Just a thought that might provide some middle ground..
When you die, you always restart "clean" - so lets make it REALLY clean. Make paying off ALL outstanding fines/bounties/legacy fines, from whichever jurisdiction, mandatory at the insurance screen if you want your old loadout back, Paying them at this point wipes them - they are gone and you truly are clean, everywhere. This doesn't matter how you "died", you could have pancaked into a high-g world trying to land or got trapped between a pair of binary stars and cooked or you could have been boiled by a bounty hunter, an opposing mercenary or even a psychotic NPC. Your ships black box was retrieved from the wreckage and every authority with a galnet feed knows you're "dead" and claims the credits from your "estate". This penalty is not eligible for coverage by a loan so if the rebuy of your ship would leave you with an outstanding loan or too little credits to cover the claims on you, tough luck, you're sidey'd and still have to pay the claims. All of them. They come out of your balance and if that runs out reduce your starting credits with your sidey (down to a minimum cap where you can maybe afford to haul a couple tons of biowaste when you start over) Same if you elect to restart in a sidey, the claims on you persisist.
Bounty farming with a friend? Impossible. You're still paying it all even if your friend is claiming part of it as a local bounty.
Incentive on players to be careful accumulating a huge bounty? check.
This would work without any changes to the current scale of bounties and fines (although I do believe that system needs looking at to make things a little more aligned to the severity of the offence - but penalties should still be somewhat draconian, as for some crimes they are now, because that is a long-standing feature of the Elite universe and lore and we don't want to lose that)
This would not address the problems that currently exist with bounty hunting as a career, but I believe that is a separate issue - one that must be looked at, to be sure, but this is not intended to do that.
It should not negatively impact piracy as a career - the pirate wants cargo not corpses and if they are good at their trade they'll get it too. I know some pirates fly their astronomical bounties as a flag of honor but if anything this will increase the "social value" of doing that. "I don't care, I'm such a (wicked donkey) that nobody is ever going to make me pay this!"
Will it be enough to deter "serial murder for the lulz"? probably not, but it will make doing so more expensive. The random PKer will have to either keep on top of paying off the legacy fines as bounties expire or let them accumulate, potentially putting their ability to rebuy their ship at risk should the law of averages catch up with them and they don't win a fight or make some other mistake. Because it's galnet-wide, avoiding places where you've accumulated high legacy fines wouldn't be a viable option to avoid paying them off on death.
One additional twist that would be interesting under this system would be to make a KWS scan show in the left UI an additional field "total death claims" - the amount tacked on to the targets rebuy cost if they die - all outstanding fines bounties and legacy fines combined, while the total bounty field still only shows what the person who kills them could actually claim. This may seem pointless but think about it for a minute. We know that there are folks out there who take delight in inflicting loss on others, every game has them and it is a part of human mentality to "smoke the competition". Even dedicated PvPers who are after the "win" not necessarily after handing the other guy a "loss" feel it to some extent. It is precisely these players who are likely to see high "total death claims" as a higher value target, even if they can't get their hands on all of that value. It's also these players that will likely have the highest value in their own "total death claims" as well, unless they've been assiduously paying them off as they accumulate. We're incentivizing them to fight amongst themselves, which is a win/win - they get better fights and while they are doing that the folks that don't want to PvP with them aren't getting bothered.
When you die, you always restart "clean" - so lets make it REALLY clean. Make paying off ALL outstanding fines/bounties/legacy fines, from whichever jurisdiction, mandatory at the insurance screen if you want your old loadout back, Paying them at this point wipes them - they are gone and you truly are clean, everywhere. This doesn't matter how you "died", you could have pancaked into a high-g world trying to land or got trapped between a pair of binary stars and cooked or you could have been boiled by a bounty hunter, an opposing mercenary or even a psychotic NPC. Your ships black box was retrieved from the wreckage and every authority with a galnet feed knows you're "dead" and claims the credits from your "estate". This penalty is not eligible for coverage by a loan so if the rebuy of your ship would leave you with an outstanding loan or too little credits to cover the claims on you, tough luck, you're sidey'd and still have to pay the claims. All of them. They come out of your balance and if that runs out reduce your starting credits with your sidey (down to a minimum cap where you can maybe afford to haul a couple tons of biowaste when you start over) Same if you elect to restart in a sidey, the claims on you persisist.
Bounty farming with a friend? Impossible. You're still paying it all even if your friend is claiming part of it as a local bounty.
Incentive on players to be careful accumulating a huge bounty? check.
This would work without any changes to the current scale of bounties and fines (although I do believe that system needs looking at to make things a little more aligned to the severity of the offence - but penalties should still be somewhat draconian, as for some crimes they are now, because that is a long-standing feature of the Elite universe and lore and we don't want to lose that)
This would not address the problems that currently exist with bounty hunting as a career, but I believe that is a separate issue - one that must be looked at, to be sure, but this is not intended to do that.
It should not negatively impact piracy as a career - the pirate wants cargo not corpses and if they are good at their trade they'll get it too. I know some pirates fly their astronomical bounties as a flag of honor but if anything this will increase the "social value" of doing that. "I don't care, I'm such a (wicked donkey) that nobody is ever going to make me pay this!"
Will it be enough to deter "serial murder for the lulz"? probably not, but it will make doing so more expensive. The random PKer will have to either keep on top of paying off the legacy fines as bounties expire or let them accumulate, potentially putting their ability to rebuy their ship at risk should the law of averages catch up with them and they don't win a fight or make some other mistake. Because it's galnet-wide, avoiding places where you've accumulated high legacy fines wouldn't be a viable option to avoid paying them off on death.
One additional twist that would be interesting under this system would be to make a KWS scan show in the left UI an additional field "total death claims" - the amount tacked on to the targets rebuy cost if they die - all outstanding fines bounties and legacy fines combined, while the total bounty field still only shows what the person who kills them could actually claim. This may seem pointless but think about it for a minute. We know that there are folks out there who take delight in inflicting loss on others, every game has them and it is a part of human mentality to "smoke the competition". Even dedicated PvPers who are after the "win" not necessarily after handing the other guy a "loss" feel it to some extent. It is precisely these players who are likely to see high "total death claims" as a higher value target, even if they can't get their hands on all of that value. It's also these players that will likely have the highest value in their own "total death claims" as well, unless they've been assiduously paying them off as they accumulate. We're incentivizing them to fight amongst themselves, which is a win/win - they get better fights and while they are doing that the folks that don't want to PvP with them aren't getting bothered.
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