Holy mother of replies, you managed to mention everything!a. It generally does in ED. Ever done any bounty hunting? Ever been able to claim a bounty via not killing? Do you know any mechanism by which you can drag a wanted ship to a station and hand it in? (Not saying it wouldn't be good to be able to do that stuff, but it's more a point of whether it's possible at present.)
b. At present you can actually turn yourself in alive. You just need to ensure you don't get killed on the way - which means you need to make sure you don't get scanned.
Criminals can't directly pay the bounties. When you got to an Interstellar Factor, you are paying someone to essentially hack the system and clear you of your wanted status illicitly. If you hand yourself in then you are sent to a detention centre and charged the amount of the bounty.
(For reference, the hand yourself in was only added because people were using ships with FSDs too small to jump out of their current systems, getting bounties, and then finding themselves with no option other than to get themselves killed.)
On what grounds are you disputing it? The general principle of it is spot on. Without that principle you've not got bounties, you've just got fines.
Again, how do you claim a bounty in game other than killing a criminal? (Well destroying the ship technically.)
And an ally shouldn't be doing illegal things against their allies. Accidental in your case, but what were you doing scanning your ally's outpost anyway? - just making the point here that it could be taken further and considered an act of treachery as you're an ally, and thus making you considered much more of a criminal and more warranting of a termination order - maybe one of them should make you the target of an assassination mission.
Whether a bounty is worth the effort is down to the bounty hunter.
You were blown up by law enforcement anyway, so technically that's due to you being wanted rather than the bounty anyway.
Quick point on being allied - I think you said at some point you were allied with the Federation. As well as the points above, being an ally of the superpower doesn't mean you're an ally of every minor faction of that superpower.
It not working in a way that was favourable to you doesn't equal it being a poorly-thought game mechanic.
Disregarding that, there are a great many other things that could have happened. What if the planet you'd done the scan on had been a high G world and you hadn't noticed? What if you got interdicted and shot down? Etc. etc.
Ultimately you took a risky approach. That was your choice. If you hadn't done that you wouldn't have lost your exploration data (or at least you would have been less likely to).
.... That's not what it sounds like.
So at a very basic level we've got:
- Fines - work as fines. You owe money. You face a restriction in services when in the relevant jurisdiction until you pay it off.
- Bounties (and Wanted status) - You are wanted and someone is offering a reward for your death (ship destruction). You face being attacked (and potentially destroyed) by bounty hunters and law enforcement in the relevant jurisdiction.
Where is the lack of sense? Where's the lack of logic?
Oh wow, is that what you really think the situation is?
You think you're the first person to critique C&P? The first person to get on the wrong end of a bounty / wanted status?
You're not.
It's all come up before. And 'I've decided a bounty on me should be treated as a fine. The game doesn't treat it as a fine therefore C&P is stupid and broken.' is one of poorest critiques that comes up.
For reference, there was a big round of discussion prior to the implementation of the new C&P in 3.0. Many people provided feedback on FD's initial proposal, and gave their own proposals on how things should work (I know I did). 3.0 launched, player numbers hit a peak (as they always do around a big release) and further critique and feedback was given.
That sounds all well and good, but you you've spent a lot of time saying it's stupid and disagreeing with some pretty basic principles. Also, are you really saying you think it should be reworked so it makes sense to everyone? Or are you saying you think it should be reworked in a way that would have worked favourably for you personally in the particular circumstances you encountered?
It's a description of the manner you're accessing the station services. It's fine for what it is. I think what you're looking for is something different - i.e. something which tells you why you you're having to use anonymous access. But if you had a bounty you would already have had 'Wanted' displayed on your HUD.
Which is a good idea, but becomes totally redundant after the first time of being displayed. It's also partially there already - it's in the text if you click on the relevant item in the Transactions menu. - The text for Bounties is currently wrong though and needs sorting out. You can also find info on the Pilots Handbook. There's actually the basis for a good suggestion here though - see later in the post.
If docking wasn't allowed then that would completely remove the option of handing yourself in, which is something you appear to think there should be. There's already 'Wanted' on your HUD in red letters. Also the station isn't hostile to you until you're scanned - should it appear as red before or after? And would one way lead to some people getting confused for one reason and the other to some people getting confused for another reason? How would you avoid confusion over whether you have 'hostile' status with the faction in question, vs being wanted for a crime?
We've already got a simple system - fines, you don't get attacked; bounties/wanted, you get attacked.
That simple system results in confusion.
What makes you think that adding an extra level of complexity to bounties would eradicate the possibility of confusion?
All that would happen if your proposal was implemented is complaints from people who didn't realise things changed when they got higher bounties, and from people who disagreed with the response level their particular bounty received. As you'd have added more points for the confusion to happen (i.e. the change over points between every different level of bounty) there would more issues than there are now. It's all so predictable.
I think what I would say overall, is that the system is largely already fairly sensible and logical in terms of the basic principles we're talking about.
All that seems to be really needed is for there to be a bit of extra info provided on screen to a cmdr the first time they get a fine and the first time they get a bounty. (With it also appearing the first time a cmdr gets a fine or bounty the first time after any changes to the C&P system.)
That's a refinement of the suggestion you made above, and would seem to me to be a reasonable suggestion / feature request.
Anyway, as we're on, some extra info for you.
Things are now logged against your ship (including its component modules) rather than you. This makes sense when you think about it - it's the ship that's 'seen', not you directly.
This means that you can swap out to another ship. It also means that the ship that has the wanted status on it remains 'hot' until it's cleared, as do all the modules on the ship. If you swap the modules out to storage or another ship, they'll carry over the 'hot' status. If you put new modules onto the hot ship, they'll also become 'hot' You can clean the 'hot' status on modules individually but it's very expensive to do so. In your case it would be much more expensive to clean the modules then it would be to pay the bounty. This also makes sense as a general principle - for many ships the real value of the ship is not the ship itself but all the modules, and the investment that's been made in engineering them. Bounties would be meaningless if they could be avoided by just buying a new ship and swapping all the modules over to it.
I would advise having a read of the full info here so you know how C&P currently works and can avoid the risk of falling foul of incorrect assumptions: https://support.frontier.co.uk/kb/faq.php?id=423
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