Cloud Imperium Games makes sure you can’t keep the ships you steal in Star Citizen

Star Citizen is set to give players a class of freedom previously unseen in almost any title in the current market with a plethora of outlined mechanics at play. One of which allows you to steal the ships of other players, but as developer Cloud Imperium Games has revealed, you cannot keep the ships you forcefully take from others.

Stealing ships is not meant to be the first protocol by a player and as such, any ship that a player steals will disappear the moment the criminal party exits the game. This is done to promote the act as a “short-term goal,” according to system designer Will Maiden, and can even be sold for scrap, but should not be to build a person fleet through other players' hard work.

For the players who have their ships stolen, Star Citizen has an insurance system in place to ensure that their hard work never goes to waste, but this will come at a cost to the player. This system can be abused by the player to duplicate ships easily by orchestrating their ship to get stolen and then claiming on the insurance for a new one. Deleting the ships bypasses this problem, as well as keeping trolling via stealing to a minimum.

This isn't the only way that Cloud Imperium Games tried tackling the problem of theft and abusing the system. Previously, the developer had mentioned that each ship was equipped with a hull ID code. This code would be invalidated once theft had taken place, making it so that the criminal party cannot land that ship on any lawful planet without being chased down and selling the vehicle might prove a task in and of itself.

Of course, this new system is a little more ham-handed but it prevents a whole host of problems that come with the freedom to kill enemy players and steal their stuff. Just look at Grand Theft Auto Online and how players like to torture one another for reference.

KitGuru Says: This new system makes it infinitely more difficult to simulate the pirate lifestyle Star Citizen once optioned during its crowdfunding campaign, but in its place it preserves a whole selection of other roles it allows for. Do you think this is the right course of action or could it have been handled better?

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