Or whatever the hell people want to call it. 
I assume this has probably been brought-up before (I know some people have touched on it on Reddit), but I honestly can't find relevant threads in this forum so, here goes.
Bounty hunting NPCs is easy as pie. Head to a RES, sit, wait. Bounty hunting specific players is nigh impossible. Sure, we can see the five players with the highest bounties that passed through the area recently, but there's crucial information missing. How long ago were they seen? What ship were they in? Where are they going? There are players running around with bounties on their heads in the millions (edit: and also billions; wowz) of credits, but presumably they don't really have to care about it. It's highly unlikely they'll run into some crack bounty hunter that is actually looking for them.
My idea here is to fill the void of information that prevents one from effectively tracking specific players with extremely high bounties with a new, subscription-type service. Initially, you pay a few thousand credits (say maybe 30-50k as a one-time flat fee, to separate it from new players just starting bounty hunting so they don't bite-off more than they can chew) to subscribe to any of the major factions' information services (Alliance, Federation, or Empire; independent worlds would be excluded). Each service would be subscribed to separately, at any local security office that's in that faction's space. Once you pay that flat fee, you can access their service to search for players (not NPCs) that have bounties on their heads (with some lower limit, like say a 50k bounty minimum to again separate new players a bit and give them time to learn the ins-and-outs of piracy or the like). The list would show the player's name, the bounty on their head (only for Alliance, Federation, or Empire, depending on who's list you're looking at; kill scanners would still be a necessity), and the last known system, as well as an indication of how old that data is (say anywhere between 30 mins -1 hour, at least for the data on the full list).
When you see someone you want to hunt, you select them and then start paying a recurring fee (say maybe 1-5k credits per 30 mins, or possibly larger, scaling with the size of the bounty), which gives you near-real-time data whenever that target enters a system belonging to that faction (time-delay for the data could be random, anywhere from 1-3mins or so, to ensure that FSD wake scanners are still a necessity). That information would be sent to your inbox as a message, saying something like "Alliance BHIS: CMDR 'BaconyGoodness' spotted in 'Lave', in a Viper Mk. III [Delete] [Unsubscribe]" (the [Delete] button would delete the message, and the [Unsubscribe] button would stop tracking the target, for convenience's sake, so you can give-up the chase without having to trundle all the way back to that faction's systems; the ship type data is important for effective hunting in crowded systems). (It should also be noted that having that subscription active provides enough data to the network to know that it should put the target player and the bounty hunter in the same instance when they're in the same system.)
In a way this is also a good thing for pirate players, as it would add significant risk-reward decisions for those who just run around killing people all the time, as well as add incentive to keep their total bounty in check, or face a veritable swarm of players looking to collect. And on the flip side, players with high bounties could use it as a honey trap, to knock-out bounty hunters and eat into their profits, discouraging others from trying the same. Hell, couple it with a way for subscribers to the service to add notes or comments on each bounty and it'd also add a bit of social glue between bounty hunter players.
One side-effect of this would be that it might push pirate players to independent and anarchy systems a bit more, as it'd be much much harder for a bounty hunter to get up-to-date intel on them. In a grander sense, this could also be seen as a form of pressure for independent worlds to sign-on with one of the three major factions, as joining them would also mean gaining protection by that faction's bounty hunters.
I assume this has probably been brought-up before (I know some people have touched on it on Reddit), but I honestly can't find relevant threads in this forum so, here goes.
Bounty hunting NPCs is easy as pie. Head to a RES, sit, wait. Bounty hunting specific players is nigh impossible. Sure, we can see the five players with the highest bounties that passed through the area recently, but there's crucial information missing. How long ago were they seen? What ship were they in? Where are they going? There are players running around with bounties on their heads in the millions (edit: and also billions; wowz) of credits, but presumably they don't really have to care about it. It's highly unlikely they'll run into some crack bounty hunter that is actually looking for them.
My idea here is to fill the void of information that prevents one from effectively tracking specific players with extremely high bounties with a new, subscription-type service. Initially, you pay a few thousand credits (say maybe 30-50k as a one-time flat fee, to separate it from new players just starting bounty hunting so they don't bite-off more than they can chew) to subscribe to any of the major factions' information services (Alliance, Federation, or Empire; independent worlds would be excluded). Each service would be subscribed to separately, at any local security office that's in that faction's space. Once you pay that flat fee, you can access their service to search for players (not NPCs) that have bounties on their heads (with some lower limit, like say a 50k bounty minimum to again separate new players a bit and give them time to learn the ins-and-outs of piracy or the like). The list would show the player's name, the bounty on their head (only for Alliance, Federation, or Empire, depending on who's list you're looking at; kill scanners would still be a necessity), and the last known system, as well as an indication of how old that data is (say anywhere between 30 mins -1 hour, at least for the data on the full list).
When you see someone you want to hunt, you select them and then start paying a recurring fee (say maybe 1-5k credits per 30 mins, or possibly larger, scaling with the size of the bounty), which gives you near-real-time data whenever that target enters a system belonging to that faction (time-delay for the data could be random, anywhere from 1-3mins or so, to ensure that FSD wake scanners are still a necessity). That information would be sent to your inbox as a message, saying something like "Alliance BHIS: CMDR 'BaconyGoodness' spotted in 'Lave', in a Viper Mk. III [Delete] [Unsubscribe]" (the [Delete] button would delete the message, and the [Unsubscribe] button would stop tracking the target, for convenience's sake, so you can give-up the chase without having to trundle all the way back to that faction's systems; the ship type data is important for effective hunting in crowded systems). (It should also be noted that having that subscription active provides enough data to the network to know that it should put the target player and the bounty hunter in the same instance when they're in the same system.)
In a way this is also a good thing for pirate players, as it would add significant risk-reward decisions for those who just run around killing people all the time, as well as add incentive to keep their total bounty in check, or face a veritable swarm of players looking to collect. And on the flip side, players with high bounties could use it as a honey trap, to knock-out bounty hunters and eat into their profits, discouraging others from trying the same. Hell, couple it with a way for subscribers to the service to add notes or comments on each bounty and it'd also add a bit of social glue between bounty hunter players.
One side-effect of this would be that it might push pirate players to independent and anarchy systems a bit more, as it'd be much much harder for a bounty hunter to get up-to-date intel on them. In a grander sense, this could also be seen as a form of pressure for independent worlds to sign-on with one of the three major factions, as joining them would also mean gaining protection by that faction's bounty hunters.
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