Bounties need to be tied to CMDR, not ship

FDev seems like they want CMDRs to interact with each other more, and frankly if this is the case tying bounties to ships is not the way to go.

CMDRs can easily spread their bounties out right now, or even eliminate them by buying a new ship hull, transferring modules, and selling the bountied ship. This is inane. Having a huge bounty on a CMDR's HEAD encourages others to hunt him down. The current system renders bounties less meaningful.
 

Lestat

Banned
FDev seems like they want CMDRs to interact with each other more, and frankly if this is the case tying bounties to ships is not the way to go.

CMDRs can easily spread their bounties out right now, or even eliminate them by buying a new ship hull, transferring modules, and selling the bountied ship. This is inane. Having a huge bounty on a CMDR's HEAD encourages others to hunt him down. The current system renders bounties less meaningful.
I Was thinking the Modules tied to the Bounties also? So if they are Engineered It would be a pain in the rear to make it again.
 
I think being KWS'd while in a different ship should reveal that it is linked to a currently outstanding bounty on another ship owned by the same player (and therefore add that bounty to the current ship), but I haven't done much with this since the new KWS rules were introduced in March 2018 and it may be that it already works that way.
 
I totally agree with J.. I find it useless and inconvenient that the bounties are tied to ships and modules. It doesn't even make sense. It's like not being responsible of what the ship has done.
More over at present when we enter outfitting with a bounty we should at least get a big reminder. The small symbol next to the module is almost invisible and easy to miss. You end up having to pay huge money to clean a module you removed from a ship you didn't even know you had a 500 Cr bounty.
 
More over at present when we enter outfitting with a bounty we should at least get a big reminder. The small symbol next to the module is almost invisible and easy to miss. You end up having to pay huge money to clean a module you removed from a ship you didn't even know you had a 500 Cr bounty.

It could be more obvious, yes. I once forgot about a small bounty on my SRV (there may have been a bug that hid it at the time), switched ships & was unable to return to the 'wanted' ship. I had to pay a large fee to get it transferred to another location.

But I only did that once ;)
 
I think they can be cleaned for a fee.
Yes, though it's quite a large fee. You have to have a pretty big bounty before paying for a new hull and all your modules to be cleaned is the cheap way to get rid of it.

However, the problem with CMDR-based bounties is that they were subject to exploits. The alternative to "people expensively shuffle modules once in a while to keep their bounty below 100 million" was not "people accumulate multi-billion bounties" but "people very rarely have bounties at all" - before 3.0, I saw a lot of notorious player-killers hanging around with Clean status, because they just cleaned the bounties off each run.

What you could do with the old CMDR-based bounties was:
- run up a big bounty
- buy a Sidewinder
- attack the station with the Sidewinder to get the bounty detected
- get destroyed by the station
...one of
- declare bankruptcy rather than paying rebuy, clearing the bounty with the loss of a cheap Sidewinder only (and a teleport back to your starting system)
- for smaller bounties, pay the bounty and the Sidewinder rebuy, avoiding paying the rebuy on your actual expensive ship you'd obtained the bounty in

If there was a way to tie the bounty to the CMDR without exploits, they'd probably have gone with it, but no-one found one (either Frontier or players). They tried one for a little while in 2.4 and it had some interesting edge cases leading to 50 million credit trespass bounties and similar.
 
Until you can peel yourself out of your seat and mosey over to the IF cutie to pay your fine,
you are your ship.
 
I would put the bounty on the player and the notoriety on the ship. Any ship with notoriety cannot be transferred and cannot have its modules changed except at an Anarchy.
 
Yes, though it's quite a large fee. You have to have a pretty big bounty before paying for a new hull and all your modules to be cleaned is the cheap way to get rid of it.

However, the problem with CMDR-based bounties is that they were subject to exploits. The alternative to "people expensively shuffle modules once in a while to keep their bounty below 100 million" was not "people accumulate multi-billion bounties" but "people very rarely have bounties at all" - before 3.0, I saw a lot of notorious player-killers hanging around with Clean status, because they just cleaned the bounties off each run.

What you could do with the old CMDR-based bounties was:
  • run up a big bounty
  • buy a Sidewinder
  • attack the station with the Sidewinder to get the bounty detected
  • get destroyed by the station
...one of
  • declare bankruptcy rather than paying rebuy, clearing the bounty with the loss of a cheap Sidewinder only (and a teleport back to your starting system)
  • for smaller bounties, pay the bounty and the Sidewinder rebuy, avoiding paying the rebuy on your actual expensive ship you'd obtained the bounty in
If there was a way to tie the bounty to the CMDR without exploits, they'd probably have gone with it, but no-one found one (either Frontier or players). They tried one for a little while in 2.4 and it had some interesting edge cases leading to 50 million credit trespass bounties and similar.
Easy fix: your bounty decreases by your rebuy amount when you die.

Dying in a Sidey won't clear it.

If you also cap bounty payouts at the rebuy amount, exploits are largely eliminated.
 
The problem isn't the ship-based or player-based bounty. It's the misuse of fines, bounties and notoriety. All three of these features do the wrong things.

Fines
Intended: legally enforced financial punishments for minor infractions designed to teach people to behave a little more responsibly. No one else would even know unless they looked up your past fines.
Actual: makes you almost a complete outcast by virtually every station in the galaxy until your meager 100cr fine is paid. Then everything's fine.

Bounties
Intended: a reward for the capture or death of a highly dangerous, wanted, repeat criminal. Usually quite lucrative because the target is likely to be very difficult to take down or bring in.
Actual: an excuse for the AI to fly in front of a shot already in the air, blame the player, turn all guns on him immediately, lock him out of all station services and force him to visit specific stations to pay off the only slightly bigger "fine" that nobody else will let him pay. Then everything's completely fine.

Notoriety
Intended: a lasting reputation based on past history that affects peoples' perception of someone negatively for a very long time
Actual: A good reason to for a griefer to just park somewhere obscure and go take a nap, then come back and everything's fine.

NONE of these things do what a good crime and punishment system ought to do. Accidents are punished with inconvenience that's usually a trivial cost...unless it's a bad enough accident that someone wants you dead instead of 100 credits poorer. Then a normally upstanding citizen, even with MILITARY RANK AND SPOTLESS REPUTATION, is completely outcast and killed on sight.

The career criminal, on the other hand, has only two problems: waiting for the notoriety timer to tick down and making sure he's still making enough money to have fun. Nothing changes for him. The system hurts honest players who fly (or shoot) less than perfectly while causing only the slightest divergence in playstyle for dedicated criminals. That's not a good system to me.
 
The problem isn't the ship-based or player-based bounty. It's the misuse of fines, bounties and notoriety. All three of these features do the wrong things.

Fines
Intended: legally enforced financial punishments for minor infractions designed to teach people to behave a little more responsibly. No one else would even know unless they looked up your past fines.
Actual: makes you almost a complete outcast by virtually every station in the galaxy until your meager 100cr fine is paid. Then everything's fine.

Bounties
Intended: a reward for the capture or death of a highly dangerous, wanted, repeat criminal. Usually quite lucrative because the target is likely to be very difficult to take down or bring in.
Actual: an excuse for the AI to fly in front of a shot already in the air, blame the player, turn all guns on him immediately, lock him out of all station services and force him to visit specific stations to pay off the only slightly bigger "fine" that nobody else will let him pay. Then everything's completely fine.

Notoriety
Intended: a lasting reputation based on past history that affects peoples' perception of someone negatively for a very long time
Actual: A good reason to for a griefer to just park somewhere obscure and go take a nap, then come back and everything's fine.

NONE of these things do what a good crime and punishment system ought to do. Accidents are punished with inconvenience that's usually a trivial cost...unless it's a bad enough accident that someone wants you dead instead of 100 credits poorer. Then a normally upstanding citizen, even with MILITARY RANK AND SPOTLESS REPUTATION, is completely outcast and killed on sight.

The career criminal, on the other hand, has only two problems: waiting for the notoriety timer to tick down and making sure he's still making enough money to have fun. Nothing changes for him. The system hurts honest players who fly (or shoot) less than perfectly while causing only the slightest divergence in playstyle for dedicated criminals. That's not a good system to me.
You summarized it PERFECTLY. Well done, CMDR.
 
Fines had a standard cost for all players.
For example, a big ship intentionally ramming a small ship and thus giving them an inconsequential 100cr bounty for griefing.
Making the ship "part of the crime" allowed the fines to scale up with the commander as well.
Shutting down services until you paid off the fine, stopped wanton recklessness, giving notoriety for Killing someone, gives a second "line" of punishment.
NPC kills is not as dramatic as the PVP.
So a player who opted to kill unconsenting pvp'er have a harder time killing other players via a loophole of "but it was just an accident".
They have a harder time cleaning their record.
 
I find it great that with the current C&P you can have wanted ships where you enjoy the wanted gameplay, and you can have the rest of your fleet for other types of gameplay. I think it was great game design.

Hard yes. It was a real creative shot in the arm for me and a lot of the outlaw players I know.

The problem isn't the ship-based or player-based bounty. It's the misuse of fines, bounties and notoriety. All three of these features do the wrong things.

Pump the brakes. You're off base on a lot of this. I'll go ahead and explain.

Fines
Intended: legally enforced financial punishments for minor infractions designed to teach people to behave a little more responsibly. No one else would even know unless they looked up your past fines.
Actual: makes you almost a complete outcast by virtually every station in the galaxy until your meager 100cr fine is paid. Then everything's fine.

Fines are only a problem at stations controlled by the faction that issued you the fine. If your notoriety is at zero just pay the fine. Who cares? The sky isn't falling.

Bounties
Intended: a reward for the capture or death of a highly dangerous, wanted, repeat criminal. Usually quite lucrative because the target is likely to be very difficult to take down or bring in.
Actual: an excuse for the AI to fly in front of a shot already in the air, blame the player, turn all guns on him immediately, lock him out of all station services and force him to visit specific stations to pay off the only slightly bigger "fine" that nobody else will let him pay. Then everything's completely fine.

They're intended to punish certain criminal behaviors regardless of who commits them. If you're having problems shooting clean ships, watch your goddamn fire.

Notoriety
Intended: a lasting reputation based on past history that affects peoples' perception of someone negatively for a very long time
Actual: A good reason to for a griefer to just park somewhere obscure and go take a nap, then come back and everything's fine.

No one can see your notoriety so obviously "affects peoples' perception" was never intended.

Notoriety is partially why fines and bounties are tied to your ship and not the Commander. You can have a notoriety of 10 and still go play the game in another ship (be careful though, as you won't be able to pay off any new fines or bounties until the notoriety is gone!).

As far as your "griefer" comments the current C and P was never meant to just handle that. It was to apply consequences to all crime. It doesn't do too bad a job.

NONE of these things do what a good crime and punishment system ought to do. Accidents are punished with inconvenience that's usually a trivial cost...unless it's a bad enough accident that someone wants you dead instead of 100 credits poorer. Then a normally upstanding citizen, even with MILITARY RANK AND SPOTLESS REPUTATION, is completely outcast and killed on sight.

The career criminal, on the other hand, has only two problems: waiting for the notoriety timer to tick down and making sure he's still making enough money to have fun. Nothing changes for him. The system hurts honest players who fly (or shoot) less than perfectly while causing only the slightest divergence in playstyle for dedicated criminals. That's not a good system to me.

Not true at all, but frankly I'm done explaining for now as you clearly aren't interested in the mechanics of C and P just in changing them to PUNISH THE GRIFFERZS.

You summarized it PERFECTLY. Well done, CMDR.

No. Not at all. As per usual, you non-outlaw types just need to get good.
 
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