Bounty Hunting woes...

[ajburr]

There are a couple places I like to do Bounty Hunting: Kremainn and Gende. But I have a simple question... while I only shoot at those who have the WANTED tag under their name (on rarely on ones who are teamed up with other ships like 3/3), why do I occasionally start getting shot at by other ships that are CLEAN? I can't tell you how many ships I've lost to this problem. I desperately try to get the hell out of there as five or more ships team up on me, and about half the time I am able to escape, with major damage, not to mention a bounty on me that I need to wait out before I can come back.

I'd love an explanation, because I'm tired of paying ship insurance, especially on an Anaconda.

 

[MottiKhan]

There are a couple of possibilities.

First, make sure the scan completes before you shoot. If the scan isn't complete, the target ship is considered clean, even if it's wanted.

It could also happen if some of your shots accidentally hit a clean vessel.

 

[d8veh]

If you scan all of them first to see "wanted" before you shoot them and the Feds start shooting you, it's because you have a dormant bounty on you. Check your transactions tab to see if there's one listed. If so, go to Brani, then Freng, then Aphra, then Aura.

I made this video to help explain bounties and being wanted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WK0XHN9CuY4

 

[ajburr]

It could also happen if some of your shots accidentally hit a clean vessel.

This is likely the case^

I'm always careful about who I shoot at, and I never shoot before a full scan. Second, I know I don't have any dormant bounties. I typically do alright for at least a half-hour before anything like this happens.

What occurred to me as that I only use turreted weapons (since I fly an Anaconda, with its poor maneuverability), so I imagine that once in a while, a friendly might fly through my line of fire when I have no control over a turret. I know there are ways to stop those weapons from firing, like switching to a different fire group, but it's hard to predict when some idiot friendly decides to fly right through my laser beam, or whatever.

 

[TheNut]

Other things to take into consideration:

1. Make sure you don't have anything in your cargo hold. Pirates will scan you and if you have anything in your cargo, even if it's 1T of biowaste, they'll open up on you. This includes any power play vouchers, which may spawn a rival NPC to come after you.

2. Check your influence with the minor factions in that sector. You said you like to bounty hunt in the same 2 sectors. If you bounty hunt in the same sector long enough, your influence with all factions other than the controlling one will degrade as you're killing their own people (even if they are wanted). When your influence gets low enough, ships from those minor factions may open fire on you. After spending an hour or two in a sector, it's best to move elsewhere to avoid hitting negative influence. Or do a couple missions for that minor faction to restore your lost influence.

 

[ajburr]

Since my last post, I started doing a butt load of missions for all the minor factions in Gende (already Allied with the main one), where I usually bounty hunt. I'm now friendly with almost all of them, excluding a couple that tend not to give me missions I'm qualified for. I tried bounty hunting again, this time with gimballed weapons, just in case.

Point being, after hours of doing missions, and changing weapons, I STILL get shot at by a huge group of ships after about 15 minutes of killing WANTED people. I got lucky this time around because I switched to a Fer-de-lance and was able to get away fast enough to survive the onslaught.

Soooo, yeah. I don't know what is happening now. Is "Friendly" not good enough? Do I need to be Allied with everyone just so I don't get shot out of the sky?