The Bounty exploit was mentioned dozens of times now and is a well know "game mechanic" that is abused a lot.
In short: Switch to a sidewinder (the suicidewinder) and let someone else kill you and claim the bounty. You have now lost all the bounty you had for the price of a Sidewinder.
Previous ideas i posted here were for example introducing a system where bounty is based on rebuy.
The Murderers Bounty is then equal to the rebuy of the victim. The Bounty Payout is then again the rebuy value of the killer.
That way the murderer cant switch to a sidewinder and generate magic money while cleaning his record. He would need to loose money equal to his victims loss.
Now here is another idea i had while reading Drews Elite Reclamation where the swapping of the ships id was mentioned.
Why not add a mechanic where the bounty is bound to a ship? bound to the id?
So for example your "Black Sun" is known to belong to a murderer. You could switch to another ship with another ID and you would be "clean" again. You could also pay the black market a large amount of money to swap the id for you so the "wanted" ship appears as "clean" too...until a Bounty hunter scans you with his KWS and discovers that you are the same guy who has a bounty put on his id. If it is a "cleaned ship" the bounty would be reactivated, your black market job is now wasted money. if it is a new ship though it would get a new bounty placed on it which is a fraction of all your other bounties (its subtracted from those ships then). The hunter would be free to kill you, he would get his bounty and the ship you died in is clean again (until the next KWS). All your other ships would still have their bounty.
That way the exploit would be gone while at the same time it rewards players for owning multiple ship, rewards hunter for KW scanning targets, and punish the criminal with not just a slap on his wrist. Maybe it is even fun for some to be a fugitive on the run
In short: Switch to a sidewinder (the suicidewinder) and let someone else kill you and claim the bounty. You have now lost all the bounty you had for the price of a Sidewinder.
Previous ideas i posted here were for example introducing a system where bounty is based on rebuy.
The Murderers Bounty is then equal to the rebuy of the victim. The Bounty Payout is then again the rebuy value of the killer.
That way the murderer cant switch to a sidewinder and generate magic money while cleaning his record. He would need to loose money equal to his victims loss.
Now here is another idea i had while reading Drews Elite Reclamation where the swapping of the ships id was mentioned.
Why not add a mechanic where the bounty is bound to a ship? bound to the id?
So for example your "Black Sun" is known to belong to a murderer. You could switch to another ship with another ID and you would be "clean" again. You could also pay the black market a large amount of money to swap the id for you so the "wanted" ship appears as "clean" too...until a Bounty hunter scans you with his KWS and discovers that you are the same guy who has a bounty put on his id. If it is a "cleaned ship" the bounty would be reactivated, your black market job is now wasted money. if it is a new ship though it would get a new bounty placed on it which is a fraction of all your other bounties (its subtracted from those ships then). The hunter would be free to kill you, he would get his bounty and the ship you died in is clean again (until the next KWS). All your other ships would still have their bounty.
That way the exploit would be gone while at the same time it rewards players for owning multiple ship, rewards hunter for KW scanning targets, and punish the criminal with not just a slap on his wrist. Maybe it is even fun for some to be a fugitive on the run