Elite Dangerous Crime: Fines, Bounties and Notoriety

[marelooke]

One thing I found confusing and I'm sure a new player would has well:

When a bounty can't be paid at the station in Odyssey the bounty simply does not appear. It shows "No Bounties". The first few times that happened I had no clue what was going on. The transaction tab showed I have one but the station insists I don't. That really should appear and be greyed out with a message as to WHY you can't pay that bounty there, hand yourself in or pay the IF to clear things up. When caused by notoriety its made clear but not when caused by the faction being present in or very near the system.

The ship and Odyssey UI also get out-of-sync, I think, where it'll show 70k fine in station Transaction window and 140k in Ship Status dialog as "Galaxy-wide fine", until a relog, then they were both 70k... Took me a second to realize it's probably a bug and not some weird split between "ship" and "on foot" fines. I thought I had 210k outstanding for a while... Or maybe they are separate after all and I somehow have 140k outstanding. I'm honestly not sure any more.

Additionally, as a new player, I most of the time don't even know what I did to get fined in the first place. I did fail a (Odyssey Salvage) mission (because it didn't tell me that I might need an e-hack), did that result in a 70k fine? I guess so, hard to know for sure. Rather ridiculously steep for the measly reward associated with that mission if so...
Maybe it's because of speeding? Are there fines for that? Might be handy if the autopilot sticks to the speed limits as well if there are...

 

[Screemonster]

I did fail a (Odyssey Salvage) mission (because it didn't tell me that I might need an e-hack), did that result in a 70k fine?

Yeah, if you fail a mission that involves retrieving or delivering an item, you get fined double the value of the item regardless of whether you obtained it or not.

This doesn't apply to missions where you have to steal the thing in question, such as heists, shutdowns, downloads, theft and so on - this can be a way to get settlement defence plans, as they'll appear as the mission target and once you've obtained them you can just cancel the mission and keep the stolen plans for yourself.

 

[Jack Winter]

There definitely is a bug in some areas of the game where various things don't get updated properly without a relog. To be honest in spite of having become a career criminal and murderer, I'm not entirely sure how fines and bounties work, but it can happen that you need to relog in order to be able to pay it all off. Another area it can happen is when you buy from a fleet carrier and your cargo hold is empty unless you reenter the buying menu or relog. This can be exploited in as much as you can travel with an empty cargo hold and when you reach your final destination you relog and sell the cargo.

 

[T'kael]

The conditions under which fines and bounties are converted into superpower bounties are unclear also (at least to me). Does anyone have insight on the conditions under which this currently occurs?

 

[Jmanis]

The conditions under which fines and bounties are converted into superpower bounties are unclear also (at least to me). Does anyone have insight on the conditions under which this currently occurs?

Bugged AF, like a good deal of current C&P generally.

What is *meant * to happen is if you either accrue:

• x value of bounty[1]; or
• y number of bounties in different minor faction jurisdictions[1]

... within the same superpower jurisdiction, it's supposed to give you a superpower bounty. However, last i checked this:

- it doesn't seem coupled to value of the bounty... I've had upwards of 50m in bounty not convert to a superpower bounty, but a minor indiscretion in a new jurisdiction go straight to a superpower bounty. I know this wasn't based on # of bounties because...

- It doesn't seem to count per- jurisdiction... rather, it just has a global count (or something). Most of my ships have a half- dozen bounties in rando Indy/ federal jurisdictions, because they simply don't impact me. But on one particular occasion, i ran an illegal mission against the Empire, accruing a small 1000cr bounty. That was my only Imperial transgression, and it instantly went to a superpower bounty, presumably because i had a dozen or so outstanding jurisdictions of warrant... but none were Imperial.

I suspect the latter is possibly related to the bug where station voiceovers take their tone from your Federal superpower rep rather than the ownership of the station... to be explicit, if you have hostile Federal superpower rep, and Allied Imperial rep, and go to an Imperial station, you'll get a voiceover like "you're not welcome here", even though you can dock and happily land without issue. I checked this a while back but was definitely a thing.


[1] I'm not in a position to get the exact text from the codex right now.

 

[Titler]

Just dipped into ED to help a friend this weekend; and wanted to just leave a note stating this system is still as hateful and anti-player as ever, and one of the reasons why, even before Odyssey, FDev managed to butcher much of the good will held outside of the heavily obsessive and invested die-hards...

I want to help fight a guild of nasty bullies and help a major other player faction shove them out of the local space where my friend's player faction is; no names, but I deliberately take Notoriety to undermine the control of bully faction by killing npcs. They get pushed into war, which I fight for our friends. We win, huzzah. And I now have 8 Notoriety... or 16 hours of idling in game, for maybe 10 kills of npcs. Disgusting, but so far, so FDev designing for the lifeless obsessives. Ok, but who cares about trading in the bullies system anyway, everyone hates bullies...

Trying to find somewhere to trade in our friends nearby systems though, I pick up a single Trespassing Fine of 400cr (I think it was). No problem, just pay that off right?

Except you now can't pay fines if you have Notoriety, and that's global. Including at Interstaller Factors. So I can't trade in any of that factions systems, because all their stations are stuck Anonymous to me.

Get blown up and have it reset, yes? But Fines aren't reset. You have to pay them off, and now you can't.

Get blown up to remove notoriety and then pay the fine? That no longer works either, it just removes the Bounty for the faction that spots and holds your Bounty, but not the Notoriety. And I don't have a bounty with my friends. When they scan me, they just see a Fine and don't react.

Take a bounty with the friends and then get blown up? That might be a way forward to at least allow access to their station services again. Which makes a mockery of the justice system, because I have to become a criminal just to pay a fine?

Awful, awful system.

 

[varonica]

but I deliberately take Notoriety to undermine the control of bully faction by killing npcs.

NPC's are people to.........you get punished for it. Seems to be working as intended.

I want to help fight a guild of nasty bullies and help a major other player faction shove them out of the local space where my friend's player faction is

You claim they are bullies, but surely you are for pushing them out and killing NPC's, the ends doesn't justify the means, I think that's clear from Star Trek.

Anyway we all sign up for C&P, you knew it would happen but you still did it! It wouldn't be punishment if it was ludicrously easy to remove.

 

[Screemonster]

NPC's are people to.........you get punished for it. Seems to be working as intended.



You claim they are bullies, but surely you are for pushing them out and killing NPC's, the ends doesn't justify the means, I think that's clear from Star Trek.

Anyway we all sign up for C&P, you knew it would happen but you still did it! It wouldn't be punishment if it was ludicrously easy to remove.

The issue isn't the notoriety or the bounty for killing the faction he was after.

The issue was the completely undocumented change upon the launch of odyssey that made it so you can't pay fines when you have notoriety, and thanks to the usual nonsense with the issue tracker we have absolutely no idea whether this is a bug, an oversight, or a deliberate change.

Whatever we signed up for, none of us signed up for gamebreaking bugs.

 

[Wullail]

The issue isn't the notoriety or the bounty for killing the faction he was after.

The issue was the completely undocumented change upon the launch of odyssey that made it so you can't pay fines when you have notoriety, and thanks to the usual nonsense with the issue tracker we have absolutely no idea whether this is a bug, an oversight, or a deliberate change.

Whatever we signed up for, none of us signed up for gamebreaking bugs.

No. You are warned that you can't pay fines if you have noteriety.

It was stated this was intended when the change was made to the C&P system.

Working as intended.

 

[Wullail]

Just dipped into ED to help a friend this weekend; and wanted to just leave a note stating this system is still as hateful and anti-player as ever, and one of the reasons why, even before Odyssey, FDev managed to butcher much of the good will held outside of the heavily obsessive and invested die-hards...

I want to help fight a guild of nasty bullies and help a major other player faction shove them out of the local space where my friend's player faction is; no names, but I deliberately take Notoriety to undermine the control of bully faction by killing npcs. They get pushed into war, which I fight for our friends. We win, huzzah. And I now have 8 Notoriety... or 16 hours of idling in game, for maybe 10 kills of npcs. Disgusting, but so far, so FDev designing for the lifeless obsessives. Ok, but who cares about trading in the bullies system anyway, everyone hates bullies...

Trying to find somewhere to trade in our friends nearby systems though, I pick up a single Trespassing Fine of 400cr (I think it was). No problem, just pay that off right?

Except you now can't pay fines if you have Notoriety, and that's global. Including at Interstaller Factors. So I can't trade in any of that factions systems, because all their stations are stuck Anonymous to me.

Get blown up and have it reset, yes? But Fines aren't reset. You have to pay them off, and now you can't.

Get blown up to remove notoriety and then pay the fine? That no longer works either, it just removes the Bounty for the faction that spots and holds your Bounty, but not the Notoriety. And I don't have a bounty with my friends. When they scan me, they just see a Fine and don't react.

Take a bounty with the friends and then get blown up? That might be a way forward to at least allow access to their station services again. Which makes a mockery of the justice system, because I have to become a criminal just to pay a fine?

Awful, awful system.

There are so many other ways to work the BGS, they take longer to run through and involve more work.

One of them would have taken several days to have the same effect but only given you negative effects with the faction you were trying to effect and zero noteriety.

You decided to take the easiest/fastest route to your intended result.

The easiest way of doing it has the hardest negative effects.

Stick to anarchy systems until the noteriety has been paid off, use carriers that allow people with noteriety to dock and repair etc.

There are people who play at noteriety 10 permanently.

 

[Screemonster]

No. You are warned that you can't pay fines if you have noteriety.

It was stated this was intended when the change was made to the C&P system.

Working as intended.

Stated where?

In-game not allowing it doesn't count. Show me the patch notes.

It appeared out of nowhere on odyssey's launch, was unchanged in Horizons (as in, before the legacy split, you could switch to horizons to clear your fines no matter how much notoriety you had) and is still unchanged in Legacy.

Even Sally's OP in this thread only refers to notoriety blocking bounties and says nothing about it affecting fines. It even specifically lists them as follows:

Commited a crime?

• Is it a fine? You can pay this off at a relevant social space terminal or ship station interface via the station security contact, using anonymous docking if in your own ship.
• Is it bounty? You can pay this off at a station hosting an Interstellar Factors service, after notoriety has worn off (if there is any) using your own ship, APEX taxi or being flown there as crew member

I don't see anything mentioning notoriety in the first bullet point, notoriety is specifically referred to in the post as applying to bounties.

 

[Apocalysse]

In the end notoriety is useless, dock your ship where you murder people without they scan you, hand yourself, you will be trasnfered in the near prison ship, all your fines / bounty will be cleared and you still got notoriety. Play like always because notoriety without fine / bounty is useless and no one will harm you or say you something about you having notoriety, even passenger mission where you have to do not commit crimes are fine with you having 8 of notoriety ... LOL

 

[St0rmFury]

In the end notoriety is useless, dock your ship where you murder people without they scan you, hand yourself, you will be trasnfered in the near prison ship, all your fines / bounty will be cleared and you still got notoriety. Play like always because notoriety without fine / bounty is useless and no one will harm you or say you something about you having notoriety, even passenger mission where you have to do not commit crimes are fine with you having 8 of notoriety ... LOL

I haven't done that before, but I've read around that there's an impound fee for your ship if you hand yourself in. And the impound fee is either same as insurance or full value of the ship. Could you confirm that?

 

[Apocalysse]

I haven't done that before, but I've read around that there's an impound fee for your ship if you hand yourself in. And the impound fee is either same as insurance or full value of the ship. Could you confirm that?

When you handle yourself the screen is the same as you got your ship destroyed or you get killed on foot, so you get the "Incident report", but you don't have the re-buy your ship because it isn't exploded (like on foot when someone kills you). So you don't have loss of anything like cartography or similar and you have only to pay all the fine / bounty on your head, nothing more.
The only drawback is: if you are using a pure PVE ship, your jump range maybe a bit short and having it in the prison ship at +80LY at where you were operating it could be a problem, so you have to use a taxi and them recall the ship, it's not a real issue however. ^^

 

[St0rmFury]

Ok, I guess the impound fee is something you have to deal with if you & your ship got destroyed while wanted.

 

[Jmanis]

Ok, I guess the impound fee is something you have to deal with if you & your ship got destroyed while wanted.

So, i don't know how the impound stuff works, but i definitely had to pay one when i handed myself in (i.e from the shipyard, not the rebuy screen)

 

[Fixitman]

When I returned last month, I'd forgotten most of what I previously learned about on-foot missions. Because of this, I initially accrued quite a few fines every time I tried to do those missions.

Upon landing at the station, I had limited access as expected. Both the local contacts and IF showed I didn't have any fines. I re-logged so I could pay my fines, and found that limited access and the fines both disappeared. I continued playing that way for the rest of the night, resetting the fines each time (I had no other choice).

The next day, I accrued a couple fines, and was able to pay them after a re-log. I didn't get any more fines for a week, and those worked normally. I still have to re-log to pay fines occasionally, but fines clearing on re-log hasn't returned.

There is obviously at least an intermittent issue with C&P. Like most ED bugs, I just find my own way around them whenever possible. Based on previous experience, the likelihood of most bugs being fixed is closed to zero.

 

[St0rmFury]

Eurgh, I think I'll just stick to lawful gameplay.

 

[Jmanis]

Eurgh, I think I'll just stick to lawful gameplay.

My biggest gripe is still not being able to pay fines when notorious like you used to be able to do.

Fines are nonviolent crimes, and become bounties anyway if you have a bounty history in the relevant jurisdiction.

Making it impossible to pay fines off when notorious without escalating them to bounties first makes them essentially no different to bounties and dilutes the difference.

& if you get a bounty which doesn't make you notorious (eg assault only) then finding an IF is no real impost compared to just paying a fine either.... it's just dumb.

 

[Chaparral]

Going forward, will C&P still use the notoriety and hot ship model (this seems to be diseased with bugs, and at the ship level work-arounds) or will there be a design level change in how crime and punishment is handled in EDO in future updates?