Yeah, even the original price-range for ships was a little crazy. Im pretty sure all of my ships came via early bitcoin mining, 2012-2014 probably, while it was still fairly unknown, so never really felt the same as money earnt working etc, it was kinda like play money.
I first heard about it as a news story over on bit-tech, taking about it hitting around $60m raised or something like that, and thought it was obscene and crazy what idiots spend money on. Less than a month later a mate mentioned it, and my response was "i dont do space". Never liked it, not in films, tv, games, nothing except for Red Dwarf & Star Wars. However what pulled me in was they were doing something other developers had just stopped doing, which was being ambitious and shooting for the stars, having a vision of something that felt meaningful. It'd been something that i strongly disliked, and things have only got worse (sequels/iterations of the same game).
So i bought an Aurora LN, "... and nothing else", 2-3wks later i had a Starfarer, a month later i bought $500 credit to eventually buy a Retaliator and BMM, then the 3rd wave of concept ships came out and the Reclaimer was everything i loved. Big, Ugly, Industrial. It just went on from there. Nothing crazy after that, just basically trying to exploit the system CIG set up to exploit its backers, and use it to my advantage etc.
Sadly i think my mates Carrack will be too big for us, too. We did buy a handful of aUEC ships before the wipe and the Redeemer was one i liked, but its role isnt something we're interested in. I really wish CIG hadnt drifted so far away from ships which had variants for different roles, like the Cutlass, Freelancer, Reliant etc. It feels like cargo & combat are the only roles where theres a variety of sizes & styles, to suit what you're looking for. We both like the Raft & Mole, although both wish the Mole interior was what the Raft has, its so similar but just done FAR better.
I've had the Saitek x55 for about 6-7yrs now and its spent the last 5yrs collecting dust. Even made custom aluminium plate mounting plates to mount it onto the Obutto cockpit, but now thats disassembled and im midway through building a new desk area. I bought the rig for sim racing & SC, and barely touched either in the last 6yrs, and it stopped making sense. The whole setup would have been perfect for SC, too. I could get kb, mouse, HOTAS and racing wheel, all mounted at the same time and useable, so i'd have had fps, flight & driving all somewhat optimal or close to realistic. Havent given a thought to whether theres somewhere comfortable to mount the HOTAS in the new setup. I did enjoy using it though, and while ive never been bothered about being the one flying, its ended up being the role ive done and its been fun, just never feel like its worth figuring out the HOTAS button map cos we barely play it and back then things used to change frequently, dunno about these days.
Its either going to need brilliantly done NPC characters who'll crew our ships, or more likely we're gonna have to assimilate into some generic SC guild/org and hope its a positive experience.
