Plus, why would any insurance carrier continue to write a policy to a pilot who keeps having 110 million credit ships destroyed? Auto insurance companies often drop people's coverage over a few thousand in damages. 110 million credits in insurance claims means you will NEVER be issued a policy by anyone ever again because you are too great a risk! This is a flatly indisputable reality of business.
One of my hobbies is studying organized crime so I have more than just a passing knowledge about this sort of thing. Major criminal enterprises don't just randomly target people. They do their homework. Information critical to determining whether or not a particular entity is a good target for robbing in some way is part of the criminals' activities. Poor people aren't targeted by kidnappers, con artists, extortionists, blackmailers, and serious thieves, are they? No, the rich are targeted because the criminals know who the rich are from doing their homework. In Freelancer, all of that real world data is distilled down into one single rank number. Nobody can help it that this is the way the game designers chose to do it, but this is the way it is. It isn't out of roleplay for a pirate to use that data, because that data tells the pirate in a simple way the very thing that real pirates would find out before choosing a target. In the real world criminals can search public records, case locations, pose as a customer or serviceman and do many other things to gather intel about a target. Do you think the pirates in the South China seas just aimlessly roam around robbing whatever boat they happen to bump into? Of course they don't. The serious pirates hunt the super freighters. It would be OUT of roleplay for pirates in Sirius to do otherwise as well, and it is OUT of roleplay for pirates to ignore the only piece of information that tells them anything useful about their target.
Do you somehow think that extortionists, blackmailers, con artists, and thieves IGNORE how rich someone is when they decide how much to steal? Of course not. That is the primary determinant of the size of their demands. Why should pirates in Freelancer operate any differently than thieves in the real world? Roleplay doesn't employ some sort of outlandish and unrealistic "in the game world only" model of criminal behavior.
Some of you call it metagaming if a pirate makes demands based on your treasury, as indicated by your rank. I call it metagaming when a trader refuses to pay more than the purchase cost of his cargo because he knows in the game's terms that is all the credits he stands to lose by being destroyed. It is downright hypocritical to answer what you erroneously call a "non-RP" demand with a non-RP reliance on the game's mechanics in order to save you money.
If you really want to talk serious roleplaying, then any demand up to but not exceeding the replacement cost of the ship is entirely reasonable. Pirates don't do that, because we recognize that we shouldn't "kill the goose that laid the golden egg". Pirates don't want to bankrupt traders in just a couple hits. It's much more fun to get to pirate the same target multiple times. Pirates are entirely reasonable to tax based on profits, not cost. That is the way governments tax corporations, remember. Cost is irrelevant; profits are the only number that matters.
When you traders base your taxing ceiling on the cost of your lost cargo / equipment, YOU are the one who is metagaming and is OUT of role-play, NOT the pirate!
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