Crime Update Discussion
- Thread starter Sandro Sammarco
- Start date
Javert
Volunteer Moderator
Hi Sandro, I'm not sure if I am understanding these two points correctly, but one of the main concerns that I've read is that bounty hunters want to feel confident that criminals who have murdered, or attacked, other players will be marked as wanted, and that they cannot reset their status to clean whenever they feel like it for a relatively small payment relative to their net worth.
I think you probably mean this?
- If you are killed by a bounty hunter (who then claims your bounty), you then still have to pay off your bounty anyway as a fine, but you are not wanted until you commit future crimes (or you don't pay the fine within the time limit)
- If you die in some other way (self destruct, accident, whatever), your bounty becomes dormant.
The first point here seems to make sense to me - if someone defeats you and claims your bounty, you would then have to commit further crimes to get another bounty.
The second point on this still troubles me slightly because you will still appear as clean when scanned (?) and therefore no bounty hunter can attack you until you've committed a further crime. I think dormant bounties should either reactivate on a timer, or they should appear when scanned with a kill warrant scanner, or something along those lines. I suppose there is some disincentive in that there is some financial cost to losing your ship or swapping ships. Bottom line is that it should not be an attractive option to lose your ship on purpose in order to appear clean to bounty hunters.
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I've always had a problem with the current shoot on site priority that the system security take. in situations where im trading and have a small bounty it keeps me from being able to land to pay it off. if this system were to make it so you couldn't immediately pay off a fine it could prolong this problem for the amount of time people are unable to pay off the fine, especially if incurred on a system in a trade route.
We just need to make the punishments fit the crimes. The difficulty comes in determining the crime committed based on the actions taken. If a sufficiently well armed ship could strip another ship's shields in a single volley, how do you determine whether it's friendly fire or the opening act of piracy? Do you give the offender a minor punishment for the former offence or a more major punishment for the latter?
I suppose the most foolproof way would be to not look at each action separately, but determine the crime committed based on as many indicators as you have available.
-Equipment loadouts of the attacking and defending ship.
-Any previous fines or bounties incurred by the attacker (essentially your local reputation).
-Duration of the assault, damage incurred, losses sustained by the defending party.
-any other identifiers the team can think of that I can't.
Basically if you make an AI "judge" to determine the crime committed when the dust settles (either when the defender is destroyed or the attacker leaves) rather than trying to predict what someone is doing at the very moment they do it. So if you accidentally slap a sidewinder around while chasing a Fer-De-Lance in a combat zone the system will take a couple of seconds to determine whether you're actually trying to kill or rob that sidey or whether it was an accident. Collecting enough data points about both parties should enable distinction between assault, piracy, murder and accidental misfire. Proper identification and categorization of each crime, to me, is far more important than deciding what punishment each crime warrants.
I suppose the most foolproof way would be to not look at each action separately, but determine the crime committed based on as many indicators as you have available.
-Equipment loadouts of the attacking and defending ship.
-Any previous fines or bounties incurred by the attacker (essentially your local reputation).
-Duration of the assault, damage incurred, losses sustained by the defending party.
-any other identifiers the team can think of that I can't.
Basically if you make an AI "judge" to determine the crime committed when the dust settles (either when the defender is destroyed or the attacker leaves) rather than trying to predict what someone is doing at the very moment they do it. So if you accidentally slap a sidewinder around while chasing a Fer-De-Lance in a combat zone the system will take a couple of seconds to determine whether you're actually trying to kill or rob that sidey or whether it was an accident. Collecting enough data points about both parties should enable distinction between assault, piracy, murder and accidental misfire. Proper identification and categorization of each crime, to me, is far more important than deciding what punishment each crime warrants.
I think the key would be to separate fines and bounty. If you shoot a friendly or neutral ai or player you incur a fine. Fines however don't cause a wanted status. Fine should be made mandatory to pay off before a station witch you owe fines to will sell you ships/rearm/refuel/outfit. If fines hit a certain threshold they should become bounties. Maybe a good number is 5000cr. Now for destroying a ship, getting caught with illicit cargo, and possibly doing hull damage to a ship you should receive a bounty. I don't think bounties should be easy to pay off and have the timer system you suggested.
Personally I like this but there are a few issues
firstly there's no real reason to get a bounty.
what I mean by this is pirating is basically for the lols, and smuggling is nonexistent and completely unprofitable.
this means the majority of the reasons we're going to get slapped by a bounty are going to be accidental or due to lag.
this would be incredibly infuriating.
ive been wanted lots of times, only once was it intentional.
so the issues that would need addressing before this being implemented:
1. The friendly fire non aggression threshold needs to be higher and applied to NPC and player alike.
2. Turrets stray fire needs to be exempt from causing a wanted status.
3. Pirating needs a reason to be done as it stands it's almost more profitable to do missions let alone anything else.
4. Smuggling and the black market need a complete revision. This way traders can become wanted if they align themselves with less legal activities along with combatants.
4A. The black market needs to be its own UI complete with buying and selling of goods, missions, kill lists on bounty hunters, and an alternative to local security where you would when able to bribe off your bounties.
4B. Selling illegal goods in this black market should be significantly more profitable than regular commodity trading. For items that are stolen a 25% reduction in base value. For items scanned upon entry that are marked unsellable and confiscated with a large fine if not paid immediately (before leaving the station) a bounty placed on your head. Items successfully smuggled into the station a 250% if not more increase to the base value.
4C. Black market only items like rare artwork, these would have large base values so they would be worth pirates attempting to steal them from smugglers and be even more costly if caught. Minimum of 50k per ton.
5. Murder needs to be a very steep bounty, not a laughable 5k minimum 20k
6. There needs to be a threshold for when you're stuck with a bounty. This would be so brand new players can mess up and not immediately have a player kill them their first couple hours playing. If murder would be 20k than that threshold would be 30k enough for one mess up before you're stuck with it. This threshold would be easy to reach if smuggling and not paying the fine immediately. Before that threshold however you can pay them off as you can now but only at a black market, where you could contact someone willing to erase them for you.
firstly there's no real reason to get a bounty.
what I mean by this is pirating is basically for the lols, and smuggling is nonexistent and completely unprofitable.
this means the majority of the reasons we're going to get slapped by a bounty are going to be accidental or due to lag.
this would be incredibly infuriating.
ive been wanted lots of times, only once was it intentional.
so the issues that would need addressing before this being implemented:
1. The friendly fire non aggression threshold needs to be higher and applied to NPC and player alike.
2. Turrets stray fire needs to be exempt from causing a wanted status.
3. Pirating needs a reason to be done as it stands it's almost more profitable to do missions let alone anything else.
4. Smuggling and the black market need a complete revision. This way traders can become wanted if they align themselves with less legal activities along with combatants.
4A. The black market needs to be its own UI complete with buying and selling of goods, missions, kill lists on bounty hunters, and an alternative to local security where you would when able to bribe off your bounties.
4B. Selling illegal goods in this black market should be significantly more profitable than regular commodity trading. For items that are stolen a 25% reduction in base value. For items scanned upon entry that are marked unsellable and confiscated with a large fine if not paid immediately (before leaving the station) a bounty placed on your head. Items successfully smuggled into the station a 250% if not more increase to the base value.
4C. Black market only items like rare artwork, these would have large base values so they would be worth pirates attempting to steal them from smugglers and be even more costly if caught. Minimum of 50k per ton.
5. Murder needs to be a very steep bounty, not a laughable 5k minimum 20k
6. There needs to be a threshold for when you're stuck with a bounty. This would be so brand new players can mess up and not immediately have a player kill them their first couple hours playing. If murder would be 20k than that threshold would be 30k enough for one mess up before you're stuck with it. This threshold would be easy to reach if smuggling and not paying the fine immediately. Before that threshold however you can pay them off as you can now but only at a black market, where you could contact someone willing to erase them for you.
This sounds a lot like the reddit threadnaught I had up two days ago. However, taking only a page out of the book isn't going to solve the problem. There is a need to have a scaled bounty for killing players placed on pirates. To fix a pirate from "giving" another player his bounty, we need to make bounty payouts based on the value of the ship that the pirate is flying when he dies. This should solve the sidewinder gift mechanic currently in place while giving a healthy incentive for bounty hunters. Lastly, the bacon needs to be laid out evenly, doesn't cook well when it's stacked. Pirates can't just go into open to steal cargo, then go to solo mode to sell it. This leads to the most contested and most controversial requirement of this system, open and solo/private saves need to be separated. This goes for traders too, they are part of the food chain. Without them, the bottom falls out.
Original post for clarification and citation.
reddit .com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/2zhvwp/why_can_i_clear_my_bounty/
EDIT: New user profile will not allow me to post links. I broke the link up to post.
That sounds really good!!
As I said elsewhere: in a universe where the penalty for loitering is death, a slap on the wrist for destroying an expensive ship (and a less valuable pilot) doesn't seem well balanced.
I think the idea of a bounty that turns into a non-expiring fine is really good; I contextualize that as "you suffer having your ship blown up too" and then you still have to deal with the lawsuit from the insurance company for blowing the other guys' ship up in the first place.
As I said elsewhere: in a universe where the penalty for loitering is death, a slap on the wrist for destroying an expensive ship (and a less valuable pilot) doesn't seem well balanced.
I think the idea of a bounty that turns into a non-expiring fine is really good; I contextualize that as "you suffer having your ship blown up too" and then you still have to deal with the lawsuit from the insurance company for blowing the other guys' ship up in the first place.
Any chance you are also going to address reinforcement NPCs arriving in conflict zones that immediately attack any player in range first? I am having that all the time and it is quite annoying.
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Javert
Volunteer Moderator
I think this is something to do with exploits where you can work with a friend to run up a large bounty, then have them kill you to claim the bounty, then swap around and do it the other way around. I'm not sure whether you can actually make money from this faster than you can through normal means, but this might be the concern here.
Viajero
Volunteer Moderator
This bit is still the confusing one. A couple questions:
- So the new system will prevent WANTED players to pay off there own bounties for a certain (longish) time in the first place. So they just wait until that time passes by to pay it (or ignore it), or they get hunted/killed before that time. Correct?
- If they wait until the time lapses the bounty becomes a fine. Is that fine the same value as the original related bounty? Do WANTED players remain as WANTED after the time has lapsed if they dont pay the fine?
- If a WANTED player gets hunted/killed by another player that has detected the bounty, the bounty gets paid from whose pocket? The WANTED player or the jurisdiction?
- In the same scenario as above, if the bounty is paid by the jurisdiction, will the formerly WANTED player still suffer a non-expiring fine upon respawn? If they do suffer a non-expiring fine, what will be its value? If they do suffer a non-expiring fine, what happens if they respawn in the relevant bounty jurisdiction? Do they have to pay the fine automatically?
- If the player pancakes or gets killed by someone who does not detect the bounty, will the WANTED player lose its WANTED status and simply get a "dormant bounty"?
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I'm not sure why this is a thing, unless the goal is to actually deter piracy. Who does it bring enjoyment to? Why institute a cooldown at all? It seems the goal is to increase repercussions for "bad behavior." In purely law enforcement terms, why would something like this exist in the real world? "For a time, you will be hunted and put down like a rabid dog, but after you've had a chance to hide for a while, we're cool with you just giving us some cash." Has any civilization ever instituted a system like this? Sure, there are things like statutes of limitations, but that's more of a recognition that the indiscretions of youth should not necessarily punish you in your 40's after you've become a good citizen.
So I *guess* the logic for this is that you want to institute something like "kill rights." A means by which someone can exact retribution after the fact without having to incur the same penalty. If Pirate A kills Trader B and immediately pays off his bounty, Trader B can't return and kill Pirate A without becoming wanted himself. This gives Trader B time to get revenge within the law. One problem with the proposed system is that there are so many edge cases with friendly fire, small bounties for grazing a ship in combat, shooting before the scanner has finished, accidentally shooting instead of scanning, etc. The level of complexity you are getting yourself into with a system like this is going to be a headache.
So why not just give us kill rights? If you are killed by a fellow CMDR, you have 48 hours to get revenge until those kill rights expire. Regardless of whether you die in the meantime, as long as the kill rights are in effect, your victim can take his revenge legally. Any members of a wing who were present at the time of the crime are also subject to the kill rights. The wanted bounty can be paid off immediately, same as now, but perhaps extract a premium to pay it off while the kill rights are still active. Note the premium would not negate the kill rights, it just removes the threat from local law enforcement.
You could easily expand that system to improve bounty hunting in the future (selling kill rights, allowing the victim to contribute to the bounty pool, etc).
So I *guess* the logic for this is that you want to institute something like "kill rights." A means by which someone can exact retribution after the fact without having to incur the same penalty. If Pirate A kills Trader B and immediately pays off his bounty, Trader B can't return and kill Pirate A without becoming wanted himself. This gives Trader B time to get revenge within the law. One problem with the proposed system is that there are so many edge cases with friendly fire, small bounties for grazing a ship in combat, shooting before the scanner has finished, accidentally shooting instead of scanning, etc. The level of complexity you are getting yourself into with a system like this is going to be a headache.
So why not just give us kill rights? If you are killed by a fellow CMDR, you have 48 hours to get revenge until those kill rights expire. Regardless of whether you die in the meantime, as long as the kill rights are in effect, your victim can take his revenge legally. Any members of a wing who were present at the time of the crime are also subject to the kill rights. The wanted bounty can be paid off immediately, same as now, but perhaps extract a premium to pay it off while the kill rights are still active. Note the premium would not negate the kill rights, it just removes the threat from local law enforcement.
You could easily expand that system to improve bounty hunting in the future (selling kill rights, allowing the victim to contribute to the bounty pool, etc).
I think the main issue is going to be with minor infractions and very small bounties - i.e. as other people have mentioned - accidental fire etc. No matter what mechanism is in place to reduce chances of getting bounties for accidental 'crimes' there's always going to be incidents where due to a minor bounty such as assaulting another ship (accidentally) it leads to the pilot being killed for their tiny bounty. i.e. the pilot feels hard-done-by and rages on the forum 
How about something as follows:
Small bounties still have the facility to be paid off - i.e. the odd accidental assault. You'd still be 'bounty-tagged' but at least you've got a chance at getting to a station and getting the bounty paid off.
If a player gets too many of these small bounties (3 or more?) then it can be considered not to be accidental at all and be the same as murder or targeted hits which would result in a bounty as suggested - i.e. 'criminal' tag for a period etc. etc.
How about something as follows:
Small bounties still have the facility to be paid off - i.e. the odd accidental assault. You'd still be 'bounty-tagged' but at least you've got a chance at getting to a station and getting the bounty paid off.
If a player gets too many of these small bounties (3 or more?) then it can be considered not to be accidental at all and be the same as murder or targeted hits which would result in a bounty as suggested - i.e. 'criminal' tag for a period etc. etc.
This is really going to hurt some community goal interactions. Say Crimson State players in Lugh don't want the Feds to repair Hudson Dock so they setup a blockade on ships transporting metals into that station. Right now they can rack up fines involved with this and just pay them down, but after this they're pretty much going to be branded as pirates even if they're just interdicting, scanning and turning back Fed players.
There's just a lot of situations where the current bounty system has a lot of flaws in how it works that sort of get glossed over because paying off bounties isn't that big of a deal. But once you make those bounties sticky, these flaws are going to come up front and center.
This isn't going to impact career pirates any because they don't bother to pay down bounties. It is going to have a dramatic impact on a lot of the casual and immersive player on player interaction that happens in Elite.
There's just a lot of situations where the current bounty system has a lot of flaws in how it works that sort of get glossed over because paying off bounties isn't that big of a deal. But once you make those bounties sticky, these flaws are going to come up front and center.
This isn't going to impact career pirates any because they don't bother to pay down bounties. It is going to have a dramatic impact on a lot of the casual and immersive player on player interaction that happens in Elite.
I'm also somewhat concerned about this. the easy answer is to make it a 200cr fine instead, except then if you are an aggressor your target can't simply defend themselves because you are not wanted.
Better than for the AI to ignore very small bounties unless there is no-one else in the vicinity (in which case they have nothing better to do). But also to change the bounty for friendly fire to an escalating one with a slight delay. Shoot someone once, it's 200 credits and nobody cares, but shoot someone again after 1.5 seconds, well now it's 400 credits and AI starts to take notice (unless there's still a larger bounty in the area), once again and it's 800 credits, and more AI take notice, once more for 1600 and you've hit the cap - the bounty gets no higher unless you destroy someone (or start on another ship), but all the AI now see you as a viable threat and come to get you (which is as it is now). 1600 isn't that much if your intention is to murder someone, and if your actions were truly a mistake you can at least take down the guy you were going for before hotfooting it out of the system until your bounty cools down.
Other CMDR's are free to come after you immediately of course - but hopefully they are smart enough to know an accident when they see one, but if it's not then it's legal for them to defend themselves. And obviously the AI you actually shot will start attacking you back if you hit them a second time (or a first time, if they're not already engaged in combat).
Just thoughts - probably fairly complex to implement.
(Tried posting this earlier, failed. trying again now - Probably out of date as a response now though :/)
An update like this has been a long time coming - I'm glad Frontier are implementing it. That said - A few things would assuage my worries about the potential for this to have unintentional side-effects on law-abiding commanders (and the rest of us, during the times when we're being law abiding):
1. When you say that friendly fire (as described in the first post) is already enabled toward npc's, I'm assuming you don't include system authority vessels? Even being careful, I've rarely spent a full hour in a RES without accidentally aggroing every system authority ship and getting a bounty on my head. It would be nice if non ship-go-boom damage to SA vessels could be a fine instead of a bounty, at least up to a point (a much further point than what it is now) - Especially against SA eagles (It takes about a tenth of a second to get their shields down by a huge percentage). That way 80% of RES bounty hunting trips won't end because an SA vessel can't tell that the one shot I hit them with is part of a whole stream of shots that are pew pewing into that criminal over there.
2. Give people options to let only certain commanders shoot them without a crime being reported (ie: anyone in my wing, anyone on my friends list, anyone on this specific list of "don't report crimes against me by these people" people). That way we can fly or practice pvp with our friends without giving any other commanders in the area a free pass to make our ships go boom. We can already do this somewhat - but it would be nice to have finer control over it.
1. When you say that friendly fire (as described in the first post) is already enabled toward npc's, I'm assuming you don't include system authority vessels? Even being careful, I've rarely spent a full hour in a RES without accidentally aggroing every system authority ship and getting a bounty on my head. It would be nice if non ship-go-boom damage to SA vessels could be a fine instead of a bounty, at least up to a point (a much further point than what it is now) - Especially against SA eagles (It takes about a tenth of a second to get their shields down by a huge percentage). That way 80% of RES bounty hunting trips won't end because an SA vessel can't tell that the one shot I hit them with is part of a whole stream of shots that are pew pewing into that criminal over there.
2. Give people options to let only certain commanders shoot them without a crime being reported (ie: anyone in my wing, anyone on my friends list, anyone on this specific list of "don't report crimes against me by these people" people). That way we can fly or practice pvp with our friends without giving any other commanders in the area a free pass to make our ships go boom. We can already do this somewhat - but it would be nice to have finer control over it.
rootsrat
Volunteer Moderator
Regarding bounties/fines: I think this is a good system, however couple of questions arises:
1. What timescales are we looking at in regards to the bounty>fine transition? Hours, days, weeks?
2. Bounty switches to a fine. Is the Commander still Wanted in that system or does the Wanted status expire with the bounty?
- 2a. If the Wanted status expires, what happens if the Commander simply ignores paying the fine?
- 2b. If the Wanted status does not expire, I presume it would be cleared upon paying the fine, is that right?
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I guess my comment would be initially: I find it hard to comment on changes to the punishment system because as a law abiding citizen I don't even really understand how it works right now.
I'm almost certainly not alone in this. The whole bounty, fine, dormant bounty, wanted status, faction wanted status thing is unexplained and not clear.
My only experience with crime was an accidental smuggling fine (first time finding floating cargo), and an accidental NPC friendly fire incident that got me Wanted, but I fled and paid at the office.
I think ultimately the goal I would like is for PvP crimes to not easily be escapable by quickly paying a moderate fine. I would like a criminal to have to live on the run for a while. I think that's what we're going for?
I'm almost certainly not alone in this. The whole bounty, fine, dormant bounty, wanted status, faction wanted status thing is unexplained and not clear.
My only experience with crime was an accidental smuggling fine (first time finding floating cargo), and an accidental NPC friendly fire incident that got me Wanted, but I fled and paid at the office.
I think ultimately the goal I would like is for PvP crimes to not easily be escapable by quickly paying a moderate fine. I would like a criminal to have to live on the run for a while. I think that's what we're going for?