Bounty system seems really broken

SkoZombie

S
One of the biggest problems I'm having is that whenever bounty hunting in a RES and I accidentally clip a police vessel either with a round during a dog fight because they fly into my line of fire, or we fly into each other, I seem to get a 7 DAY bounty. I always lose my ship which costs me a bit in insurance, and then I have to      of that system and related systems for 7 days in case I get scanned again, and blown away again. All for a 400 Cr bounty that I can't pay off, after I've had my ship destroyed. Surely a bounty should stop once someone dies?

This is beyond irritating and one of the single most annoying things in the games along with regular "mission updates" that give me <1 min to deliver goods quickly when I'm still thousands of Ls away.

I know I'm a Newbie and I'm having a whinge but I love this game and there's just some really stupid stuff going on that I would have thought would have been fixed/ changed during early play testing. It's fine that there's a consequence when I make a mistake, but it just really takes away from the game being fun (it's a game, it's supposed to be fun) when simple little things have such total disproportionate consequences.
 

Soopyyy

S
You're not the only one to have complained about the stupid system, It's been like it since release.
Traders can accrue millions of credits worth of fines trading slaves and so and and nobody bats an eye-lid. Open fire on a pirate 3/10th of a second too soon and its a death sentence, even if there are several other NPC's engaging already.
 

SanguisDiabolus

S
Specifically with accidentally clipping feds though, I feel there should be an alternate system in place for just that.

Scenario:
You accidentally shoot a fed enough to trigger a fine. Rather than all feds instantly turning hostile, you'd see a message saying something like, "Pilot, de-arm yourself, cut engines, and submit to federal authority immediately." Then you'd have like 15 seconds to retract your hardpoints and come to a stop. Maybe even make it a little more involved, making you have to manually power down your weapon modules. Then they'd scan you, and you'd get another message saying, "Your assault has been registered. Return to dock to pay your fine immediately." Then you'd have to do just that. If you don't leave within maybe like a minute, THEN they become hostile.

That way, accidentally shooting a fed has the same result (you need to leave right away), but this way it makes sense rather than a simple death sentence that lasts 10 minutes...
 

Lemanrouste

Lemanrouste
That is odd, since the worst I have ever got from friendly fire is all of ten minutes, which is easily done away with by jumping to a nearby system and grabbing a drink.
 
Last edited:

SkoZombie

S
SanguisDiabolus said:
If that happens to me I don't even go that far. Just drop into normal space in a random place inside the system and wait it out.
Click to expand...

I find I'm always copping 7 day bounties that go dormant after you die but as soon as that faction scans you you're boned over and over again. This time it happened to be with one of the factions I have the highest rep with so it was extra annoying as I'm new and trying to get rank up missions with fed.

thorn- said:
Cool, another thread on "dinged a cop and got a bounty." Because 9,768 thread weren't enough.
Click to expand...

Maybe after another 232 threads when we hit 10K threads Frontier will do something about it? As I say, I'm still relatively new to this game (after playing elite 2/3 as a kid) so still trying to work out how everything works.

My complaint isn't that there's a bounty, it's the way the bounty system works: it's too long, persists after you die, and thus totally disproportionate. On my previous issue with a 7 day bounty I died 3 times before I realised     was going on and just abandoned that area of the bubble for a week. Very rage inducing. Thankfully I had enough for insurance each time.

Soopyyy said:
You're not the only one to have complained about the stupid system, It's been like it since release.
Traders can accrue millions of credits worth of fines trading slaves and so and and nobody bats an eye-lid. Open fire on a pirate 3/10th of a second too soon and its a death sentence, even if there are several other NPC's engaging already.
Click to expand...

I wish Frontier all the best with ED but these sort of game play annoyances make me (and presumably others) less inclined to play it if small actions have disproportionate responses. It's things like this that play testing should pick up, and if not, should be gleamed from forum posts like this and fixed.
 

Robbie84

Robbie84
You rammed it and got 7 days? More like you hammered it with high speed or such.

Any time I would (accident ofc :) fire on police or scraped\hit them in the middle of a RES (any) they would first give a warning (something in the lines of: "Hey we are the good guys....")
If I really made a mistake and unloaded a lot of them I will get 9 MINUTE bounty. I just then SC out and then jump to the nearest system and wait it out. After jumping back to the system where the bounty was after the timer expires, I am no longer WANTED.

7 days is for major offenses. Never had that issue with shooting\scraping accidentaly on police or collisions in RES sites. Bounties would last 10min or maybe somewhere in the past it was longer but I dont remember it.

Also lately I have been flying\fighting inside RES sites with a really OP ship and would ram and shoot on police but bounty would still be same. 10min. Unless as said I made a mistake and did huge damage to the police but that hasnt happened for some time now.
 
Last edited:

h347h

h347h
SkoZombie said:
One of the biggest problems I'm having is that whenever bounty hunting in a RES and I accidentally clip a police vessel either with a round during a dog fight because they fly into my line of fire, or we fly into each other, I seem to get a 7 DAY bounty. I always lose my ship which costs me a bit in insurance, and then I have to of that system and related systems for 7 days in case I get scanned again, and blown away again. All for a 400 Cr bounty that I can't pay off, after I've had my ship destroyed. Surely a bounty should stop once someone dies?

This is beyond irritating and one of the single most annoying things in the games along with regular "mission updates" that give me <1 min to deliver goods quickly when I'm still thousands of Ls away.

I know I'm a Newbie and I'm having a whinge but I love this game and there's just some really stupid stuff going on that I would have thought would have been fixed/ changed during early play testing. It's fine that there's a consequence when I make a mistake, but it just really takes away from the game being fun (it's a game, it's supposed to be fun) when simple little things have such total disproportionate consequences.
Click to expand...

You only get 7 days for killing some one.
 
Last edited:

Siranui

S
Erm... you don't get a 7 day bounty for 'just clipping a Fed'. You just get a fine, which you can jump out, wait out and pay off. You get a seven day bounty for *murdering* a Fed.

If you just clip a Fed once with a small weapon, they don't even fine you the first time, in order to give new players a bit of saving grace.

SkoZombie said:
Does anyone have any opinions on this? It just seems crazy over the top to me.
Click to expand...

It's like that time there was a shoot out with police and I joined in, and that stupid policeman got in the way of my line of fire, so I accidentally shot him in the back four times and killed him, and then the police started treating ME like some kind of *criminal* but HE WAS IN THE WAY AND I WAS TRYING TO EARN A REWARD!!! Grrr. the police reaction was completely unfair and disproportionate.

:D

Ultimately, the only way to not get fined is not to shoot police. And if you do, high-wake out, wait off the bounty, then go back and pay the fine.

It is not their *problem* as police officers for not getting out of the way of the multi megajoule lethal weaponry festooned all over your ship, it is your *responsibility* to check line of fire before holding the trigger down.

Or... best solution is to hunt in Hz Rez, where there are no Feds to get in the way...
 

Lobstris

Lobstris
Aside from whether the balance of fines/bounties for various crimes are correct OP, and leaving aside the fact you should only get a 10-minute wanted status and a 400cr fine for clipping the police, so what if you do get a 7 day bounty in a system for certain crimes? There are quite a few other systems (about 400 billion or so) to choose from in the game. ;)

If fines and bounties didn't persist they would be even less of a deterrent than they are now. One of the reasons Elite is in the state it's in is the fact that there aren't any truly permanent consequences for actions.
 

d8veh

d8veh
The game is called Elite Dangerous. There's hazards in whichever activity you choose. 400cr bounty is no big deal. It just means you immediately jump out of the system, make a cup of tea, then come back and carry on. Death collisions are not so common these days. When you scan ships and find that they're friendly and without shields, you need to be suspicious and careful. You see it more at the nav beacon than in the RESs

You still get Feds and other ships deliberately lining up with your fire behind your target ship, so you have to be watchful and careful, especially when your target chaffs. Beam lasers will get you a lot more bounties than pulse weapons, so avoid them if you can for bounty hunting.

After you've been bounty hunting for a long time (hundreds of hours) your senses become much more tuned to the warning, which less experienced plays tend not to notice. When you get that message, point immediately to the light sky, boost, boost and boost until you're free from mass-lock, jump into supercruise, then choose which system to go to. There's plenty of time to do that even in a slow ship.

If you're bounty hunting in a hazRES, in most cases you can ignore it, though sometimes Feds can be there, in which case it's time to leave. Pre 2.1, I noticed that the AI became more difficult when you had a bounty in a Hazres. All the big ships mysteriously used turrets, which didn't happen when I wasn't wanted.
 

SkoZombie

S
Hazzu said:
You rammed it and got 7 days? More like you hammered it with high speed or such.

Any time I would (accident ofc :) fire on police or scraped\hit them in the middle of a RES (any) they would first give a warning (something in the lines of: "Hey we are the good guys....")
If I really made a mistake and unloaded a lot of them I will get 9 MINUTE bounty. I just then SC out and then jump to the nearest system and wait it out. After jumping back to the system where the bounty was after the timer expires, I am no longer WANTED.

7 days is for major offenses. Never had that issue with shooting\scraping accidentaly on police or collisions in RES sites. Bounties would last 10min or maybe somewhere in the past it was longer but I dont remember it.

Also lately I have been flying\fighting inside RES sites with a really OP ship and would ram and shoot on police but bounty would still be same. 10min. Unless as said I made a mistake and did huge damage to the police but that hasnt happened for some time now.
Click to expand...

Might be a bug then, because the two times I've gotten a bounty it's been 7 days and I'm pretty confident I didn't kill anyone. The most recent one would have been a collision with another shielded ship which I imagine is unlikely to kill someone as I wasn't boosting, just turning around after a dogfight once all the hostiles were eliminated.

Is there any way to see my alleged crimes to confirm this?
 

sqzbox1

S
In all honesty you just have to improve your situational awareness. In CZ's or Res's it is chaos and you have to be quick off the trigger when other ships are around - any ship really because even damaging a wanted ship will fine you if you haven't scanned it already. And if you clip someone but don't do damage then there is no penalty. If you clip someone and they had no shields so you did actual damage then you get a 10 minute penalty and small fine. Collisions don't happen now as much as they used to so again, you just need to improve your situational awareness and pilot accordingly. This is called "skill" - get some. You can't expect to go into a battle location and just shoot willy-nilly.

In summary then, I don't believe there is a bug or the game is broken. I spend half my time in these situations and I haven't received a fine in months. But very occasionally I won't be quick enough or the situation was unavoidable - too bad for me.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom