Ship repairs being too expensive?

[ArkanoiD]

Is it really OK that 20kg of platinum, ughm, collected in space, is not enough to cover expenses caused by a few laser hits, given no major ship subsystems were damaged beyond in-space repair? And if your MSE is hit, you instantly lose up to 40,000cr!

I remember in original Elite ship damage could only occur if you are really running out of energy, below 10% or so. And now every laser hit after the shield was exhausted burns a hole in my wallet.

And when you see a last Thargoid encounter costs you something like 10,000 credits or more, a 1,000cr navy reward looks like a mockery.

[ArkanoiD]

btw is there a way to remove a message from bb? i concatenated 2 but cannot kill second..

[winston]

Running away and licking your wounds before re-engagement usually makes battle cheaper.

[Odo987]

Is it really OK that 20kg of platinum, ughm, collected in space, is not enough to cover expenses caused by a few laser hits, given no major ship subsystems were damaged beyond in-space repair?

Theory #1:
It is not unreasonable to assume that current trends will hold and material costs become ever cheaper while labour is ever more expensive. Thus that 20kg of platinum isn't worth much compared with the hours and hours of time which those highly trained technicians have to spend to get banged-up ship of yours back to specs.

Theory #2:
When a ship blows up (and gosh, they seem to do that a lot when you are in the area, don't you find?) the insurance companies who sold the escape capsule to the victim have to pay for a whole new ship. They will sue anyone or anything which was in the area at the time of the "incident" if they think they can recover some of their losses. So in order to cover yourself, you always need certification to prove you were in good shape and that nothing fell off that flying box of bolts which could have contributed to the "incident". And it goes without saying you'll need to replace those perfectly good (but clearly used) laser emitters since your innocent-bystander report said nothing about being involved in a firefight.

Theory #3:
The repairs are actually quite cheap. But the lazy repair crews are notorious for just painting over cracks instead of welding them properly. Judging by the damage on your ship, they figure you're an accident waiting to happen, so in your case the quality of the repair doesn't make a lot of difference in the long run. That's why you've been forced to also pay for a contract to be taken out on the repair crew. They know that if you don't get to the next system, someone large will come looking for them. Mr Large's services don't come cheap.