In message: [email removed] Bertil Jonell writes:
>
>Richard Johnson writes:
>> The insurance underwriter does not want to pay for a starship
>> that he (or she) cannot *guarantee* really was destroyed. This
>> is hard to prove when communication is so poor.
>
>Report on Damage: "Dear Hortalez-et-cie, Last wonday when my Free Trader
>"Noisy Roamer" was parked on Regni starport, Regina/Spinward, It suddenly
>was attacked by a large vicious building owned by the Regni Starport
>Authority...."
>
>If the ship is big and valuable (name a ship that isn't :) the underwriter
>would probably send out an investigation team to the site of the accident to
>inspect the wreckage. (This is a great opportunity for adventures: The
>underwriter is the Patron and the PC's the ones who are going to do the more-
>or-less-covert investigation of a suspected MultiMegaCred insurance scam.)
Hey, if someone told me that their ship had been attacked by a
*building*, I'd be suspicious too. :-) Really, I think it would
tend to depend on what *type* of ship was involved. An armed merchant
would, I think, have a somewhat lower premium than an unarmed one,
conditions being what they are these days, since it would be able to
fight back, and thus provide a deterrent to attack by Var...ah,
pirates... :-)
At the same time, the insurance problem is probably having at least
as much of an effect on interstellar commerce as, ah, the "current
unpleasantness." The underwriters have probably marked off large sections
of territory as "too dangerous; go there and void your policy." A
prudent Captain just won't go there, since he can't afford to lose his
current underwriting. Why? Well, insurance policies usually have ceilings
on how high the premiums can go, so most of the existing policies (at
least, those that predate the assassination) are probably running at
bargain-basement rates (at least, by current standards). If a Captain
loses one of these policies, he would have two problems: 1) the new rates
for a new policy would be enough higher than his old one that they would
seriously impact his revenues (perhaps enough to slowly bankrupt a free
merchant on a marginal route), and 2) he obviosly did something dangerous
(like going into the wrong subsector) or some such thing to convince his
old underwriter to terminate his policy. It's going to be *very*
difficult for him to find a new underwriter under those circumstances,
and give an added boost to his new rates if he does manage to find one.
>Two additional questions:
>How much of the total value would the underwriter pay?
In most cases I'm sure they would pay the current market value of
the ship. That's what happened to me when my old car got totalled--I
received the current cost of my old car (an '80 Mustang). I had to add
some of my own money to that to get a new car (well, newER).
That would be a problem--the ex-owner would need a new loan to
get a replacement ship, in a lot of cases (I'm sure used ships are
selling at a premium, these days). Unfortunately, losing your old
one would tend to make you a poor risk...
>These Scoutships... Any ideas on iiss policy regaring ex-scouts crashing
>scoutships?
Depends on what else gets wrecked in the crash. The ships that are
released to detached duty are getting near the end of their service
lives in the first place. If just the ship is wrecked, I think the IISS
would tend to say, "Oh well. Write the ship off." However, if there was
a substantial amount of property damage as well (like, say, crashing into
a fuel tank farm sited next to a residential area) as possible loss of
life, the IISS would throw the ex-Scout to the local wolves as well as
slapping him with a massive lien themselves.
- --
Brent
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