But then you need to assure that losing a battle wouldn't count towards the outcoming of a war (other than just losing time). Is it so? Otherwise any combat bond hunter would potentially distort the outcome of wars, as he wouldn't care if losing or not.
No, what's being said is that bonds and bounties should no longer count toward war success/fail. Instead, they act as payment for services rendered—unrelated to the conflict itself. I agree with both posters in this regard. To add to their sentiments, I think bonds and bounties should certainly contribute to security states and, potentially, happiness. For instance, turning in either would increase your own faction happiness and lower the happiness of whichever faction was losing ships. Unfortunately, happiness is perfectly useless at the moment; however, FDEV did state that their intention by introducing it was to contribute to a wide array of states, especially expansion. If your INF is high but happiness low, you shouldn't expand into a new system. FDEV is certainly on the right track; they just need to fix what is broken in this regard. Once they fix this broken aspect, things should become even more interesting and even strategic.
That said, losing a battle in a Conflict Zone should
absolutely count one way or another. This makes things more realistic. Wars are won via a series of successful engagements, not because a group of contractors were paid for delivering scalps. I'm not saying wars should
only be won or lost within Conflict Zones, just that bonds and bounties don't really make much sense as contributing factors. Trade and trade missions should also be a factor, because without supplies, no one can fight. An ideal [negative effect] combat mission associated with trade would be to destroy
trade ships of the opposing faction, essentially cutting off supply chains. A [positive effect] mission would be along the lines of delivering military commodities, medicines (for wounded), technology commodities (ship repairs), food, etc. in favor of your faction.
I know we're talking about a space game here, but this isn't rocket science.
