A proposed rework of the bounty system: Tracking wanted commanders, increased rewards, etc

[SaliVader]

Before we start, be aware that I know this is not perfect. This is more like a set of ideas for Frontier, and my hope is that they will at least take some. These is a condensation of some ideas of mine and other ideas I've seen on Reddit. Please read everything, or at least section six, before commenting.

Why change the system we have now? Well, first of all, criminals face next to no consequences in Elite. I think it would be logical for the Pilots Federation to prosecute any person that attacks their pilots, even if tha criminal is one of their own pilots. This system would allow criminals to actually feel like criminals, instead of just being able to die in a suicidewinder and face no other consequence for their crimes. This would also open more possibilities for bounty hunters that wish to avenge their friends or protect their territory, as all we have now is the Top 5 bounties and last seen, which is... Lacking.

1. Bounties, gaining and losing them.
2. Criminal levels
3. Punishments
4. Rewards
5. Powerplay
6. Problems, solutions and other

1.

• Bounties against NPCs will remain as they are now
• Fines will turn into legacy fines, not bounties.
• Bounties obtained from attacking NPCs will decay as normal
• Galactic bounty (GB): Issued by the Pilots Federation for attacking other commanders (PP exceptions apply)
• Galactic bounties are universal, and are enforced everywhere except in anarchy systems.
• When you kill a commander within 2 ranks of your combat rank, you gain the ship rebuy you destroyed as bounty.
• When you die, you lose half of the rebuy cost of your current ship from your bounty. (possibly increase the rebuy cost as well, by 20% for instance, so a 50m rebuy would turn into a 60m rebuy, etc)

2.

• Criminal levels:
  • Lesser criminal: Bounty <100k CR
  • Major criminal: Bounty 100k-1m CR
  • Mass murderer: Bounty >1m CR, or see below
  • Galactic threat: GB >15m CR
• When you kill more than 2 CMDRS within a week, you are automatically labelled as a lvl 3 criminal and acquire a 5m bounty on your head if your bounty wasn’t over 1m or more at the moment
• If you lose your bounty and you were lvl 3 or above, you are still flagged for the rest of the week. Any new bounty on your head will put you back to lvl 3.
• In the UI, instead of WANTED, it will show the criminal status.
• Cmdrs that wish to bounty hunt other cmdrs will be able to access a contact in any non-anarchy system. With this contact, they will be able to tag a specific cmdr (who must be online to appear on the list), and (maybe with the aid of a special internal module) constantly see the location of the criminal on the galactic map. There is one exception: If the criminal is in an anarchy system, the map will show the last known location instead. If you go there, you will find the high wake of the criminal.
  • A mass murderer’s location is updated every 10 minutes
  • A galactic threat’s location is updated every minute.

3.

• Lesser and major criminal penalties are the same as now, the minor faction you have a bounty with will hate you, not let you dock, etc
• Lvl 3 and 4 criminals will be hunted across the bubble. They won’t be allowed to dock at ANY station that isn’t in an anarchy system, and when in a non-anarchy system, wings of police ships will spawn to hunt you down, with increasing combat level and equipment depending on the security level of the system and your criminal level.
• If you kill a cmdr whose combat rank is 3 or more tiers below yours, they will have the insurance cost reimbursed after you die, be it in the hands of a bounty hunter or ramming an asteroid. If they can’t afford the rebuy, their ship will instead be impounded until the criminal dies or a week has passed (the insurance company has been renting it to pay for the rebuy).

4.

• Killing a cmdr within 2 combat ranks will yield a data core that can be scanned for money (I’m talking millions), and boost the influence of an anarchy faction if you sell it to a station it controls.
• Stolen goods black market prices multiplied by 10 (but only those obtained from commanders)
• Systems controlled by Archon Delaine will act as anarchy systems for all purposes (maybe this could be toned down to lessened security, idk).
• For the bounty hunters, you get half the rebuy cost of the current ship of the criminal as reward, plus a criminal data core you can scan for a few more millions. You will also get a reputation boost with the controlling faction of the station you sell the data to, as well as a boost to its influence.
• Rules for data cores:
  • They are dropped by a destroyed cmdr ship.
  • They are scanned, not scooped, so you can’t give it to your friend.
  • If you are in a wing, the reward is shared. However, if a person joins the wing after the ship has been destroyed they won’t get any reward, even if they are in the same instance.
  • Only the cmdr that killed the ship can scan it.
  • If you kill a cmdr in your wing, they won’t drop any core.
  • The worth of the criminal core scales with a base amount plus extra for crimes committed, scales especially with cmdr kills.
  • You can’t scan the core of a criminal if you or any of the member of your wing are one, even if you dealt the killing blow.
• If you are a criminal and you kill a criminal, you still get the bounty reward (but not the data core), and you can redeem it in the SIN contact (coming in 2.2)

5.

• This obviously collides a bit with PP.
• If you are pledged to a power, you will be able to kill cmdrs from other powers without penalty.
• If you kill an enemy cmdr in an enemy system, you get up to lvl 2 bounty (maybe power-wide), and no GB.
• If you kill an enemy cmdr in a friendly system, you get no bounty at all.
• Archon Delaine controlled systems give bonuses to criminals, for instance cover from bounty hunters (as previously discussed) and bonus to scanned data cores and black market when pledged (which is even better for commodities stolen from cmdrs).

6.

• As with any other mechanic, certain parts of this rework could be abused.
• For instance, 3 friends could gather and kill each other, get a 5m bounty and “transfer” it to one of them. However, to “transfer” the bounty the criminal would have to lose 10m credits in rebuys, so at least there’s that.
• As for the data core abuse, I think a good approach would be to limit the amount of data cores you can get from the same cmdr to 1 every 2 weeks or a month. Also a lock based on rank would prevent elite players from giving harmless players the reward of their core.
• It might be more appropriate for criminal levels and bounty requirements to scale with rank instead of being fixed.
• This system could be an issue if 2 cmdrs wish to duel in a non-anarchy system; a possible solution would be the “report crimes against me” toggle, if it’s off nobody will get a bounty if they attack you.
• A decay of the bounty similar to that of merits (albeit at a slower pace) could fit in this system, although I’m not 100% sure.
• As for rank requirements, maybe using solely combat rank is not a good approach. Maybe it would be better to give each rank (trade, exploration and combat) (yes I’m leaving out CQC rank) a numerical value (1 being lowest, 9 the highest and then making the average, and you use that number as a base to subtract 2 or 3 to get the rank thresholds.

EDIT: I'm sorry, I've been trying to reformat it to have all the letters have the same size but I haven't been able to

 

[Captain Hooch]

Skimming over it, it looks alright. We do need some kinda improvement to the crime and punishment in elite though. Its way too easy to be a murderhobo and get away with it.

 

[DrFreez]

Why this will be work only for CMDRs kills? That's all fine, if will be for all kills. If you decide to make life difficult for offenders, why do you think that all stay good for you? You never break the law in this game? What is the policy of double standards?

 

[Xelren]

Ok, now make something profitable for pirates please, or you want to fly in "rainbow unicorn universe"?

 

[SaliVader]

Why this will be work only for CMDRs kills? That's all fine, if will be for all kills. If you decide to make life difficult for offenders, why do you think that all stay good for you? You never break the law in this game? What is the policy of double standards?

Because this is a multiplayer game, and being able to track wanted commanders would add new gameplay elements. I explained it as galactic bounties issued by the Pilots Federation (who hand out all the permits for the commanders, aka players). Logically, if you kill NPCs from a certain faction you become wanted within that faction. I do not want to change that.


Also, notice in the OP that, if you have a bounty of over 1m credits (which you can achieve by killing NPCs) you also get a galactic bounty! Isn't it beautiful?

 

[okano666]

Before we start, be aware that I know this is not perfect. This is more like a set of ideas for Frontier, and my hope is that they will at least take some. These is a condensation of some ideas of mine and other ideas I've seen on Reddit. Please read everything, or at least section six, before commenting.

Why change the system we have now? Well, first of all, criminals face next to no consequences in Elite. I think it would be logical for the Pilots Federation to prosecute any person that attacks their pilots, even if tha criminal is one of their own pilots. This system would allow criminals to actually feel like criminals, instead of just being able to die in a suicidewinder and face no other consequence for their crimes. This would also open more possibilities for bounty hunters that wish to avenge their friends or protect their territory, as all we have now is the Top 5 bounties and last seen, which is... Lacking.

1. Bounties, gaining and losing them.
2. Criminal levels
3. Punishments
4. Rewards
5. Powerplay
6. Problems, solutions and other

1.

• Bounties against NPCs will remain as they are now
• Fines will turn into legacy fines, not bounties.
• Bounties obtained from attacking NPCs will decay as normal
• Galactic bounty (GB): Issued by the Pilots Federation for attacking other commanders (PP exceptions apply)
• Galactic bounties are universal, and are enforced everywhere except in anarchy systems.
• When you kill a commander within 2 ranks of your combat rank, you gain the ship rebuy you destroyed as bounty.
• When you die, you lose half of the rebuy cost of your current ship from your bounty. (possibly increase the rebuy cost as well, by 20% for instance, so a 50m rebuy would turn into a 60m rebuy, etc)

2.

• Criminal levels:
  • Lesser criminal: Bounty <100k CR
  • Major criminal: Bounty 100k-1m CR
  • Mass murderer: Bounty >1m CR, or see below
  • Galactic threat: GB >15m CR
• When you kill more than 2 CMDRS within a week, you are automatically labelled as a lvl 3 criminal and acquire a 5m bounty on your head if your bounty wasn’t over 1m or more at the moment
• If you lose your bounty and you were lvl 3 or above, you are still flagged for the rest of the week. Any new bounty on your head will put you back to lvl 3.
• In the UI, instead of WANTED, it will show the criminal status.
• Cmdrs that wish to bounty hunt other cmdrs will be able to access a contact in any non-anarchy system. With this contact, they will be able to tag a specific cmdr (who must be online to appear on the list), and (maybe with the aid of a special internal module) constantly see the location of the criminal on the galactic map. There is one exception: If the criminal is in an anarchy system, the map will show the last known location instead. If you go there, you will find the high wake of the criminal.
  • A mass murderer’s location is updated every 10 minutes
  • A galactic threat’s location is updated every minute.

3.

• Lesser and major criminal penalties are the same as now, the minor faction you have a bounty with will hate you, not let you dock, etc
• Lvl 3 and 4 criminals will be hunted across the bubble. They won’t be allowed to dock at ANY station that isn’t in an anarchy system, and when in a non-anarchy system, wings of police ships will spawn to hunt you down, with increasing combat level and equipment depending on the security level of the system and your criminal level.
• If you kill a cmdr whose combat rank is 3 or more tiers below yours, they will have the insurance cost reimbursed after you die, be it in the hands of a bounty hunter or ramming an asteroid. If they can’t afford the rebuy, their ship will instead be impounded until the criminal dies or a week has passed (the insurance company has been renting it to pay for the rebuy).

4.

• Killing a cmdr within 2 combat ranks will yield a data core that can be scanned for money (I’m talking millions), and boost the influence of an anarchy faction if you sell it to a station it controls.
• Stolen goods black market prices multiplied by 10 (but only those obtained from commanders)
• Systems controlled by Archon Delaine will act as anarchy systems for all purposes (maybe this could be toned down to lessened security, idk).
• For the bounty hunters, you get half the rebuy cost of the current ship of the criminal as reward, plus a criminal data core you can scan for a few more millions. You will also get a reputation boost with the controlling faction of the station you sell the data to, as well as a boost to its influence.
• Rules for data cores:
  • They are dropped by a destroyed cmdr ship.
  • They are scanned, not scooped, so you can’t give it to your friend.
  • If you are in a wing, the reward is shared. However, if a person joins the wing after the ship has been destroyed they won’t get any reward, even if they are in the same instance.
  • Only the cmdr that killed the ship can scan it.
  • If you kill a cmdr in your wing, they won’t drop any core.
  • The worth of the criminal core scales with a base amount plus extra for crimes committed, scales especially with cmdr kills.
  • You can’t scan the core of a criminal if you or any of the member of your wing are one, even if you dealt the killing blow.
• If you are a criminal and you kill a criminal, you still get the bounty reward (but not the data core), and you can redeem it in the SIN contact (coming in 2.2)

5.

• This obviously collides a bit with PP.
• If you are pledged to a power, you will be able to kill cmdrs from other powers without penalty.
• If you kill an enemy cmdr in an enemy system, you get up to lvl 2 bounty (maybe power-wide), and no GB.
• If you kill an enemy cmdr in a friendly system, you get no bounty at all.
• Archon Delaine controlled systems give bonuses to criminals, for instance cover from bounty hunters (as previously discussed) and bonus to scanned data cores and black market when pledged (which is even better for commodities stolen from cmdrs).

6.

• As with any other mechanic, certain parts of this rework could be abused.
• For instance, 3 friends could gather and kill each other, get a 5m bounty and “transfer” it to one of them. However, to “transfer” the bounty the criminal would have to lose 10m credits in rebuys, so at least there’s that.
• As for the data core abuse, I think a good approach would be to limit the amount of data cores you can get from the same cmdr to 1 every 2 weeks or a month. Also a lock based on rank would prevent elite players from giving harmless players the reward of their core.
• It might be more appropriate for criminal levels and bounty requirements to scale with rank instead of being fixed.
• This system could be an issue if 2 cmdrs wish to duel in a non-anarchy system; a possible solution would be the “report crimes against me” toggle, if it’s off nobody will get a bounty if they attack you.
• A decay of the bounty similar to that of merits (albeit at a slower pace) could fit in this system, although I’m not 100% sure.
• As for rank requirements, maybe using solely combat rank is not a good approach. Maybe it would be better to give each rank (trade, exploration and combat) (yes I’m leaving out CQC rank) a numerical value (1 being lowest, 9 the highest and then making the average, and you use that number as a base to subtract 2 or 3 to get the rank thresholds.

EDIT: I'm sorry, I've been trying to reformat it to have all the letters have the same size but I haven't been able to

This def needs spicing up and I have experienced a similar and amazing system before or can see similarities and ideas from the Star Wars Galaxies bounty system although broken there has never since been any gameplay like it. These kinds of changes will make Elite as legendary as it should be!

 

[okano666]

This def needs spicing up and I have experienced a similar and amazing system before or can see similarities and ideas from the Star Wars Galaxies bounty system although broken there has never since been any gameplay like it. These kinds of changes will make Elite as legendary as it should be!

 

[lysan]

the LEO need to be more active too, if you kill a commander a special force should be on you tail from the pilot federation, there should be very few systems that are safe, only anarchy and pirate stations should be safe if you are a commander killer.

 

[Cosmos]

When you kill more than 2 CMDRS within a week, you are automatically labelled as a lvl 3 criminal and acquire a 5m bounty on your head if your bounty wasn’t over 1m or more at the moment

Wow thats a bit harsh.. TWO players?

 

[Aeos]

When you kill a commander within 2 ranks of your combat rank, you gain the ship rebuy you destroyed as bounty.
When you die, you lose half of the rebuy cost of your current ship from your bounty. (possibly increase the rebuy cost as well, by 20% for instance, so a 50m rebuy would turn into a 60m rebuy, etc)

What is the point of this stuff being double punishing? People who pirate as part of the game get the most screwed over with this, and it isn't even that profitable. I do like the incentive to not murder people and find other means to do piracy, however I don't believe it is fair to blanket slate everyone into a punishing mechanic. It sounds like the second idea might be better applied if FDEV decide to revamp the insurance at some point, where you could have different insurance providers so who condone replacement of ships under less than legal reasons (very expensive policy to maintain) or some that don't and you would incur a penalty as provided above.

I think it's important to make sure a revamp to the crime system really hits the notes of what being a criminal in a galaxy would be like or likewise what being a bounty hunter should be about. Reputation should be a key in all of this that doesn't really have much effect right now. If you're a repeat offender or have a bounty then you won't be openly accepted at a majority of star ports especially not high sec systems (though with no bounty they may tolerate you). Instead of having players positions automatically all the time, why not make it into a mechanic? Instead of the timer, a players position would update when they navigate through a system of low-high security that have normally functioning nav beacons, compromised ones won't update their position. Anarchy systems and the compromised beacons would give the criminal some breathing room, and it would be very important that you could see the "trail" of the criminal commander (that way you could work out where he is going and what not). There could also be a tracker module, maybe a utility slot, that shoots out a tracker that would last for the length of their bounty. This would help you track down the commander when he was in the dark systems and then you would get the always broadcasting location (the system and if in system a wing like beacon to drop in on them), the player could ditch this tracker by switching ships, however things like ship transfer couldn't happen if you somehow managed to dock in a higher security system or if the ship you wanted to transfer was in a high security system. Maybe a system like this could function for NPCs as well at least the tracking? And could help make assassination missions a little more dynamic.

Overall your other ideas sound good, I just didn't like the double punishing bounty/rebuy and the auto tracking seems a bit wanting for a game about player interaction. Definitely some good ideas though. Anything to help make the bounties and crime system feel a little more gamey/deep are welcome by me.

 

[QuantumPion]

I had a similar idea but much simpler.

-If you kill a commander, you gain their rebuy (and possibly cargo value as well) as bounty.

-If you have a PK bounty and you die, the bounty is removed from your net assets. Even if you suicide sidewinder you still pay. If you have insufficient cash, your stored ships will be sold to pay for it. This way, if you are a kill-on-sight mass murderer, there is substantial risk as when you die you are back to starter sidewinder with 0 cash.

-Bounties are multiplied by a combat rank difference factor. E.g., if you are elite and kill a harmless, the bounty is multiplied by 100 (with a cap of 5 million or so - this is to make killing noobs in sidewinders just as expensive as pros in FDL's. But killing a pro in a Cobra is not too bad.).

-If you kill a wanted PK, the max reward is 10 million (to prevent exploits and such).

-PK bounties apply to all lawful systems and lawful CMDR's.

-If you have a PK bounty, you cannot land at lawful starports - anarchy starports only. Police NPCs will aggressively interdict and attack on sight PK commanders in lawful systems.

 

[Lucius-Darcia]

Some very well thought ideas. I would like this and can imagine to take part. At least it would give a real risk vs reward for hunting criminal cmdrs.

 

[Raile]

So this assumes your griefers are rich enough to always pay off their debt. Most likely you'll end up with players that have a negative credits amount and then what happens? Do you invalidate their account and make them buy a new copy?

Lets take this all the way instead of making it look like a grasp for revenge for getting beaten up.

All fines turn into bounties and these rules apply.

 

[spatula]

2.

• Criminal levels:
• When you kill more than 2 CMDRS within a week, you are automatically labelled as a lvl 3 criminal and acquire a 5m bounty on your head if your bounty wasn’t over 1m or more at the moment
• If you lose your bounty and you were lvl 3 or above, you are still flagged for the rest of the week. Any new bounty on your head will put you back to lvl 3.
• In the UI, instead of WANTED, it will show the criminal status.
• Cmdrs that wish to bounty hunt other cmdrs will be able to access a contact in any non-anarchy system. With this contact, they will be able to tag a specific cmdr (who must be online to appear on the list), and (maybe with the aid of a special internal module) constantly see the location of the criminal on the galactic map. There is one exception: If the criminal is in an anarchy system, the map will show the last known location instead. If you go there, you will find the high wake of the criminal.
  • A mass murderer’s location is updated every 10 minutes
  • A galactic threat’s location is updated every minute.

I really like this part, especially bounty hunters being able to find/track high level murderers if they are seen in lawful systems. Would be great to be able to "add player to the kill list" and get notifications when they show up if you are online at the same time, being able to pick the names from the highest list even if the player is offline. Any criminal below galactic level could be tracked while online only and would be removed from the kill list when the log off, until next time. I'd suggest a wider gap between a "level 3 and 4".... so like 10 mil for level 3 and then 50 mil for galactic level threat or something.

I think what would be cool for the killers, aside from the infamy, would be some kind of mechanic that also benefits for becoming a galactic level threat and staying there (Since you're just being tracked) IF they are staying within a set of rules which minimize the encouragement of griefers - like station kills don't count, if the kill is more than 2 pilot ranks below them they lose stuff, or the player who was killed can have some effect on the type of bonus they receive.

So what I'd propose is NOTORIETY and INFLUENCE as a karma system.

- Each player is given a status for both Galactic Influence and Galactic Notoriety
- This is not tied to factions/systems, it's just a galaxy wide stat. Maybe tied to Galnet, which can publish a section for "most influential commanders" and "most notorious". Like SpaceForbes.
- Not a progress bar for 100% that maxes out - a running number that can keep growing, but can possibly suffer huge losses and wins for certain actions.

Gaining I/N:
- You can gain/lose influence/notoriety in SMALL ways by interacting with NPCs (Missions/Faction-work, etc.)
- You can gain/lose I/N in BIG ways by interacting with players (ie. winging up / killing people, etc.)

Giving Influence:
- Players can GIVE influence to players they meet, like an up-vote, when they enjoy the antics this player had brought them. (like a comms menu option)
- You can't give influence to the same player. Or maybe, after your first small give (which is free), you can then only give YOUR personally gained influence (ie. you lose what you give) to prevent exploitation.

Giving Notoriety:
- Players can GIVE notoriety IF they have been attacked/killed.
- A small amount for an attack, but you can dump more on a re-buy screen if murdered. Or chose not to reward any notoriety for killers who exploited you.

For PVP/PP:
- For PVP, players can agree to "duel" which will flip notoriety into influence, so players can duel each other to improve each others influence (ie. word of their friendly battles spread) and perhaps reduce re-buy costs too.
- For powerplay, you can't give influence/notoriety to any opposing powers and vice versa.
- Exception for the pirate faction is that they get a small constant trickle of notoriety (but only up until tier 3, not to bring to a galactic threat) just for being signed up to that faction to offset the loss here.

If you have high notoriety:
- More news articles generated about your exploits in Galnet will be generated (which bounty hunters can monitor) getting your name and infamy out there
- You will receive invites/permits from rare hidden systems which foster/hide murders where you can't be tracked and are safe (except from other murderers).
- Get special mission options at these systems, like, "cmdr x has you on his list, let the hunter become the prey" or "interdict and inflict hull damage without killing X CMDRS to spread your notoriety"
- However, if you have too much notoriety, you become a galactic target and you can keep this under control by simply gaining influence.

If you have high influence:
- More news articles about influential pilots in the galaxy. Could be auto-generated in local news feeds or a galnet tab. "System X thanks CMDR ZZTop for killing Y pirates / supplying Z needed commodities." or "System A awards CMDR B the Award C for their exemplary docking skills".
- Receive invites to special in-game parties/events to help wing up players in the same rankings, more rare trade goods will randomly appear in new systems, maybe special decals too.
- HOWEVER, as your influence grows, so does your visibility... and the more influence you have, the higher value target you will be.

- You lose influence via notoriety (ie. influence is + karma, notoriety is - karma) and both will degrade slowly over time back to 0, however if you want to shed a lot of influence, you can give some to other players.

I think would need to be worked on more, but that's my basic idea to throw in here.

 

[SaliVader]

I'm seeing some very good ideas in the comments! I've managed to get to the front page of the reddit sub as well. Let's hope that FDev sees this and grabs some ideas!

 

[Overlord]

Ok, now make something profitable for pirates please, or you want to fly in "rainbow unicorn universe"?

The failure to make any significant distinction between lawful players and unlawful is probably the greatest harm to anything resembling real piracy. A pirate should not be able to just wax a fleet of trading vessels in policed space and then waltz into a starport to resume their trading business. A proper punishment/reputation system is key to making piracy into a proper career path. It's stands to reason that there should be more money to make breaking the law, but in conjunction with that you take on greater risk. Of course, what the OP suggests comes accross as complete overkill with the intention of just wiping out people who PvP, but that asside, the current system clearly needs reworking.
Anarchy space should be a "safe" haven for criminals, and a dangerous place for anybody not well armed, but the missions and benefits of going there should pay dividends, a proper criminality/infamy system would stand to greatly impove gameplay on both sides of the legal fence, whislt simultaniously discouraging meaningless PKing and encouraging tactical piracy such as theft by slashing the bounty aqquired for doing so without murdering your victim.
A clearer distinction between lawless and lawful space would add far greater depth to both PvP bounty hunting and PvP Piracy. Imagine systems where having a clean record could get you killed by pirate gangs in polar opposite to systems where a criminal record gets you hunted by the law.
Solo mode does throw a spanner in the works but that's another matter entirely.