We're discussing player bounties internally and considering an increase to the current cap on those. This needs to be decided carefully to avoid exploitation.
I spent some time thinking about that one; not because I participate, but because the current implementation sounds silly. My idea for avoiding people exploiting it is as follows:
- Players can only get player collectable bounties for killing players. That means that an easily obtained billion credit fine for smuggling (or similar) cannot be used to quickly gain a bounty value.
- Bounty gained is calculated as follows: Total rebuy cost of target's ship + total rebuy cost perpetrators' ship at the time of death + arbitrary cost (this could vary from system to system with lowest in low security systems).
- On the rebuy screen the perpetrator must pay as much as possible of their bounties, even if they must sell ships, parts and/or fleet carriers (including anything in storage) to pay off at least 50% of their bounties total value. If you've incurred a billion credit bounty and someone kills you in a relevant system, you need to pay off at least 500,000,000 credits. This also applies if you've been killed by NPCs.
- If this is not possible, the perpetrator is charged however much they can afford to leave them with 1,000 credits and a free Sidewinder.
- Bounties only pay out when the perpetrator goes past their rebuy screen. The payout is split between the wing members of the killer, and who were in the instance where the perpetrator was killed.
- Bounty payout to players is less than the "fine" paid by the perpetrator. 50 to 75% for example. Call the rest processing fees, payment for rescue vehicles, restitution etc.
This makes being a PvP ganker far more dangerous, because once you've done it enough, you're faced with having to start over entirely (including engineering) if things go bad. I'm not above suggesting that materials are part of the stuff that may/must be sold off to cover the bounty to make things even more dangerous, just make sure it has reasonable value.
As an example - Vectron has a combined bounty of 2.3 billion credits (my highest fine I think). I get together with a friend I want to boost and have them kill me in my Sidewinder.
At the rebuy screen I remember I only have 200 million credits in cash, and I need to pay off 50% (1.15 billion credits). I now have to sell off ships and parts in storage to cover this. I can't selectively sell individual parts in a stored ship - I can only sell the entire ship. I choose to sell off as many unmodified ships and parts as possible, and I'm now left with having to pay 125 million credits, and the least valuable modified ship in my stored fleet that I'm willing to sell off is 300 million credits. I sell that and have the option of keeping the remaining 175 million credits in cash or use that to pay off more of my bounty. I choose to pay another 75 million and keep 100 million credits in cash. All in all I've paid off 1.25 billion credits of my 2.3 billion credit bounty. My remaining bounty is now 1.05 billion credits.
My friend is given a voucher for 50% of the 1.25 billion credits I paid, which is 612.5 million credits. All in all the value of the involved players has been reduced by 612.5 million credits, despite my friend getting 612.5 million credits in bounty vouchers. This can still be used by very rich players to give their friends a massive credit boost, but since there's a significant loss in combined value of the players, I do not think this counts as an exploit.
It is slightly convoluted in terms of getting payouts, but it gets rid of a lot of weird complications that the current system in my opinion, and it makes dying with active bounties quite dangerous and costly. Make it impossible to pay off these bounties without going through the rebuy screen, and things get even more dangerous.
A slight alternative is having individual bounties for each kill, with each of them having to be paid off in full until 50% of their total bounty value at death has been fulfilled. This is more dangerous, when you're suddenly staring at having to pay off a couple of billion credit bounties/fines after having paid off a bunch of cheap ones.
Edit: I wasn't done. Not sure why it posted.
