Crime & Punishment Changes

[Justinian Octavius]

I think it is fair to argue that the Beyond Crime & Punishment changes although taking many great steps in the right direction haven't reached their full potential & some find aspects on occasion frustrating. As such, here are some quick thoughts on changes that could possibly make it more effective & possibly enjoyable.

Fines & Bounties
These apply again to the Commander, not the ship. However, ships are still marked as hot if the Commander has earned Notoriety in them.

Anonymous Login

• No longer occurs for Fines or Bounties but instead happens following a successful stealth docking
• Allows 'grey market' commodity trading & access to the Black Market. 'Grey Market' is the standard Commodities Market with only high demand goods available. Commanders receive a premium Sell Price for trading in these in this mode. Mission Board & Passenger Lounge only show criminal, secretive & potentially illegal missions.
• The only Station Services available are Black Market, Commodities Market, Mission Board, Passenger Lounge, Power Contact, Refuel & Ship Transfer.

Hot Ships & Modules
Hot ships & modules can only be transferred using Anonymous Login accept between Anarchy systems (which can be transferred as normal). There is no increased cost for doing so. Ships can be cleaned at Interstellar Factors if the commander has a notoriety of 0 or anytime if the Interstellar Factors is an Anarchy System. The cost of cleaning is a percentage of the ship's value.

Interstellar Factors
Only fines can be paid off at Interstellar Factors, bounties cannot.

Notoriety & ATRs

• Notoriety does not decay over time & is per Superpower
• ATRs will now also randomly drop into instances of players with Notoriety throughout the appropriate Superpower territory until the Commander has a Notoriety of 0 with that Superpower.
• Killing the ATRs or being destroyed by the ATRs in this type of incursion reduces Notoriety by 1. The former also removes the bounty
• Strength of ATRs is influenced by level of Notoriety
• The ATRs could be themed, adding new characters & lore to the game

Rebuy
Commanders can opt to have a replacement ship for free but it will take a number of hours/days to be delivered and in the meantime they will have to use a sidewinder or another ship they own

Anyway, just some ideas.

CMDR Justinian Octavius

 

[bigity]

It's a no from me dawg.

Maybe if crime was worth doing in the first place. Why punish something any further that isn't worth doing in the first place?

 

[Wargfoot]

I incurred a 200cr. fine with a faction with which I'm allied.
I made it to the dock, paid the fine, and then was immediately transferred to a detention facility.

So if I was going to change C&R one thing I'd look at is that if I'm allied with a faction that accidently shooting an ally wouldn't immediately incur a fine, and if I did get a fine anything less than 1,000 cr shouldn't be getting me booted to a detention facility - especially when I've just paid it. I think the ridiculously low fines getting you transferred to the other side of the galaxy is ridiculous.

If I murder someone - sure, that makes sense - but the equivalent of chewing gum in class shouldn't be breaking up my evening.

 

[peppi]

changes need to be made i agree
at least get the commanders wanted again not the ships
the noto must not expire

so yeah the whole C&P is not 100% atm
and still frontier favors the pvp players
when they complain its changed when pve players complain its git gud

 

[MickyG1982]

I incurred a 200cr. fine with a faction with which I'm allied.
I made it to the dock, paid the fine, and then was immediately transferred to a detention facility.

So if I was going to change C&R one thing I'd look at is that if I'm allied with a faction that accidently shooting an ally wouldn't immediately incur a fine, and if I did get a fine anything less than 1,000 cr shouldn't be getting me booted to a detention facility - especially when I've just paid it. I think the ridiculously low fines getting you transferred to the other side of the galaxy is ridiculous.

If I murder someone - sure, that makes sense - but the equivalent of chewing gum in class shouldn't be breaking up my evening.

If only you'd thought about interstellar factors rather than handing yourself in...

Then you wouldn't have gone to the detention facility at all. Never pay your fine or bounty off at station security and always read the text before you do...

 

[Wargfoot]

If only you'd thought about interstellar factors rather than handing yourself in...

Then you wouldn't have gone to the detention facility at all. Never pay your fine or bounty off at station security and always read the text before you do...

I know about intersteller factors - my point is I shouldn't need one for such petty fines.
Serious crimes? No problem.

 

[VR Davemartin88]

For me, the Interstellar Factor was farther away than the detention facility so I just paid it locally and then jumped back. Only 2 jumps.

 

[Justinian Octavius]

I incurred a 200cr. fine with a faction with which I'm allied.
I made it to the dock, paid the fine, and then was immediately transferred to a detention facility.

If a commander kills 1 NPC of a faction they are Allied it is probably going to be an accident. Perhaps a perk of being Allied is you get let off with the bounty & instead get a fine and your Rep gets goes down to Friendly. I'd also look at fitting stations with 'magic air bag healing beams' so ships can't get destroyed by being rammed inside/colliding inside a station.

CMDR Justinian Octavius

 

[Barney_dk]

So this just happened to me. I can't understand that FDev think this is the correct outcome. I get a 100 cr fine for clipping a ship on the way out of a station. Then get interdicted, and killed. Then moved 350 ly to a detention facility. Is this the type of improvements to the system you wanted?

 

[Wargfoot]

So this just happened to me. I can't understand that FDev think this is the correct outcome. I get a 100 cr fine for clipping a ship on the way out of a station. Then get interdicted, and killed. Then moved 350 ly to a detention facility. Is this the type of improvements to the system you wanted?

I've made it into the station before, paid the fine, and then upon paying the fine (they took the money) I was then immediately shipped to a prison.
I think the whole crime and punishment thingy needs a work over.

 

[murder_duck_5000]

Fines won't send you to a detention center... I think you guys might be getting them confused with Bounties.

FYI, Crime is very lucrative atm. Pirating installations and NPC convoys is probably the second most profitable business behind VO.

Sometimes crime is necessary; for instance, if there's an enemy CMDR interfering in your BGS ops, you have to kill him, which will get you a bounty.

I like the idea of making notoriety superpower-based.

There should be a way to get rid of notoriety, but I don't think it should be done by killing the ATR. I propose making it instead based on superpower reputation. The higher you notoriety goes, the lower your reputation, and vis versa. Work on improving your superpower rep to keep yourself safe from ATR if you by chance happen to earn a bounty with some random faction. Bounties should just stay there, but I think you should only be tracked by NPC hunters within a limited range of any systems where the faction you have a bounty with is present.

I think rebuy should stay the same as it is now, tbh. What might be cool would be a re-working of the detention center mechanic. Somebody wrote a post about it "make prison meaningful", I liked the ideas proposed there.

 

[Killnine]

If notoriety was per superpower, perhaps being caught in their territory would mean you have no access to rebuy and have to buy a ship at the detention centre. So you fly a Hauler (or similar, the selection should be pretty poor and not include combat oriented ships) to a territory where you're not notorious, and only then get the option to rebuy your beloved fully engineered murder boat.

This way, even fabulously rich immortal space pirates would have actual consequences for getting caught.

 

[Screemonster]

I've said it before, but main thing that would remove the massive annoyance of C&P for incidentally-criminal cmdrs such as accidental assault and trespass bounties and the like that incur bounties in the hundreds, instead of thousands, of credits, would be to make bounties decay into fines after you leave the jurisdiction provided they're below a certain threshold.
The only reason these low-level crimes are bounties instead of fines in the first place is to summon authority ships and make it legal for the person you're shooting to shoot back, there's no need for them to dog you after the fact as though you were a serial murderer.

 

[murder_duck_5000]

If we really want to deal with incidental crimes, instead of making bounties decay into fines, I propose going to the root of the problem. Make it so that assaulting a ship leads to a fine, but continued assault leads to a bounty. So, for instance, every time you shoot somebody you get a 500CR fine, and then there's a two second cooldown before you get another fine. Get a 1500CR fine for assault, and it becomes a bounty. This gives you six seconds to stop shooting the good guys before you start getting killed.

I think bounties should be per-CMDR and ships shouldn't be "hot". Having a wanted CMDR be able to clean ship and remain undetected unless he is scanned with a KWS doesn't fix the problem imo.

On a side-note, a grey market for outfitting your ship in a region where you are wanted would be nice.

 

[MickyG1982]

I think bounties should be per-CMDR and ships shouldn't be "hot". Having a wanted CMDR be able to clean ship and remain undetected unless he is scanned with a KWS doesn't fix the problem imo.

They used to be, all crimes were against the commander rather than the ship.

But it was a system that could (and was) easily abused by racking up fines and bounties in your most expensive ship (read ganking), then switching to a sidey and managing to die. As all crimes and bounties were against the pilot all were wiped and the criminal could continue on Scot free avoiding any real punishment whatsoever.

Also, it's not as if there wasn't just as much salt being poured over that version of C&P. Indeed the only real difference between old and new was that all bounties were against your ship and not you.

 

[juddadredd]

When I hit the mail box in my Cutter why the hell cant I pay off the fine from inside my ship while in the system ?
I can PayPal from my car for God’s sake, or the train or even in a plane.

Also goes hand in hand with, why can’t I pick up Data courier missions from outside the station ?
Short range directional laser like we have today would do the job.

Why can’t nav beacons be expanded to cover some of the points raised above ?

 

[Dillon Fallon]

I'm with people on the bounties for small stuff. At the moment, the difference between an assault bounty and a murder bounty is an insignificant amount of credits and a 2 hour wait to pay it off. Maybe having a total bounty of less than 5000 cr decay to a fine after a while would be better when at worst all you've likely done is bruise some shields.

Personally I think the line between reckless weapons fire (fine) and assault (bounty) is ok as it's only an unlucky shot with something like a PA that gets you in trouble. Still, if you've done enough damage to warrant an assault bounty as things are now, system security should be getting involved.

 

[Screemonster]

When I hit the mail box in my Cutter why the hell cant I pay off the fine from inside my ship while in the system ?
I can PayPal from my car for God’s sake, or the train or even in a plane.

You used to be able to do exactly that in FE2.

 

[Wargfoot]

They used to be, all crimes were against the commander rather than the ship.

But it was a system that could (and was) easily abused by racking up fines and bounties in your most expensive ship (read ganking), then switching to a sidey and managing to die. As all crimes and bounties were against the pilot all were wiped and the criminal could continue on Scot free avoiding any real punishment whatsoever.

Also, it's not as if there wasn't just as much salt being poured over that version of C&P. Indeed the only real difference between old and new was that all bounties were against your ship and not you.

I don't understand this at all.
If the crimes are against the commander then he should pay the entire cost of fines/bounties regardless of the ship he's piloting.

 

[Dillon Fallon]

I don't understand this at all.
If the crimes are against the commander then he should pay the entire cost of fines/bounties regardless of the ship he's piloting.

I suppose it's because now the effort is around cleaning up a heavily engineered ship. If it's on the CMDR, you get blown up you rebuy and get into a clean murder ship. Now you have to clean up the ship to park it in the station of a faction you've committed a crime against (or to keep the bounty hunters off your back). There's no fix without selling the ship and buying a new one or paying off the bounties (both at significant cost).

At least, I think that was the idea. At one point fines and bounties were tied to factions and then would be escalated to superpower bounties when they got big enough. Being unable to dock in any Fed, Imperial or Alliance dock until bounties were paid would have been significant.

But then bugs happened and things had to be toned down to make it work.