Official PSA Regarding Melting for LTI and a General Guide to Melting and Upgrading

[Chimaera]

Following many different questions on TS and posts related to LTI and melting, I have decided to make this PSA and Guide in order to help members of SCB understand the process, how it works, and the pitfalls people can fall into when doing melts. So first, here's the main PSA.

I caution EVERYONE to BE CAREFUL when melting their ships. Remember that the upgrade to LTI via the Archimedes or any other stand-alone is NOT a package, and in order for you to be able to continue with the game, you need to have a package. As of right now, there are NO PACKAGES available on RSI with LTI that are less $1000, and MANY of those packages DO NOT INCLUDE SQ42 + PU Access. If you have a SQ42 and/or PU Access package with a ship and you choose to melt your PACKAGE, when you upgrade to whatever ship you choose, you WILL NOT have your package and package perks anymore.

 

So, with that out of the way, here's the Guide/FAQ for Melts/Unmelts. If there are any insights that I might have missed that others wish to have in this thread, please mention me in a comment below using the "@mention" function.

 

Q: How do I melt a ship?

A: Each ship or item you have on RSI that is "meltable" has a button on their profile that's shown in the image below. Once you click that button, a warning page will appear that requires you to confirm the melt request, add in your password, and it then melts the ship. Once that happens, you will receive an email stating that you have reclaimed a pledge.

Figure 1:

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

Q: If I melt a ship, can I get it back?

A: Yes you can. There's a section on your hangar page called "Buyback Pledges". You can purchase back with cash/credit cards unlimited times, but you're restricted in how often you can use Store Credit.

 

Q: Can unmelted ships be gifted?

A: Only if purchased with cash/credit card, NOT with Store Credit.

 

Q: When I melt a package to upgrade the ship to a LTI ship, do I keep the package perks?

A: As stated in the PSA above, no. When you melt a package, it and all the perks are also melted. Depending on when you purchased the package, you will probably see you have some leftover money from the transaction once you upgraded from a LTI Stand-alone to the ship you want to have as a LTI ship.

 

Q: Is there any way to turn a package that isn't LTI into a package with LTI?

A: No. The only way to melt packages and get an LTI package is to melt over $1000 worth of ships and packages and purchase one of the +$1000 packages on the RSI pledge site. So in this way, if you want to turn a 6-month insurance Freelancer package into an LTI Freelancer package, this is not possible.

 

Q: I have decided I want to melt my ship and purchase upgrades to a ship to get LTI. How do I do this?

A: This is a multi-step process. Assuming you have melted a ship using the button pointed out above, you must follow these steps.

 

Step 1: Click on the upgrades section of the RSI pledge store page as indicated by the top arrow in the graphic below.

Step 2: Select your ship you wish to be the BASE ship with which to be upgraded FROM in the section indicated by the left-middle arrow in the graphic below. (Note: This will have a list of all of your PLEDGE SHIPS including those within packages. The BASE SHIP INSURANCE will STAY with that ship.)

Step 3: Select the ship you wish to upgrade the FROM ship TO as indicated in right-side arrow on the graphic below. (Note: This will have a list of STAND ALONE ships available within the store. It WILL NOT include ALL RSI-available ships unless a sale happens to be going on at the time. THE BASE INSURANCE OF THE "TO" (The Vanguard) SHIP DOES NOT OVER-RIDE THE "FROM" (The P72) SHIP.)

Step 4: You will see the total cost of the upgrade below the "From" and "To" Sections and you can purchase that upgrade using the "Buy Now" button as indicated in the bottom arrow in the graphic below.

Figure 2:

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

Q: Once I buy the upgrade, does it automatically apply the upgrade to the ship I chose?

A: No, it does not. Instead it puts an upgrade inside of your hangar that you will then need to apply to the ship in your hangar.

 

Q: If I buy an upgrade like the P72-Vanguard Warden shown above, can I use it with a different ship, like an Aurora?

A: No, you cannot. If you do not use the P72, or if you give away your P72, you will be unable to use the upgrade until you get a P72 into your hangar again.

 

Q: How do I apply the upgrade?

A: You select the upgrade in your hangar and click on the "Apply Upgrade" button as shown in the graphic below. Once you have done that, an upgrade screen will show in which you select the ship you wish to upgrade. Once you have selected the ship you then apply the upgrade.  (Note: If you have multiple ships in the hangar of the same type, you will see MULTIPLE ships available to upgrade from, INCLUDING ships inside of packages, so be very careful that you're upgrading the CORRECT ship.)

Figure 3:

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

Q: Okay, I have applied the upgrade, but I don't see it in my hangar! What's wrong?

A: Keep calm and look at the ship you upgraded from. You will see that it shows a default icon, but under the title it has the term "UPGRADED" and has a funky looking computer chip icon next to the name. When you expand the actual ship or package itself, it will show the correct ship, as indicated in the image below.

Figure 4:

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

Q: So I have applied the upgrade and I see that I have the proper ship or package and it has LTI. If I melt that ship, will it give me the full amount of my pledge?

A: Yes. Even though you'll see the default image, when you melt the pledge, the FULL AMOUNT PAID to CIG will be refunded. (Note: If you purchased from the Grey Market, you will only receive the CIG-set price that was paid for the ship or package.) However, if you wish to unmelt the ship or package, the BASE SHIP ONLY will be available for unmelt, not the ship + the upgrade. So to use the example above, if you melted the Vanguard that came out of the P72, you could only get the P72 back.

 

Q: I bought/got/won an AMD "Never Settle" Edition, and upgraded it, but when I go to melt the package it only shows me the upgrade price, why is that?

A: Despite the actual "code" having a value of "$60" on the RSI codes page, the total value of that ship in the RSI store is $0.

 

Q: If I want to melt and buy a ship, then upgrade to another ship, am I actually losing money?

A: No. If you refer to Steps 2, 3, and 4 in Figure 2 you will notice that there are MSRP amounts in the "From" and "To" images. The final cost of the upgrade is the DIFFERENCE in price from what you would have paid CIG. Once again, this will be the CIG-listed price, not the price you may have paid if you purchased something or were gifted something that wasn't paid full price for.

 

Q: I was gifted a ship that has a MSRP of $350, but when I try to melt it, it's showing that I will only get $280. Why is that?

A: Most likely the ship you were gifted was purchased with a Discount Coupon. Remember, the FULL AMOUNT PAID to CIG is what the system will read, and that is all.

 

Q: Is there any way to "game the system"?

A: As of right now, it appears that the only way to "game the system" is in relation to the Armada Pack and some of the Original/Veteran Backer ships and packages. Because the upgrade system has a set MSRP for the ships based on the hull, the OB/VB ships and packages will show as worth their CURRENT MSRP, not their "price at purchase". As such, with my $250 VB Retaliator, I can CCU that and it gives me $275 toward something like, say, a Caterpillar.

 

I hope this has been helpful, and if you have any further questions you wish to add to this guide, follow what I stated at the beginning and post them below.

[HarlequinJester]

This was so incredibly helpful! Thank you for posting this

[Nossa]

So if I melt my Freelancer dur and upgrade the p-72... will i keep my aeroview hanger? or is it just the ship that is upgraded? 

[Chimaera]

As it says in the guide, once you melt something it's like the item no longer exists. Once you buy the base Archimedes and upgrade, the only thing upgraded is the ship itself, so if the Archimedes only has Self-Land, or if it doesn't even have a hangar, then your upgraded ship will have the hangar that the Archimedes came with. 

[Nossa]

55 minutes ago, Chimaera said:

As it says in the guide, once you melt something it's like the item no longer exists. Once you buy the base Archimedes and upgrade, the only thing upgraded is the ship itself, so if the Archimedes only has Self-Land, or if it doesn't even have a hangar, then your upgraded ship will have the hangar that the Archimedes came with. 

cheers....and damn:P

[NewzyOne]

Hiya, 

On 11/27/2015, 3:32:28, Chimaera said:

As it says in the guide, once you melt something it's like the item no longer exists. Once you buy the base Archimedes and upgrade, the only thing upgraded is the ship itself, so if the Archimedes only has Self-Land, or if it doesn't even have a hangar, then your upgraded ship will have the hangar that the Archimedes came with. 

This is often how people think of it, but it's not quite true.. fortunately. If you buy a P72 and upgrade to a Freelancer, your account gets the Aeroview. If you upgrade it to a Sabre or Cutlass, you get the VFG.

Here's a thing I wrote on Reddit about it. So far everything I've seen has pointed to this being correct. Happy to modify if someone can show evidence of it working differently:

I've seen some confusion with hangars lately.. so this is for those that are new to CCU'ing ships and packages.
Firstly, with hangars at the moment, it works in a top-down tiered approach. If you have the VFG industrial asteroid hangar, you get all "lesser" hangars, which is all of them. If you have the Aeroview, you get the Aeroview and the Selfland (because it's "smaller" or "lower tiered" than the Aeroview).
The tiers are:
    4. VFG Industrial (highest tier)
    3. Revel & York
    2. Aeroview
    1. Selfland (lowest tier)
And the TL;DR is that it comes down to this: there's a hangar listed in the initially purchased game package/standalone, and there's an unlisted one bound to the ship at the end of the CCU chain... and you get access to the highest-tiered one out of those two, and all the hangars in the lesser tiers below it.
Here's some examples:
PACKAGES:
With "Packages" you kinda get two hangars - the one that's bound (and listed) with the Package contents, and the one that's bound (and unlisted) with the ship. When you CCU the ship, you get the new hangar that's normally bound to the new ship, plus you still have the hangar that's listed in your Package. Your account has access to the highest tiered hangar of those two, and all the hangars that are lower than it.
eg. if you CCU an Aurora Package up to a Constellation Package, you'll have access to the Revel & York Hangar, even though the package lists only the Selfland, and you'd also have access to all the lower tiered hangars (Aeroview and Selfland) but not the VFG since it's a higher tier than the Revel & York.
STANDALONE SHIPS THAT LIST THE HANGAR:
With standalone ships, there's two styles of how this works. Some/Most standalone ships list their hangar as part of their contents, and these standalones work the same way as packages listed above in terms of CCUs (in that you kinda get two hangars) - if you CCU to a ship with a lower-tiered hangar, you'd have access to the higher hangar between the listed one in the contents, and the one that's bound to the new CCU'd ship if it were in a package.
eg. if you CCU a Khartu-Al standalone, which has the Revel & York listed, to a Freelancer MIS you would keep the Revel & York (and thus all other lower tiered hangars) as it's specifically listed in the standalone contents, even though the MIS only normally has the Aeroview. If you then CCU the MIS to a Starfarer, you'd get the VFG Industrial hangar (and thus every other hangar) because the Starfarers come with a bound VFG, even though the contents only lists the Revel & York.
STANDALONE SHIPS THAT DON'T LIST A HANGAR:
Some standalones don't specifically list the hangar with the ship and with those, there's an invisible/unlisted hangar bound to the ship - the one that you would've had if you purchased this ship as a package. When you CCU these, you get the new hangar that would've been bound to the ship if it were a package.
eg if you have a Hull A Standalone , which comes with an unlisted Aeroview(? so I've read) hangar, and CCU it to a Cutlass, you'd get the VFG hangar (and thus all the other hangars) because the Cutlasses get the VFG in their package. If you then CCU'd the Cutlass to a Freelancer, you'd lose the VFG and just have the Aeroview (and thus the Selfland) because the Freelancers only have the Aeroview.. and no other hangar is specifically listed in the contents.
Hope that makes sense!
If you want all hangars during alpha/beta then it's pretty simple - just buy a Cutlass black standalone or CCU any spare ship up to a Cutlass Black. Ba-da-bing, VFG hangar. If you don't want it for the PU, then melt it just before launch and buy something else with the credit.
If you have any corrections, please advise

[Chimaera]

I can neither confirm or refute what you're putting here Newzyone, as I don't have an account to test it with. I am surprised this exists, though, and I wonder if it's intentional or an unintentional bug from the upgrade system. Can anyone confirm this?

[Chimaera]

Updated this, and still have not been able to confirm the "hangar" glitch above.

[Grizzlyb]

So, lets say I have an €35 Aurora LN with SQ42 and SC, and want to keep this.

Also I bought a €99 Gladius but want to drop this one cause I want to start SC with ingame trading and not combat.

Also I have a Dragonfly with LTI that I want to transfer to the new ship.

When I want to buy a €154 Freelancer Max, do I first (on the Gladius) go to the button "exchange for store credits" to get store credits, (is that melting for ccu)  

And than upgrade the Dragonfly LTI to the Freelancer with the extra store credits (and some real dollars extra)

Would that route get me a Freelancer Max with LTI ? dangers? wrong route?

[Bench70]

If a melt a new concept ship now as rsi apollo for example, could i buy back next month or later with a token? Also if they not sell it again on site?

[Chimaera]

@Bench70 when you melt a ship, it goes into your buybacks forever (for now).  Using real money (cash or credit card) you can buy it back anytime. If  you want to use store credit, though, you need to make sure you have a buyback for store credit token. You get one of those every 3 months or so. You should have one right now. You would see a box that looks like this:

You never get more than one of these.