Here is a suggestion: Your bounty ticket system is crap. Period.

[Redcon One]

I had today to myself for once. I spent all afternoon ranking up fed missions, bounty hunting, docking periodically to cash in so I wouldn't lose money in case i died(which is stupid its lost upon death). Well I got a huge rank progression mission where I had to kill a couple generals in elite conda's followed by some specific faction targets at USS. After about 90 minutes of non-stop fighting traveling around I had just over 850k worth of bounties in fed, 350k in empire saved up and mission was done. I head back to Boston to turn in and I request dock, I need a smoke im tired so I guess when I hurry requested I must have pressed 'd' one too few times and i locked on target instead of request docking and so I fly on in and get a tresspass..At first im like hmm no pad lights but since they are so glitchy anyways thats pretty normal. It still hasn't clicked that I am about to get blown up because the dock voice is always warning about getting blown up the little red message on the bottom always flashes randomly as I fly over other peoples pads. Suddenly I realize whats going on and I try to fly out with 8 seconds left, i hit the boost and im through to door, but I guess you have to be clear of the wire frame as well because at .02 i was outside but the 00 was still within the wire frame and the lasers started. Almost made it but nope. So I was out a million credits in bounty, because for some reason the bounty is stored on paper in my ship only then i was out the 100k to replace my ship, plus the 50k for my mission cargo i had picked up on the way home, plus the time will have run out on my mission by the time i made it back..

Anyone see a problem with this or am I just having a kraptastic day? Seriously make the dang bounties persistent. there is no reason they should be scribbled on tiny scraps of paper and saved in your ship to be destroyed when your ship gets blown up. Especially since you have KWS and can claim bounties galaxy wide!

The station thing is my bad i was tired...you really need to streamline the comms to make it easier or more accessible to quick key docking. Its rather un-intuitive as it is. Again though its my bad. All that would be no problem though if I had not lost all that bounty. For the record I just got my cobra and I had 180k to my name so 1m would have been by far the most money i've had in the game ever.

 

[Nothin_]

That's not the only ridiculously crappy thing about this game.
But i agree on that.
Let's see how long it takes for any mod to show up...
I suggest making the warning appear in bright colours ALL OVER your field of view. It makes sense that a threat to be killed is a bit more visible.
That's like police wispering "Hands up" instead of shouting.
That's like cops in a police car that trie to pull you over with hand gestures, instead of the light on top of their cars...

 

[Ian Phillips]

What do you want?

 

[Paul Kingtiger]

My understanding is it's a design decision, to balance bounty hunting.
If you just got the credits you could sit out their all day, killing things with no real death penalty (the bounties would easily cover the cost of replacing the ship).

With the voucher system you have to choose to push your luck or head back and cash in, which ramps up the penalty for death. Personally I think it's a good design, but I can see how it's frustrating.

 

[Nothin_]

What do you want?

I suggest making the warning appear in bright colours ALL OVER your field of view. It makes sense that a threat to be killed is a bit more visible.

And thanks for proving to me that the mods here are quite active.

And @ Redcon, as far as i know there's a module you can fit to your ship that transfers the bounty immediately if i recall correctly...
Does anyone know if that's true?

 

[schuesseled]

^ Ha.

Sorry to hear you got yourself killed mate, but thats kinda your fault.

 

[Redcon One]

No doubt at all its my fault. Indeed. My primary gripe is the bounty system and its inability to report your successful bounties to the proper authorities for future payouts. You can scan someone and run their record across the entire galaxy to check for bounties but you can't report claimed bounties? I understand needing to dock to receive the credits(visiting the local exchange and all) but really now...You have to go back to station to re-arm every so often anyways it just seems very silly to penalize someone who just had an extremely great run of luck catching some elite bad guys with 150k+ bounties and 10+ minute fights with each one in an under kitted cobra.

The dying part yeah..my fault again. Just wish the station warning was bigger I was buggered and didn't notice its just the loss of the huge bounty boils my blood.

 

[Iskariot]

I had some second thoughts about the bounty system too, and have said so on several occasions, but now I find it adds some cool tension to the life of a bounty hunter. I have once lost almost 200k bounty money when I died. It is a bummer, but would not want FD to change it anymore.
Tonight I had gathered just over 380k in bounty money and I knew I could lose it all because of one mistake (+ the insurance value of my ship). I like that tension.

 

[Kramster]

I had some second thoughts about the bounty system too, and have said so on several occasions, but now I find it adds some cool tension to the life of a bounty hunter. I have once lost almost 200k bounty money when I died. It is a bummer, but would not want FD to change it anymore.
Tonight I had gathered just over 380k in bounty money and I knew I could lose it all because of one mistake (+ the insurance value of my ship). I like that tension.

Yep, this is exactly why it was 'designed' the way it is.
It isn't laziness or bad planning by FD, they meant it to be this way.
The 'lore' type answer would probably be that your onboard computer records kill data and you have to have that data downloaded at a security office to claim the bounty...sort of like bounty hunters dropping off wanted criminals at the sheriffs office in the old cowboy films.

 

[Zephyriel]

I like the current system for the sense of risk it provides. At some point in beta or gamma they removed this, and I felt like I was cheating when I kept my bounty vouchers after death. It makes you more careful the more bounties you gather. The more risk you are willing to take, the more profit you can earn. I think it's an interesting system. Of course they could remove the voucher system entirely and just credit your account whenever you kill someone, but that would remove some of the stress that makes this game so gripping.

Nothin_ > The moderator was answering to the OP and not to you, so no need to quote yourself, and he wasn't proving anything since he was just writing this as a regular forum user. Mods are just regular players like us, they're allowed to discuss the game like us, you shouldn't point your finger at him for no reason.

 

[Dergar]

Why not just have an option to have it where it deposits the credits into your account after an hour or two of killing the target. The hardcore players can have there option of the voucher system for the risk.

 

[Dergholm]

I agree it is a crap system! I can upload data to the cloud today but in the year 3300 I cant..... I'm sick of getting a 200cr bounty because while I'm racking up some kills a fed eagle darts in front of my line of fire and 1 round hits it accidently. Then have all the fed ships open fire on me forcing me to get the hell out of dodge. I then have to fly to a station to get rid of this stupid 200cr bounty, but this particular time while docking, I get scanned and the bloody stations starts shooting away before I can land. So all because of idiot AI that flies into a stream of fire directed at someone else I lost about 100k in bounty and about 20k in Exploration data. The biggest joke is I can go back to a system I spent a painful amount of time scanning for exploration data just an hour earlier and have to do it all over again. Any Nav data or bounties should be uploaded to a "Personal Commander net" or some such thing any time you are in a system that has a station or outpost that you are at least of neutral standing to; also Authority Ships shouldn't declare you shoot on sight enemy until it is obvious you have intentionally broken the law. ie bounty in the thousands... The current system is just a cause for rage and disgust. I bought 3 copies of this for me and my kids expecting a lot better game play (especially multi-player). While it is graphically great and flying is immersive there seem to be many obvious and simple things overlooked or not bothered with at the moment. Maybe it was rushed for pre-christmas I don't know. But I'm sick of having to repeat things because of stupid unrealistic happenings.

 

[Kramster]

I agree it is a crap system! I can upload data to the cloud today but in the year 3300 I cant......

But the cloud isn't really a cloud it is a server connected to wires that deliver data.
Radio waves travel at or below the speed of light and have no way of attaching a jump drive to them. Even if you are only 1LY away from the security office you will probably be waiting for that cloud update for quite some time.
.
The system is there to add risk, do I fight one more battle or do I run for home and take the cash?
It isn't there just to ruin your day or add annoyance.
It's the equivalent of a hauler being interdicted and deciding between fight or flee? Do I risk my cargo or drop a few tons and escape

 

[Iskariot]

I agree it is a crap system! I can upload data to the cloud today but in the year 3300 I cant..... I'm sick of getting a 200cr bounty because while I'm racking up some kills a fed eagle darts in front of my line of fire and 1 round hits it accidently. Then have all the fed ships open fire on me forcing me to get the hell out of dodge. I then have to fly to a station to get rid of this stupid 200cr bounty, but this particular time while docking, I get scanned and the bloody stations starts shooting away before I can land. So all because of idiot AI that flies into a stream of fire directed at someone else I lost about 100k in bounty and about 20k in Exploration data. The biggest joke is I can go back to a system I spent a painful amount of time scanning for exploration data just an hour earlier and have to do it all over again. Any Nav data or bounties should be uploaded to a "Personal Commander net" or some such thing any time you are in a system that has a station or outpost that you are at least of neutral standing to; also Authority Ships shouldn't declare you shoot on sight enemy until it is obvious you have intentionally broken the law. ie bounty in the thousands... The current system is just a cause for rage and disgust. I bought 3 copies of this for me and my kids expecting a lot better game play (especially multi-player). While it is graphically great and flying is immersive there seem to be many obvious and simple things overlooked or not bothered with at the moment. Maybe it was rushed for pre-christmas I don't know. But I'm sick of having to repeat things because of stupid unrealistic happenings.

I have had to flee because I accidentally hit the cops many times. It is frustrating, but it is also a realistic risk you have to accept when in combat. Most of the time I consider it my own fault because I was too trigger happy and because I was not aware enough of what was happening around me. Only a few times I could not have avoided the incident myself.
It has nothing to do with an idiot AI. This happens with only human players too.

If you get scanned though while entering a space station you are definitely doing it wrong. I have never been scanned during docking. Not even once! I use speed and stealth and it works every time... and it is easy!!!

 

[Chaotic-Entropy]

What even is a bounty voucher... do you just have a slip of paper with people's names written down that you killed?

"I killed Steve Wilkins today. Pay me."

And there's a clerk on a space station that takes that and pays you based on your scrawled note. Because if it's written down then it's got to be accurate, but not if you inform them electronically, they don't trust that new fangled com-u-nee-k-shun devices.

 

[Iskariot]

What even is a bounty voucher... do you just have a slip of paper with people's names written down that you killed?

"I killed Steve Wilkins today. Pay me."

And there's a clerk on a space station that takes that and pays you based on your scrawled note. Because if it's written down then it's got to be accurate, but not if you inform them electronically, they don't trust that new fangled com-u-nee-k-shun devices.

Yeah that is what it is... 'A slip of paper'. Obviously .

 

[Chaotic-Entropy]

Yeah that is what it is... 'A slip of paper'. Obviously .

Well... maybe a "J-Tech NoteMaster 2000", since it's 3300. Capable of recording your very thoughts... such as "I killed Steve Wilkins today. Pay me".

The clerk will perform a sub dermal brain scan on your deformed zero-gravity warped body and pays you. Because information in someone's head has to be accurate, but can degrade if transmitted across long distance FTL communication devices. I've never even heard of a "Steven Dilkins".

 

[DukeEuphoria]

Were I doing the design for this, every ship that you pop would drop something uniquely identifiable (from a game point of view) Black box flight recorder, AI core gubbins, mystic FlangeBolt 5000, whatever.
Which you would then have to scoop and hand in at the station. Takes up little or no cargo space, so you can keep a big bag of them.

Sort of like collecting the ears of fallen enemies, or their dogtags if you're feeling squeamish.

 

[Armour]

Seems pretty straightforward that, in a galaxy where FTL data transmission is unavailable to all, there has to be a viable way to police space. Each ship is therefore a tattle-tale by design.

Once you have a list of a target's crimes and have "exacted justice", it makes sense that you still have to get your own ship's log to the correct jurisdiction to collect any bounty on offer, since that's where the evidence of your kill is stored. In the wrong jurisdiction, however, that log could be seen as evidence of a crime being committed and negatively affect your rep there.

It has been implied in the past that unscrupulous parties may sell modifications that can cause your ship to become very forgetful, so much so that a scan will show up nothing more than a clean conscience. It makes sense that a ship's crime logs could be falsified for the purposes of corruption and/or spycraft, but I would guess that it's a tricky and expensive operation that is not likely to become a commonplace occurrence.

It would certainly add a bit more risk to collecting that juicy bounty if it turns out that it was merely a mirage created for secret purposes, and that by taking out that "smuggler" you have incurred the wrath of some powerful enemy or other...

 

[Max Thundercrock]

The system makes sense. Your kill is stored ibn your ships data, maybe they require the data from you scanning the ship to prove you killed the guy and pay you. Your ship gets blown up you lose the data.

They can't send it out in a data stream because then every single bounty would have to get sent to every single station in the galaxy because you can cash it in anywhere (for said faction). You got interference, limited speed, by itself just the calculations necessary to line up all that data to every station would cause your flight computer to crash, then you have forgeries to worry about, data manipulation, out running your data stream, etc. So yeah actually thier way is a little more realistic.