Implying it's not happened already?
I agree with this completely. Long-Range Smuggling just grinds my gears, (ALD) bounty hunting is absurd if they're making upwards of 5-6M per hour with the best ships, et cetera. Not only do these ridiculously-high profit activities ruin the fun of elite dangerous for many, but they destroy the ecosystem for all.
The basic ecosystem is this:
http://i.imgur.com/ol9KvGP.png
This can and has happened in many places throughout Elite, given the correct conditions. This was Lave for a long time, with rares-traders passing through, which would then be pirated, and then the pirates would be killed by bounty hunters. Here are some of the requirements:
- Traders and/or Miners need to exist, in reasonable number. For this to happen, trade routes running through dangerous space where pirates ought to be should be incentivized, and all inflated methods of earning money need to be nerfed or eliminated. Low-sec, low pop systems should want food and other necessities far more than most and be willing to pay up to an order of magnitude more for it (in the case of grain), and while high-security systems would pay you for your trading, they would noly do so barely. Lower the security, more profit, risk vs reward.
- Pirates need to exist, and have larger bounties. This is something that can be improved upon, as player death isn't something which will happen often, and so when a player does die to another for a bounty, that bounty should be very large. Lets make murder nothing to joke about, eh? Here's a list of ideas to pick and choose from - piracy is in a decent spot now, so don't go crazy.
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=163170
- Bounty hunters need to be able to track and kill other players more easily. The only way for a bounty hunter to start tracking a target is to come across him, with only luck involved. Here's an example of a better bounty hunting system:
> New bounty board created - top 50 bounties in the system. This new board only includes those who are online.
> The bounty hunter can "tag" up to three of them at a time. The bounty hunter will now get a message whenever their target jumps into a medium+ security system, and has a chance to get a notification when the target jumps into a low-security system. no indication for anarchies.
> The bounty hunter gets preferential P2P, making it far more likely for him to be matched with his target rather than create a new instance
> The bounty hunter does not need to scan the target's ship in order to get a name - he only needs to do so to get info on sub-systems, local bounty, shields, hull and powerplay allegiance - normal scan stuff. He still needs to KWS, but only once per X amount of time (24 hours). This is to eliminate the need for the bounty hunter to have to scan the player every time they fight.
> The bounty hunter can buy a device to track the targets himself. If the bounty hunter finds the target in normal space, he can fire off and attach a beacon to the target's ship, telling the bounty hunter whenever the target warps to any system. (This may be a bit overkill, is optional)
- - - - - Additional Content Posted / Auto Merge - - - - -
Design Discussion Archive, a previously forum open to kickstarter backers who paid at least 300 pounds or so for the game. They gave their ideas long before the first alpha was released, and helped to shape the game immensely. Read through it.