Overview
If your ship is destroyed, you can get it back. That goes for all your ships, whether bought with real money or in-game with in-game currency.
To do so, go to an ASOP terminal (AirSpace Organization and Procedures) in a landing zone and click the Claim button to the right of your ship.
You’ll then see the following options:
Click Claim Default Loadout to get your ship back with standard components.
It costs you nothing and you don’t have to wait anymore either. Your ship is ready again immediately.
There is a catch, though: as the button suggests, you get it back in factory condition. All components are reset to the original equipment. So if you’ve put a lot of time and aUEC into better shields, coolers or weapons, that’s gone again after a claim.
Insuring your loadout
So that you don’t lose your equipment every time you get shot down, you can insure it. To do so, go to an ASOP terminal and choose Insure Loadout for your ship.
Here you’ll see your current loadout. Click Submit and your ship’s current state is saved.
If you claim your ship later, you can get it back with this insured loadout instead of the factory equipment. That costs quite a bit of aUEC, though. Exactly how much depends on the installed components.
If you’re ever short on money to pick up your insured ship, you can temporarily claim your default loadout instead. When you have more money later, you can get the previously saved state back. Just don’t use Insure Loadout in between, so you don’t overwrite it!
Insurance
The section above already says everything about the current state of ship insurance. Every ship behaves the same, no matter how you got it (except by theft or robbery). But what do all the insurance tiers and their duration mean? What is LTI? I can only answer these questions in theory.
Outlook
At CitizenCon 2024, we were shown how insurance is supposed to work after the game’s release.
Insurance duration
Ships you buy with real money come with insurance of a certain duration on top of the ship. As soon as that (real) time runs out, your ship loses its insurance coverage. Starter ships have an insurance duration between six and 24 months, depending on the offer. Warbond packages usually have the longest duration. These days, offers with Lifetime Insurance (LTI) are rare. Those ships have insurance that will never expire.
If you buy a ship in-game, it’ll be uninsured at first until you pay for insurance. CIG hasn’t announced anything yet about the cost and duration of in-game insurance like that.
If you’ve improved your ship with a ship upgrade in the store, all parts of the original package are kept. Besides the game itself and any equipment and skins, that also applies to the insurance. So if you have a small, cheap ship with LTI, you can upgrade it to a bigger ship and keep your insurance.
Insurance tiers
Insurance will come in three tiers that also cover different things. The tiers are similar to car insurance: liability, partial cover and comprehensive cover, with the difference that it always pays out, no matter who’s responsible for the damage.
What do the different tiers cover?
| Tier | Coverage |
|---|---|
| Tier 1 | Ship hull and the stock components. |
| Tier 2 | The same as tier 1, plus any additional or upgraded components you’ve installed. |
| Tier 3 | In addition to tier 2, all your ship’s decorations are insured too. |
Every ship you buy comes with tier 1 insurance by default. So if you want to fit your fighter with new shields and repeaters, you should also consider a higher insurance tier to cover those components.
Insurance and warranty
If your ship is destroyed, you won’t be able to get it back as easily as you can today. All insurance will only pay you your ship’s current value in UEC. Then you’ll first have to fly to your ship dealer of choice.
But what about the ships bought with real money? So that players don’t lose their ships, CIG wants to introduce a warranty in addition to insurance. Every ship you buy automatically gets a lifetime warranty, no matter what insurance it has. If your ship has this warranty and active insurance, you don’t get your money back, you get the whole ship back.
That doesn’t work without active insurance, but the warranty still remains. If a ship without insurance but with a warranty is destroyed, you first have to reactivate the insurance and possibly pay higher costs for it. After that, though, you get your ship back.
That makes the warranty more important than the insurance, and it comes with every ship you buy for life. It’s also supposed to be possible to earn more warranties in the game, but more precise information on how that will work is still missing.