Deleting stolen ships is a good plan. There are WAY WAY too many exploits with ship stealing, insurance, or any asset recovery mechanism. Other games only deal with this problem by having 100% of all ships destroyed when you lose a fight. THEN and only then there is a payout. Stealing ships can aid in committing crimes in another's ship without being traced back to the pilot. You then ditch the ship or scrap it to avoid a trail leading to you, the pilot. Scrub a ship ID as a requirement to temporarily using the ship in a crime in UEE space so it's not flagged as stolen for a little bit. THERE IS ONE OTHER SOLUTION: Players have to SELL their stolen ships to NPC run Chop-shops. These would be a sort of 'Production Node' for criminal syndicates. These production nodes would dismantle ships and sell the parts on NPC driven markets in syndicate controlled territory. You'd be buying from various NPC cartels and syndicates which operate said chop-shops. Prices would be more variable, run much higher than UEE space for parts in good condition, and ONLY once stuff passes through these chop-shops do they become usable through being purchased. Players can smuggle in legit goods from UEE space to undercut the prices from the Cartels or offer newer or items in better repair. the cartels would not appreciate this and would try to intercept, destroy etc. This would open up a lot of missions to smuggle stuff in, move stuff around or stop stuff from coming in. If a player keeps a ship when they log off, the cartels 'seize' said ship and do not have to compensate the player they take it from. This works with the games predefined ways of handling Production nodes, by blocking players from supplying completed components but can only facilitate production nodes. Thus CIG can have this exploit-preventing mechanic without compromising on the 'lore' of the economy. Players can always use a stolen ship, commit a new crime using the stolen ship, and ditch the ship if they are nowhere near a chop-shop. Logging off effectively ditches the ship, depending on where you log off. Scuttling a ship via logging off or self-destruct would also seed wrecks for the salvage part of the game. Edit: For people thinking I'm proposing CIG delete ships.. I'm not. CIG HAS SAID THEY WILL DELETE stolen ships. http://www.pcgamer.com/if-you-steal-a-ship-in-star-citizen-it-will-disappear-when-you-log-out-of-the-game/ A guy here has expanded on some details and it's a good read: @TheronShan https://robertsspaceindustries.com/spectrum/community/SC/forum/61894/thread/compromise-to-the-ship-theft-issue-the-ship-fence-