Change murder BGS effect by requiring murders to be confirmed by IF contact

[Mangal Oemie]

Murder works completely differently from every other activity in the game, as far as BGS effect goes. While missions require delivery, or return after a kill or salvage, bounties and bonds require to be cashed at a station, exploration data sold at UC, cargo sold at the commodity market, etc.

Not murder. Each kill is a transaction, which means a murderer quickly racks up the transactions, while defenders have to return to station after sortie for just a single transaction.

This makes murder completely overpowered as a BGS mechanic, and the changes to C&P and introduction of ATR has not changed this, because the transactions still work the same way. Moreover, in low sec/low population systems ATR doesn't even show before ammunition runs out, so has no impact whatsoever.

So, I propose that murder kills need to be confirmed by an IF contact to count. Only if a murderer goes to a nearby IF and confirms the kills do the murders count. That would balance murder and allow defenders to counter it with bounties, missions, and other activities.

To be clear: that would mean that just like how cashing bounties and bonds is one transaction, regardless of the number of ships killed, the confirmation of murders would be one transaction, not a transaction for each kill.

 

[Misaniovent]

Having a CMDR travel to an IF makes sense but does make the transaction loop uneven if it requires travel outside a system. While I'm not sure that would be a bad thing, it might be interesting to allow CMDRs using anonymous access protocols to get in touch with an underworld contact at any station who might take these "scalps."

 

[Auxiliary]

This makes murder completely overpowered as a BGS mechanic

Agreed. Its powerful. I do believe it's intended to be powerful. But is it preventable/counterable? Yes.

So, I propose that murder kills need to be confirmed by an IF contact to count

You want a criminal to pay off his bounty before any of it has an effect in a system where the issuing faction most likely isn't even present?

 

[Jane Turner]

For me this is the most elegant and sustainable way to manage the murder issue. Murder should remain in the game and have an effect on the BGS, but its should not be more time effcient BGS-wise than either bounty hunting or fighting in a war zone. Increasing the time efficiency of BH and war zone activity is unattractive since they are currently balanced nicely with other activities.

 

[Jez146]

To be fair, it is only as broken as the rest of the transactional BGS... I mean why should selling a page of exploration data one line at a time be more effective than a page? Why should killing 1 opponent in a CZ and then cashing be more effective than killing 10? There are some factions that have made their living out of exploiting the current weakness of the BGS - and it should all be sorted... not just a bit of it.

 

[Kurgol]

I think the OP makes a legitimate observation but I think the proposed solution is just a sticking plaster and tend to agree with Jez146 in that the better solution would be to make the whole BGS value based rather than transaction based, presumably by making kills = some proportion of the destroyed ships rebuy this would even scale fairly well and I believe all other areas of the BGS already have a value attached with the transaction.

 

[Misaniovent]

To be fair, it is only as broken as the rest of the transactional BGS... I mean why should selling a page of exploration data one line at a time be more effective than a page? Why should killing 1 opponent in a CZ and then cashing be more effective than killing 10? There are some factions that have made their living out of exploiting the current weakness of the BGS - and it should all be sorted... not just a bit of it.

I recognize your view that utilizing the transactional BGS is exploitative, but rather than tackle that specifically, I want to talk about tactics in the current system.

Murder is not "as broken as the rest of the transactional BGS." Murder creates lockdown and civil unrest. These states are arguably benign (if not beneficial), but groups tend to want to clear them as soon as possible. This requires you to either start a conflict elsewhere (not typically desirable) or to deliver bounties. This requires significantly more work than simple murder. You must: find a wanted ship, kill it, and then turn in the bounty. This is a much longer loop than simple killing system authority or other clean ships until ATR responds. More difficult are situations where your faction is not in control but is facing a murder campaign; traffic providing bounties to your faction might be rare. In either case, you at least have the option of dropping two points of data for every murder — but if you are trying to push a faction that does not have a landable asset against a murder campaign, then you are at an incredible disadvantage (god help you if you have a settlement that spawns clean ships).

And of course, while you are at war, data is not an option.

edit: Also important to keep in mind that while the community might want more comprehensive changes to the system, those changes may not be feasible. That they may not be feasible should not mean that we shouldn't seek out possible solutions to something almost every experienced BGS group agrees is fundamentally broken.

 

[Ryan Murdoc]

I'm with the OP on this one in every aspect.

 

[Armholeeio]

I say yes to this, also some systems will have a anarchy faction in a planetary outpost ect so you won’t have to leave system to use a IF. On a defensive front I do suggest getting rid of that as the murder monkeys used the one In Omicron Ursae Majoris very efficiently recently.

 

[Mangal Oemie]

... and I believe all other areas of the BGS already have a value attached with the transaction.

The BGS is entirely transaction based and doesn't care about value of the transaction.

 

[Misaniovent]

Agreed. Its powerful. I do believe it's intended to be powerful. But is it preventable/counterable? Yes.






You want a criminal to pay off his bounty before any of it has an effect in a system where the issuing faction most likely isn't even present?

It is not "preventable." It is situationally counterable. I do not believe that Mangal is suggesting that a criminal pay off his bounty before turning in a scalp at an IF, just that the IF be the contact used.


The core idea here is that murders should generate vouchers that need to be delivered somewhere.

 

[Marra Morgan]

Murder works completely differently from every other activity in the game, as far as BGS effect goes. While missions require delivery, or return after a kill or salvage, bounties and bonds require to be cashed at a station, exploration data sold at UC, cargo sold at the commodity market, etc.

Not murder. Each kill is a transaction, which means a murderer quickly racks up the transactions, while defenders have to return to station after sortie for just a single transaction.

This makes murder completely overpowered as a BGS mechanic, and the changes to C&P and introduction of ATR has not changed this, because the transactions still work the same way. Moreover, in low sec/low population systems ATR doesn't even show before ammunition runs out, so has no impact whatsoever.

So, I propose that murder kills need to be confirmed by an IF contact to count. Only if a murderer goes to a nearby IF and confirms the kills do the murders count. That would balance murder and allow defenders to counter it with bounties, missions, and other activities.

To be clear: that would mean that just like how cashing bounties and bonds is one transaction, regardless of the number of ships killed, the confirmation of murders would be one transaction, not a transaction for each kill.

I agree with the premise, but I don't agree with that the IF should be used as a cash-in point.

They should be facilities to cash-in the murder claim at every station, as there is for bounty claims.

If you want balance, that's the way to do it properly.

 

[Mangal Oemie]

It is not "preventable." It is situationally counterable. I do not believe that Mangal is suggesting that a criminal pay off his bounty before turning in a scalp at an IF, just that the IF be the contact used.


The core idea here is that murders should generate vouchers that need to be delivered somewhere.

Indeed. It was just be (lore-wise) to have the kills confirmed, and require a trip (just like bounties and bonds do) to make them count.

I will also freely admit that the original idea wasn't mine (but yours ) - I just support it and added the suggestion. It's by far the best idea in years to balance the effect of murder against other activities.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

I agree with the premise, but I don't agree with that the IF should be used as a cash-in point.

They should be facilities to cash-in the murder claim at every station, as there is for bounty claims.

If you want balance, that's the way to do it properly.

Agreed that it doesn't necessarily make sense for IF to do it. Simplest perhaps would be to make them hidden claims, which automatically "cash-in" on docking with effect in the system of the claim. That makes them transactional per batch on survival, which is comparable to how bounties work.

 

[Kurgol]

The BGS is entirely transaction based and doesn't care about value of the transaction.

That's not what I meant, I know the current BGS implementation only cares about transactions, what I meant was all the other activities that affect the BGS like missions, selling on commodity market, handing in bounties and exploration data etc - all those have a value of credits attached to them that the devs could use as the weight of the contribution - only murder would need a value inventing, which could be taken as a percentage of the rebuy value of the ship destroyed.

And I understand your point about if it's not possible to fix the BGS into a completely value-based system then the one you propose does have merit and is certainly better than the status quo.

 

[Jane Turner]

That's not what I meant, I know the current BGS implementation only cares about transactions, what I meant was all the other activities that affect the BGS like missions, selling on commodity market, handing in bounties and exploration data etc - all those have a value of credits attached to them that the devs could use as the weight of the contribution - only murder would need a value inventing, which could be taken as a percentage of the rebuy value of the ship destroyed.

And I understand your point about if it's not possible to fix the BGS into a completely value-based system then the one you propose does have merit and is certainly better than the status quo.

We had a "grown up" discussion about the transactional nature of the BGS - the 1st post summarises the discussion.

 

[cmdr kruzer70]

Even if the idea of 'scalps' is rejected, murders should at least be nerfed. Having them at a value of 2 is too much. It should be a fraction not a multiplier (eg. 0.5 or better yet, 0.25)

 

[Screemonster]

Even having "sell page" count for however many transactions as there are systems on that page would help.

As for bounties and conflict zones, there's a couple of ways I can think of to handle the imbalance there.

1: Having them count for multiple transactions depending on their value. For instance, say there's a minimum threshold to count as a transaction, assume 10k. You can get 10k by blowing up a single wanted eagle, return to the station, head out, blow up another eagle, return, for a transaction each time. However, if bounties massively over that threshold started ticking over onto a second transaction - say, multipliers of 100k. Cash in a 1M bounty? That's ten transactions. Yes, it would be more efficient to just do round trips blowing up eagles and then docking, since if you got that 1 million 10k at a time you'd have racked up a hundred transactions, but you'd still be able to make some progress going after multiples and wouldn't feel that staying in the res after your 10k or going after high-value targets was wasted effort. Implement some sort of rate-limiting so people can't just sit with a billion credits of bounties on their battlebarge to cash in whenever they feel the need to counter a murderer.

2: far simpler - count the transaction at the moment the bounty/bond claim is awarded, not when it's cashed.

 

[MadDogMurdock]

I see the point the OP is making but changing it to a bulk hand-in mechanism is a recipe for shenannigans.
Lockdown is a major irritant, and a flawed mechanism.

Being able to store up your murders and then choose when to apply them is a little too powerful.

 

[Mangal Oemie]

I see the point the OP is making but changing it to a bulk hand-in mechanism is a recipe for shenannigans.
Lockdown is a major irritant, and a flawed mechanism.

Being able to store up your murders and then choose when to apply them is a little too powerful.

Why would you think that would be a problem? Once they confirm the kills, that is just one transaction. So it would be entirely pointless so "save up" these kills.

The point is entirely to make it equivalent to combat bonds and bounties. You can pre-collect bounties, but when you cash them, it's still just one transaction, however large the total value.