Bounty Hunting License

[CMDR Cosmic Spacehead]

I had this idea a while back, but it's probably locked now. And I have no idea if FD or anyone liked it. Lol

Anyhoo, this idea is mostly to fix the odd behaviour of NPC bounty hunters, that have a habit of attacking you because you have a bounty, but in a different system to that bounty. Then they become wanted for assault, and you can kill them. Legally.

Lol

So, my basic part of my idea, is just give NPC bounty hunters a Bounty Hunting License, which lets them attack you, legally.
And if you wish to defend yourself, you'll gain a new assault bounty for the system you're in.
The NPC version is basically handwavium to let then legally attack you.

But we can't have NPC's with Bounty Hunting Licenses, and not dish them out to CMDRs can we?

CMDR Bounty Hunting Licenses
BHLs are issued from high security systems, from non-anarchy factions you are allied with providing you have no active or dormant fines, or bounties in the system. This is found under a new label on the station contacts menu, "Private Security Contact".
Licenses have tiers, and when starting out, you always start at the lowest tier, Tier 1.
Some rules;

• You can only have 1 license at a time, applying for a new one, will invalidate your current one.
• Each tier has a range in Ly from the issuing faction, which the License is valid, and a % cut of the bounty vouchers, when you hand in.
• You can only hand in vouchers from your licenses catchment area from where your license was issued!
• All ships with any kind of bounty are valid and legal targets if they are in your catchment area, however, you will need to KWS them first, unless it's a local bounty (but you won't receive any other bounty vouchers if you don't KWS them).
• To increase your tier, you simply claim bounties.
• Each tier your progress through comes with a larger catchment area, and reduced cut from your license issuer.
• Committing minor crimes reduces your progress to the next tier, or even drops you back to the last tier, committing murder invalidates it, but only inside your catchment area.
• If your license is invalidated, any vouchers you have not claimed are deleted, as well as receiving a bounty on your head for murder.
• To progress up the next tier, you will be asked by your contact to perform an assassinate pirate lord mission. Your tier determines how difficult that will be.
• You can cancel your license at any station, but you will lose all unclaimed vouchers.
  

There's probably a few holes in there that need plugging, but that's the basic premise.
A BHL will allow you to hunt around many systems, but give you one neat station to cash in from.
There could be more perks to having a license. I just haven't thought of them.
CMDRs will also need a better way to track all types of fines and bounties, and should be weary of flying around with bounties from other systems.

Thoughts?

CMDR Cosmic Spacehead

 

[DocLooshkin]

Hello, CSH.

It's a curious idea, solving something that might or might not be seen as a problem.

As a PvE bounty hunter, I'm not really seeing how I might benefit much, if the idea's applied to the game as is: I generally farm bounties at NBs (and occasionally RESes) - and I don't usually bother warrant-scanning ships that don't have a local bounty. While I'm sort of interested, I'm not sure I'd ever use this in practise.

It could be more useful if the missions were slightly altered: some of the assassination missions - such as the ones where criminals and deserters are the targets - might become legal (and potentially more profitable) activities if the Commander has a valid BH-license, but carry a weightier penalty than usual otherwise. FD could even bring back the system-to-system hunting scripts we used to have, assuming they can get it working reliably.

Then again, is it worth all the bother? The NPC BH behaviour you're describing might simply be looked upon as the equivalent of a player who has no fear of SAV intervention - there are certainly plenty of those about.

FD might find it easier and cheaper to run the opposite way from your idea and play up the oddly-behaving NPCs as a new mixed class of nomadic psycho-bounty-hunters. All they'd really need for that would be some flavour text (if needed), a spawning script that gives them a slightly higher difficulty and perhaps gives them all those spiky raider shipkits.

 

[Tornado]

So if I understand you, faction A issues a license to collect their bounties in faction B's system. So what incentive does faction B have to let you commit a crime in their jurisdiction?

 

[CMDR Cosmic Spacehead]

So if I understand you, faction A issues a license to collect their bounties in faction B's system. So what incentive does faction B have to let you commit a crime in their jurisdiction?

No idea. Lol

I guess the cut from your private security contact goes in to administration for smoothing things over with the other factions. Lol

The main part of the idea is to just fix the silly NPC bounty hunter suicide anyhow. I added on the rest for no real reason. Lol