I'm pretty sure they have yet to outline any sort of realistic plan for how much ships will cost with your in-game earned credits.
They actually have been setting prices on ships in the PU for purposes of buying and (eventually) renting. Obviously these prices are very much subject to change though as the economy evolves from the very primitive state that it's currently in.
And no, there is no reason for a high end ship to be out of reach for the average player...unless they pay money for it. That's not how any of this should work. Any and every ship should have a realistic pathway to ownership.
There actually is a reason for the very high end ships to be out of reach for the average player; they're not meant to be run by your average player in the first place. Some of the ships are very much group/org focused. A Javelin, for instance, will be obscenely expensive in game. It isn't a ship that your average player would buy though, because it's designed to be run by large groups. Groups that'd have pooled their resources to have obtained it.
SC isn't a solo game, and not all prices need to reflect what makes sense for a single person. Sure a single player
could do it, if they spent a ton of time grinding for that sole purpose, but then they wouldn't even be able to run it without spending another fortune paying NPCs to man the ship. It's not like the average person would find it any easier to buy it with real life money though, seeing as how it's both limited in quanitity and extremely expensive in cash as well. Some ships are just expensive no matter how you cut it, and that's fine. In the end, ships designed for solo play will be obtainable by solo players. Ships designed for group play will be obtainable by groups.
Seems like a lot of people have a lot of ships. Maybe just walk around asking people to borrow theirs lol. Can't fly them all at once!
Sure, you could borrow a friend's ship. Else you could join an org and play as a crew member on a larger ship and share in the profits. The larger ships, as mentioned above, are designed with the intent of many people working towards a common goal on a single ship.
How much did that cost you? Did you sell your previous ships to buy new ones?
He said upgrading, so that'd imply CCUing the existing ship to a new one. Meanwhile the cost to go from an Aurora to an Avenger Titan is at most $30, which would put the entire package around the cost of a modern AAA game. If you spent half as much time researching anything about the game instead of shitposting on threads for it, you'd know all of this and wouldn't have to ask. But please, keep being "concerned" about how people spend their own money. Would you like to know how much they spent on their lunch today? Or how about how much it cost to fill up their vehicle last?
I have an Aurora and this seems so wrong that people have access to much better ships right away from the start of the game without any in-game effort?
How is this different from current micro transaction system, especially when such nicely detailed and *functional* ships are showcased which greatly affect game play?
Feel disappointed.
It's an MMO. MMOs are ultimately never fair with people on equal footing. A person coming to the game later is going to be at a disadvantage to those that came ahead of them. A person that plays for the first time on day one will be disadvantaged compared to a person that had played in the alpha/beta period and knew exactly what to do and has inside knowledge of efficient ways to make money that aren't publicized on the internet. A person with a lot of friends / contacts in game is going to have an advantage over somebody that plays solo. A person that can play a dozen hours a day is going to have an advantage over a person that can only play a couple. All SC will have done is added money as yet another factor in the myriad of statistical inequalities.
The only things that matter in the end for an MMO are progression (so none of the above inequalities prevent it) and balance within the systems of the game (so the above inequalities don't unduly punish those with a disadvantage). Who has an advantage at day one will matter very little years down the road as power ebbs and flows with regards to all of the above. In the end, if you're concerned with equality, you'll have to stick to e-sports type games.
All that said, these replies are rather diverging from the point of the thread, so this'll be my last post on them.