200Cr Death

[Morbad]

"Playing badly"? For simply wanting to prevent another $1,000,000 credit penalty as a result of a minuscule 200-credit fine?

Suicidewindering is definitely something that should have been patched out years ago and almost certainly something that Frontier would openly consider an exploit if they thought such a stance was enforceable.

That's like executing someone for accidentally jaywalking across an empty city street.

Shooting someone is hardly a jaywalking equivalent.

 

[M00ka]

Best procedure I have found for this type of incident: Immediately low wake out of the area (cos it saves time in having to select a destination, once in SC, then high wake out a system of your choosing, get yourself a drink (or whatever for 10 minutes until the timer gets to 0. Wake back into the system, and present yourself at the appropriate station and pay your fine.

As for getting beaten up for a measly 200 credit fine: well this isn't new, everyone has probably experienced it and it is an excellent learning curve to select your targets properly and trigger control. We never know, FD might just change it in the upcoming release, they did say they were looking at the way Crime and Punishment is handled.

 

[Schmack]

Oh, shush. This "exploit" have been there for years. They should fix in 5 minutes it if they don't want people to use it.

Anyway, bounty gets wiped if you dead - so just manage to die without losing too much.

Argumentum ad antiquitatum!

 

[Cupsuki]

So, your fault then?

 

[Aashenfox]

There should simply be a way to call out 'My bad! Sorry!' and have them go non hostile again. Like in X3.

 

[M00ka]

This thread has given me a chuckle. Here we are, trying to apply 21st Century morals and rules on laws that exist in the 34th Century. Laws and the associated punishments have always been a fluid thing. Heck, less than 200 years ago if you stole a loaf of bread you could be transported to a penal colony on the other side of the planet or hanged. Now days, you can kill another person and if your lawyer is better than the other one, get off scot free. Whose to know why they have these laws in the 34th Century. Maybe they got sick and tired of people loitering in the mailslot of the station, after all it is the same as someone parking in your driveway now. Maybe the police - in this case the Federal Authority - got fed up with people taking pot shots at them all the time and decided 'that will not be tolerated'. Remember, the 34th Century allows anyone, without fear of consequences, reprisals or punishment to kill anyone who has broken the law, whether the crime committed is minor or major, as long as the lawbreaker has been positively identified. That is the current law of the land and that is what we have to abide by!!

 

[babelfisch]

I think there should be no 200cr death sentences in the game.
Bounties should have a minimum value that makes sense. Everything else should be a fine.

I think for accidentally hitting an innocent ship without killing it we should get a fine.
It could be a relatively big fine. Let's say 3000 credits, if you hit the shield.
The fine could be even bigger when you actually penetrate the shield and damage the ship. Let's say 6000 credits. This is added to the previous shield-hit bounty.
As soon as you destroy the ship you get a 20.000 credit bounty on your head + the previous fines.

Fines for hitting an innocent could also be calculated per hit. let's say every bullet or laser bolt that hits the victim will cost you a 1000 credits.
For beam lasers it could be 1000 credits for the initial hit and another 1000 for every 2 or 3 seconds your beam is on the victim.

Sorry but that doesn't make sense. If you don't get a bounty for attacking targets then your target is not allowed to defend himself without risking to get wanted himself. Authorities would also stop helping traders and miners if they are attacked by a clean NPC / player. I am saying this since release and I get tired of repeating it: You can't simply turn friendly fire into a fine. The required mechanics are way more complicated. One of my suggestions was to introduce an apologies feature, you can apologise, retract your hardpoints and based on your standing / amount of damage, authorities / players would accept or decline your apologies and the bounty immediately turns into a fine.
I hope they'll add something similar when we get proper NPC communication systems.

I'm sorry but that would make too much sense.


We have this 200 cr bounty issue since day one basically, it won't be tweaked any time soon at this point.

I am sorry but it doesn't make any sense at all. You could just as well remove the crime system completely.

 

[babelfisch]

Oh, shush. This "exploit" have been there for years. They should fix in 5 minutes it if they don't want people to use it.

Anyway, bounty gets wiped if you dead - so just manage to die without losing too much.

They actually fixed this exploit for PvP where rebuys are now handled differently. Their solution was to apply the rebuy of the most expensive ship you used since you gained the bounty. They said they probably add it for PvE as well.

 

[Aashenfox]

Indeed. Friednly fire is such a significant thing in Elite that some weapons have engineering special effects that only ensure that you can't have a friendly fire incident. It;s a mechanic they have well considered and are happy with for now. To be honest, I don't see an easy alternative, as Babelfisch said. I'd like the opportunity to stow hardpoints and apologise too, but I aslwo see that being tricky with CZs for example, when the whole instance aggros you.

 

[RidingTheFlow]

Their solution was to apply the rebuy of the most expensive ship you used since you gained the bounty. They said they probably add it for PvE as well.

Or tie bounties to the ship. Or don't wipe bounty on ship destruction and only by time (since the purpose of the bounty to actually *kill* perpetrator - and players can never actually die - so...)
I am fine either way - I will play the game with whatever gameplay mechanic is actually in it.

 

[Hossi]

...but I know that the bounty will be dormant until I'm scanned again. Yet I still have no way of paying off and it's only 200cr!

I will of course try going silent and drifting out of mass lock range but how do I now get rid of this bounty if it's not showing up on the contacts at a station owned by the faction I've accrued the bounty with?

Are you sure that you have a dormant fine? Cause the way I thought this is supposed to work is: If the bounty was active by the time of your dead and you respawn in a station belonging to the same juristiction the fine will be automaticly added to your rebuy and you will be clean.
Thats how it worked for me a few months ago when I accidently hit a miner in a hazres and that idiot had the impertinence to get himself killed before I could wake out. I didn't liked the idea of this one week bounty I just sneaked in the next starport (just like you) got myself a sidewinder, flew out again and harrased the cops until one of them scanned me and three seconds later I was clean.

This chart is a bit dated, but I think its still valid.

 

[Trafalgar Law]

It would be nice if the police had their priorities right. Who should we shoot at first? The obviously dangerous pirate with the 200,000cr bounty or the cmdr with the 200cr bounty who fired at the target (that we were already shooting at) a millisecond to early (or scratched the shield of one of our mates while helping deal with the pirate)? Cmdr it is, we'll even summon reinforcements to deal with this terrible criminal!!!

 

[Darkfyre99]

I think there should be no 200cr death sentences in the game.
Bounties should have a minimum value that makes sense. Everything else should be a fine.

I think for accidentally hitting an innocent ship without killing it we should get a fine.
It could be a relatively big fine. Let's say 3000 credits, if you hit the shield.
The fine could be even bigger when you actually penetrate the shield and damage the ship. Let's say 6000 credits. This is added to the previous shield-hit bounty.
As soon as you destroy the ship you get a 20.000 credit bounty on your head + the previous fines.

Fines for hitting an innocent could also be calculated per hit. let's say every bullet or laser bolt that hits the victim will cost you a 1000 credits.
For beam lasers it could be 1000 credits for the initial hit and another 1000 for every 2 or 3 seconds your beam is on the victim.

Think about it this way. You are a Member of the Pilots' Federation, one of the four major Superpowers in Human space. Unlike the Federation, Empire, or Alliance, the Pilots' Federation has its tentacles in every part of inhabited space, thanks to its near monopoly on the flow of information, its control of the bounty system, and its control its control of station services, including the bulletin board where people can hire assassins and terrorists without fear of prosecution. Commanders throughout Human space enjoy a near immunity to criminal prosecution, with its members literally getting away with mass murder. The power of the Pilots' Federation is so great, that entire star systems are deliberately disrupted by Commanders for fun and profit.

If you were a police officer in the Elite Universe, Members of the Pilots Federation would be high on your "Just give me an excuse," list. Pirates are scum, but they don't enjoy the protection of a trade union so powerful, that even the other three Superpowers don't want to get on their bad side. So the instant some trigger happy Commander gives you an opening to take them out legally, without risking the lives of those you're sworn to protect, you take it.

 

[Pumabear8]

Advocating exploits now are we?

I've done it, but not out of wanting to cheat or cheapen my experience, just out of frustration, I'm an advocate for "check your targets"; but we do make mistakes, and I sometimes find the penalties to be a silly nuisances rather than a game experience.

 

[Marra Morgan]

They actually fixed this exploit for PvP where rebuys are now handled differently. Their solution was to apply the rebuy of the most expensive ship you used since you gained the bounty. They said they probably add it for PvE as well.

I hope they do apply this PvE to close the Sidewinder exploit.

 

[RidingTheFlow]

If you were a police officer in the Elite Universe, Members of the Pilots Federation would be high on your "Just give me an excuse," list. Pirates are scum, but they don't enjoy the protection of a trade union so powerful, that even the other three Superpowers don't want to get on their bad side. So the instant some trigger happy Commander gives you an opening to take them out legally, without risking the lives of those you're sworn to protect, you take it.

Yeah, mysterious thing that they only actually interested in taking out their *ship*
You would think they would - "oh, they've used escape pod, so they are not actually *killed* - well, bounty still on." - but no.

 

[Iskariot]

Sorry but that doesn't make sense. If you don't get a bounty for attacking targets then your target is not allowed to defend himself without risking to get wanted himself.

I see your point and I there is a simple solution for that which would add more flexibility to these scenarios.

It would be possible to simply allow for retaliation in such a case.
The decision whether to immediately retaliate could be left to the victim.
The victim would not get a bounty in such a case and the ship that shot first would have to retreat to stop the situation from escalating, or he could fire back and then still receive the bounty on his head because he was the one that initially fired first.

This would allow for a bit more elbow room and might even add a bit of tension and excitement to situations like these.

 

[Darkfyre99]

Yeah, mysterious thing that they only actually interested in taking out their *ship*
You would think they would - "oh, they've used escape pod, so they are not actually *killed* - well, bounty still on." - but no.

I still wish Frontier had implemented their planned Ironman Mode, that way I could ignore gameplay compromises like that. I don't particularly like the idea that the Pilots' Federation has super secret S&R technology that nobody else has, but I like the idea of flying in Open under Ironman rules even less, which is why I use the Pilots ejection rules as a compromise. I have to assume that the police, upon seeing a Commander's chair enter Witchspace, can only mutter, "At least I cost them a small fortune."

 

[RidingTheFlow]

II have to assume that the police, upon seeing a Commander's chair enter Witchspace, can only mutter, "At least I cost them a small fortune."

Not unless they are flying a Sidewinder (and yeah, commanders could perfectly kill people flying Sidewinder, without even mentioning ship switching). I have to assume in this case they start crying "Exploit! Unfair!".

Sorry, but the whole system is lifted from original single-player game with permadeath and badly shoehorned over completely different MMO design - it just makes little sense.

 

[Whiterose]

Sure. Its my game and I will play it however I like.

Precisely. Its legal until made illegal, and then it would be even more fun.