Crime and Penance - Murder is a heinous crime

[VR CMDR Novindus]

You're not welcome. Murderers are not welcome in civilisation.

If you murder a player, you should be refused docking permission at any station or outpost in a non-anarchy system. Not restricted services - just no docking.
If any System Security ships in a non-anarchy system are alerted to your presence, you should be considered a Kill-On-Sight target, and immediately attacked.
Even anarchy systems should not be completely safe for murderers, so in anarchy systems, at any station or outpost where the controlling faction has a murder bounty on you, you'll be denied docking permission, and the station's security forces will attack you on sight.

There should be no time limit on this, and simply paying your bounty at an Interstellar Factor after your Notoriety reaches zero should not allow you back into civilisation.

I propose a new system called Penance.

If your Notoriety reaches zero and you check in at the nearest Interstellar Factor, you'll be made to pay off your bounties as usual, but that won't be the end of it.
You will then be required to perform a defined set of penance tasks relative to your crimes.

These could involve for example (but not limited to):

• Transporting food to famine systems.
• Transporting medical supplies to outbreak systems.
• Search and rescue.
• Escorting and protecting ships doing any of the above.
• Collecting a bounty on another notorious murderer (could be a fellow ganker - intrigue!).
• Assisting security forces in a conflict zone to take down X wanted ships.
• Any other good ideas people can think of.

The more crime you've done, the more tasks you have to assist with to complete your penance. There could also be a difficulty rating for the tasks that can be worked out later.
Obviously, you don't get any rewards from the tasks, so no credits, materials, reputation, or influence.
I haven't included donations as a penance, as you shouldn't be able to buy your way out, and it would be too trivial for some players.

Until you've completed your penance, you will still be persona non grata and a KOS target in the circumstances detailed above.
Obviously, when given a task that requires you to enter and dock at a particular non-anarchy system, you will be given a restricted pass so you can dock, and security forces won't attack you. I would also recommend that you're escorted by local security on entering the system, but I don't know how viable that would be.
[EDIT]: It would make sense for one of the Advanced Tactical Responder (ATR) ships from the Interstellar Factor to be locked in to your Wing group as soon as you begin your penance, and only leaving your Wing once you've completed all tasks.

If you commit a crime whilst doing your penance, your progress will be reset so you'll have to redo the list, and more tasks will be tacked on accordingly, as well as additional bounties and Notoriety, which means you'll have to high-tail it back to an anarchy system until your Notoriety reaches zero and you can come back to an Interstellar Factor to pay your new bounties and restart your penance.

This new system would mean that you can't simply go exploring or deep-space mining while things blow over, and expect nothing more than some pitiful bounty payout when you return, which hasn't really been working well as a deterrent.
It would also make it mean something to be an outlaw.

I've never actually been killed by another player, and I do play in Open, so this is more of how I'd like things to play out for me if I decided to be a murderer in the game.
There needs to be a real cost.

Some people may want to extend the Penance system to other crimes, but to a lesser degree, and I'd be alright with that too.

 

[enonymous]

I don't think murder can be treated this way. Logically, if you treat it like this, anyone doing illegal assassination missions should also face this kind of impact. People wanting powerplay to be a murderfest would never be able to dock.

I do like the direction you're going.

 

[WesULVD]

I finally found someone who thinks the same as me about this. This would make perfect sense!

But, and I have put this here before. To balance it out a little and I do appreciate that some players like being the baddies.

There should be Pirate systems where you can only dock in secret bases if you are wanted. So everyone in those systems will get attacked by NPCs and the station would immediately attack you should you get near UNLESS you're wanted. Obviously these systems should be on the edges of the bubble.

And scenarios could be that players need clean these systems out as a wing mission by killing a set amount of pirates. This way states of systems could be changed (similar to Thargoid incursion). Interesting detail would be that a group of Pirates could change the state of a legit system to pirate smack bang in the middle of the bubble as a massive middle finger to one of the reigning powers.

 

[Marra Morgan]

I've never actually been killed by another player, and I do play in Open, so this is more of how I'd like things to play out for me if I decided to be a murderer in the game.

I think you should go out there and be a murderer in the game and then reflect on your proposal.

 

[VR CMDR Novindus]

I don't think murder can be treated this way. Logically, if you treat it like this, anyone doing illegal assassination missions should also face this kind of impact. People wanting powerplay to be a murderfest would never be able to dock.

I do like the direction you're going.

You’re right, but I think that’s as it should be. The other option would be to have this mechanic in play only when a human player’s character is murdered. That would create a real cost for gankers at least, but would kill consistency, particularly for role playing.

But it could be that some other elements of the game might need to be tweaked to accommodate penance. For example, assassination to me feels like it should have a covert element, such that you have a chance to evade detection, and thereby, punishment. Powerplay on the other hand feels like it should be treated as war, and war has different rules, so again a murder charge could be circumvented that way.

Still, I wouldn’t be against all murder being treated equally as the simplest solution.

 

[VR CMDR Novindus]

I finally found someone who thinks the same as me about this. This would make perfect sense!

But, and I have put this here before. To balance it out a little and I do appreciate that some players like being the baddies.

There should be Pirate systems where you can only dock in secret bases if you are wanted. So everyone in those systems will get attacked by NPCs and the station would immediately attack you should you get near UNLESS you're wanted. Obviously these systems should be on the edges of the bubble.

And scenarios could be that players need clean these systems out as a wing mission by killing a set amount of pirates. This way states of systems could be changed (similar to Thargoid incursion). Interesting detail would be that a group of Pirates could change the state of a legit system to pirate smack bang in the middle of the bubble as a massive middle finger to one of the reigning powers.

Clever addition. I’d support that too. “You don’t want to go there - that’s Pirate Space.”

 

[VR CMDR Novindus]

I think you should go out there and be a murderer in the game and then reflect on your proposal.

Well if I decide to become an outlaw in the game, I’ll want to be treated like one.
I’m wanted, and I’m infamous. I’m not welcome in town. If I want to change my ways, then there’s a debt to the galactic community I have to put in the work to repay.

You could still live your life on the outer rim in anarchy, provided you don’t make too many enemies there.
You can still even travel to systems you’re not welcome in to loot and kill and then haul butt back home, as long as you can avoid security forces, but that’s part of being a criminal.

So what’s your objection to that?

 

[Deathmair]

Is there a way we can put a bounty on a player? If not we should be able to place a bounty on a player at the requestors expense. I would pay a 1mil to take someone out. This should be an option in the black market because it's latterly illegal to put a hit on a player. SO in retospec I would suggest an option on the black market to put a bounty on people even tho you risk on getting a bounty on yourself or end up broke.

 

[EWanderer]

As much as I don't like mindless reasonless kiling, we have to face it: The current Notority and Bounty System is super gamy. Just this week the Galnet reported on yet another Crime, with no real leads on the ones responsible. You would think, that Criminals really would leave enough evidence in Space behind for them to become identified? Disrupting Comms is already a thing and destroying the Black Box and Escape Pod would leave almost nothing for Law Enforcement to work with.

So yeah if you want to add "realistic" punishment, you also need to add realistic crime, which would leave all Murder-hobos unaccountable, so have fun with that.

 

[Deathmair]

As much as I don't like mindless reasonless kiling, we have to face it: The current Notority and Bounty System is super gamy. Just this week the Galnet reported on yet another Crime, with no real leads on the ones responsible. You would think, that Criminals really would leave enough evidence in Space behind for them to become identified? Disrupting Comms is already a thing and destroying the Black Box and Escape Pod would leave almost nothing for Law Enforcement to work with.

So yeah if you want to add "realistic" punishment, you also need to add realistic crime, which would leave all Murder-hobos unaccountable, so have fun with that.

I like the sound of that! Joining an enforcement department which is located at each of the prison station. Joining the department grants you access to Current Criminals Database, which gives you a last scanned location and Allis info. You can work with other enforcements and bring these criminals down.