General Bounty Hunting Rebalance

[mightyowl]

Can the bounty placed on a killer be the cost of the victim’s rebuy cost, average cargo value, the total value of unclaimed vouchers and exploration data?
It means the punishment fits the crime.

Flying around for hours and only getting 50,000 cr just isn’t fun with the risk and reward.

 

[Garel]

While a slight bump to the bounties would not be unwelcome, I think the core issue lies in the credit bloat brought upon by mining.

Bumping the rest of the professions to match mining payouts would be a mistake, imo, as it would only further devalue credits. Instead, mining needs a major nerf, so that other professions don't feel pointless by comparison.

 

[mightyowl]

I would go the other way and say the other professions need a buff. I'm more into having fun in what you're doing than chasing credits but it is a long time between getting new ships and modules. I don't think we need to worry about credit inflation but instead the player sense of progression. I'm near the end game but I remember that early game grind.

I understand the view with nerfing some minable commodities being way too valuable compared to others.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Can the bounty placed on a killer be the cost of the victim’s rebuy cost, average cargo value, the total value of unclaimed vouchers and exploration data?
It means the punishment fits the crime.

Flying around for hours and only getting 50,000 cr just isn’t fun with the risk and reward.

I assume you're talking about PvP bounties here?

I think the problem with doing it this way is that it actively encourages picking on weak targets - a fully-equipped battle Cutter has a rebuy of about 70 million, and would be pretty tough to get a kill on anyway, while a cheap undefendable trade T-9 has a rebuy of 6 million, maybe the same again in cargo value depending on what it's hauling, and will go splat under any sort of sustained fire.

The way it actually works where PvP killers get a much higher bounty for picking on weak targets is much better as it encourages them to take on things their own size (which are therefore harder to kill in the first place) ... though in practice, it's so easy not to die once your ship is reasonably protected, and PvP attack ships are way more than reasonably protected that there are plenty of people going around with multi-billion bounties which would really hurt if anyone ever could possibly kill them.

(But making defenses weak enough to make it easy for people to kill PvP killers also makes it really hard for everyone else to run away from them)

Frontier should lift the cap on PvP bounty payouts, though - killing someone with a 100 million bounty to only be paid 2 million of that is a bit pointless, and Fleet Carriers mean that it'd be a silly way to do cash transfer in future.

 

[mightyowl]

Yes, I see your point, encourage taking on others at their level.

 

[[VR] Dr Gentech]

I assume you're talking about PvP bounties here?

I think the problem with doing it this way is that it actively encourages picking on weak targets - a fully-equipped battle Cutter has a rebuy of about 70 million, and would be pretty tough to get a kill on anyway, while a cheap undefendable trade T-9 has a rebuy of 6 million, maybe the same again in cargo value depending on what it's hauling, and will go splat under any sort of sustained fire.

The way it actually works where PvP killers get a much higher bounty for picking on weak targets is much better as it encourages them to take on things their own size (which are therefore harder to kill in the first place) ... though in practice, it's so easy not to die once your ship is reasonably protected, and PvP attack ships are way more than reasonably protected that there are plenty of people going around with multi-billion bounties which would really hurt if anyone ever could possibly kill them.

(But making defenses weak enough to make it easy for people to kill PvP killers also makes it really hard for everyone else to run away from them)

Frontier should lift the cap on PvP bounty payouts, though - killing someone with a 100 million bounty to only be paid 2 million of that is a bit pointless, and Fleet Carriers mean that it'd be a silly way to do cash transfer in future.

How would you solve the problem, Ian?

 

[Ian Doncaster]

How would you solve the problem, Ian?

Fair question

I don't think it is solvable in the context of Elite Dangerous without undoing so much of what's already been done that the complaints from that would far outweigh any complaints currently being received about PvP balance. Solo and PG let people avoid it completely if they want to, and a relatively easy set of defensive engineering and tactics lets moderately experienced players be perfectly safe from ship loss in Open (though they may be fairly easy to drive away), so I'd just stick with what there is and maybe keep on with the "help for new players" improvements to get people up to the stage where they can be safe in Open more easily. (And perhaps carefully add more NPC aggression to encourage people to fit those defences)

If I was starting from a blank slate, then:
- have relatively little spread in combat power between the weakest and strongest ship (A-rated Viper III/Viper IV/Cobra III/Keelback sort of spread, nothing more)
- make it take at least a few minutes of actively trying to escape combat; make firing back not only compatible with escaping but actively beneficial ... but once escaped it's hard for an attacker to catch you a second time
- make it take at least ten minutes to completely destroy a ship ... but only a few minutes (similar to the escape time) to break off a cargo pod (or on the other side, do enough damage to temporarily make a pirate/hunter ship non-viable for winning a fight) ... reward hunters for damaging and driving off pirates, rather than killing them.
- make the political layer less optional, so that you will make some enemies no matter what, and therefore being attacked (even by NPCs) is more normal, and therefore people don't get bright ideas like "if I leave the weapons and shields off I can fit more cargo"
- make cash relatively unimportant (or perhaps entirely absent) and political success quite important, try to set up "partial success" as a usual result (e.g. trade trip gets through but with a couple of pods stolen along the way ; bounty hunter drives off a pirate but needs to "spend" most of the kudos they get for it on ship-repair favours)

 

[Hat Man]

While a slight bump to the bounties would not be unwelcome, I think the core issue lies in the credit bloat brought upon by mining.

Bumping the rest of the professions to match mining payouts would be a mistake, imo, as it would only further devalue credits. Instead, mining needs a major nerf, so that other professions don't feel pointless by comparison.

This is the worst sentiment that only encouraged FDEV to continue hitting every decent paying option with the nerf bat.

My guy... Everything in this game is a grind. Everything. It's not the end of the world if players can earn a decent amount of credits quickly doing whatever makes them happy. There's still engineers to unlock, THEN INDIVIDUALLY rank up, there's still materials to grind, there's still factions and faction ships to grind, there's still guardian modules to grind... There will still always be grind. I couldn't care less if credits are devalued in a game where there's so many OTHER grinds to do that the credit grind only frustrates you the most. FDEV have already devalued credits by making so many other things to grind. Now the credit grind annoys people because they're having to do that to get the ships they want before seriously touching the other stuff.

I could maybe see mining getting a small nerf while combat gets a big buff to surpass mining and be a little above where mining is now, but don't ever encourage FDEV to coninue doing what they always do: Make EVERYTHING AS GRINDY AS POSSIBLE. For players like myself, I've only just gotten the ships that I wanted after hundreds of hours, and as far as I'm concerned, the game is only JUST NOW beginning, thanks to how much grind there is in unlocking and using engineers, guardian modules, and faction rep. And if they really want fleet carriers to cost this much to maintain, not even mining makes them really worth it time-wise. And all this wouldn't be such a huge problem if I could make this much doing literally anything else. Variety spices things up, it'd be nice to switch it up between trade, combat, exploration, etc, and not see such a huge hit to my credit earning. Feels like a waste of time if I'm not doing mining for hours on end.

 

[Garel]

This is the worst sentiment that only encouraged FDEV to continue hitting every decent paying option with the nerf bat.

My guy... Everything in this game is a grind. Everything. It's not the end of the world if players can earn a decent amount of credits quickly doing whatever makes them happy. There's still engineers to unlock, THEN INDIVIDUALLY rank up, there's still materials to grind, there's still factions and faction ships to grind, there's still guardian modules to grind... There will still always be grind. I couldn't care less if credits are devalued in a game where there's so many OTHER grinds to do that the credit grind only frustrates you the most. FDEV have already devalued credits by making so many other things to grind. Now the credit grind annoys people because they're having to do that to get the ships they want before seriously touching the other stuff.

I could maybe see mining getting a small nerf while combat gets a big buff to surpass mining and be a little above where mining is now, but don't ever encourage FDEV to coninue doing what they always do: Make EVERYTHING AS GRINDY AS POSSIBLE. For players like myself, I've only just gotten the ships that I wanted after hundreds of hours, and as far as I'm concerned, the game is only JUST NOW beginning, thanks to how much grind there is in unlocking and using engineers, guardian modules, and faction rep. And if they really want fleet carriers to cost this much to maintain, not even mining makes them really worth it time-wise. And all this wouldn't be such a huge problem if I could make this much doing literally anything else. Variety spices things up, it'd be nice to switch it up between trade, combat, exploration, etc, and not see such a huge hit to my credit earning. Feels like a waste of time if I'm not doing mining for hours on end.

And I absolutely agree that the game is too grindy, especially in terms of faction rep and engineering. I'd be all up for reducing grind in those areas! However, when it comes to credits, I feel it has already been swayed way too far in the opposite direction, I feel.

Once a player can afford a medium mining ship, they're literally hours away from upgrading into an anaconda, or any ship of their choice. I feel like something is lost in that, making credits essentially a non- factor, unless we're talking about extreme price tags, such as the 5 bil needed for a fleet carrier. (As a side note, I think that price was balanced around mining, and such is the reason it's so big in the first place). So bumping the rest of the professions to match, would mean that any further "end game" content would only continue the already extreme credit bloat, further pushing any ship purchase into "pocket change" territory.
Unless I suppose, they bump ship prices at least slightly, to be more in line with profession payouts.

Alternatively, if the game would be balanced to match mining, I'd really like to see more ways to utilize our credits. (I'd gladly pay 500 mil or so to unlock an engineer module)

So, I really am not advocating for the game to become more of a grindfest, rather, a more balanced progression that has an actual mid game.

Additionally, I strongly agree that risk should reflect the reward. So piracy, bounty hunting and especially AX combat should have the biggest payday, whichever way the game is balanced. And missions. Missions need to pay way more.