Bounties will be exploitable

[StayFrosty]

Long explanation here: http://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=6276

Short explanation is:

• Pilot federation bounties are paid by players with THEIR OWN MONEY, and the amount is regulated, and will probably depend on the value of your ship, gear and cargo: exploiting the bounty system thus means spending an equal amount of money on it, AND losing a ship in the process whose value will surely be lost. This prevents two players from exploiting it directly as they would lose money, but it doesn't seem to prevent a player from getting bounty placed by OTHER players.
  The way EVE handles that is simple: when you kill a player with a bounty, you get an amount equivalent to the value of his ship, gear and cargo, thus in a way, you're paid to destroy his property. If you try to exploit the bounty system, you'll end up losing an equal amount of property- greater actually considering price variations and taxes. The same way adding to a bounty is regulated depending on the crime and lost property, the amount you collect depends on how much property you destroyed. This is the only weak point in the system described.
  
  
• Faction bounties are placed by NPCs, and while they appear potentially exploitable the same way as pilot federation bounties, they nonetheless require:
  • Putting yourself in uncontrolled dangerous situations, as they imply NPCs, which poses some serious challenge.
  • The bounty adds up to your fines too, which you'll have to pay regardless of whether the bounty is collected or not, so exploiting it would require paying as much as you gain anyway
  This doesn't prevent "disposable" characters from being exploited to get a huge bounty and then collect it. Same solution as above, meaning collecting only part of it depending on the amount of property, seems appropriate.

Aside from a little flaw, it's a lot better than it sounds, and less exploitable than you'd think, but there are still some flaws indeed, if I'm not missing some more.

 

[Splendour]

One downside I see to an EVE style bounty system is that someone who runs up a really large bounty could then hop into a free sidewinder and be effectively untouchable by bounty hunters - the value of the ship they destroy would be 0, so a 0 credit payout.

 

[Seonid]

Except that would be another Commander slot, no bounty and no shared resources (cash etc).

Edit: Unless I misunderstood in which case the fine would be the same but the ship loss would be negligible?

 

[StayFrosty]

One downside I see to an EVE style bounty system is that someone who runs up a really large bounty could then hop into a free sidewinder and be effectively untouchable by bounty hunters - the value of the ship they destroy would be 0, so a 0 credit payout.

Indeed.

But then he's stuck in his Sidewinder forever, and I doubt people won't just shoot him for fun, at least NPCs will. What do you really win with this?

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

Except that would be another Commander slot, no bounty and no shared resources (cash etc).

OK IF a player REALLY wanted to I can see an exploit.

So I could have my main character, CMDR Mad Mike

and then my dummy character CMDR Mad Mike 2

then my mate could have his main character CMDR Random Friend

and his dummy character CMDR Random Friend 2.

Random Friend 2 would be the guy who runs up the bounty , then I kill him with my main character, Mad Mike. He can then presumably start from scratch again.

I then do the same for my mate, using my farming 2nd character

The thing is, with no real end game, This would only really be spoiling the game for my friend and I, and if we were running our bounties up against people, getting our accounts put on many block lists.

and the fact that we are probably going to be able to buy in game currency anyway I dont see it really being an imbalancing issue (FD may see it as an expliot which will stop people buying in game cash with real money however)...

Sooooo imo, if people really want to go out of their way to do this, then... let them!.

 

[arkemiffo]

Ok, I can agree to you having to pay your own bounty if you're caught. Technically you're hauled off in an escape pod by some kind of authority. Fair enough I say.
I would like however for piracy to be a viable option in the game still. You should be able to make a profit by piracy, by trying to keep your profits higher than your bounty (and of course, no one counts on getting caught in the first place).

My suggestion to the exploitation would be diminishing returns. The game keeps tracks of who you killed. Lets say a 10 slot latest kills. You can't get a bounty from someone already on that list. This *should* have minimal impact on normal players, as I would assume that very few pilots would actually kill the same guy for a bounty with less than 10 others in between.

It is of course still exploitable as you can just go out and kill 10 NPC's in between, but you would have to work harder for it.

And I bet that there are other drawbacks that I haven't thought about, but I think it would be a possible solution.

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

You won't have free Sidewinder in final game. You will go further and further in debt.