Elite Dangerous Crime: Fines, Bounties and Notoriety

sallymorganmoore

Senior Community Manager : Elite Dangerous
Greetings Commanders.

It's noted that there's been some discussion on fines bounties and notoriety (particularly in Odyssey now Commanders are on foot, carrying out some deeds) across these Forums.

I can confirm that no major changes or updates should have happened in the "Criminal Activity field" as part of Update 6, but it does concern me that some elements of Crime are sparking conversation and confusion, following update 6.

With this in mind I'd like to release this post to share more targeted info on how crime works as Elite Dangerous currently stands. This could potentially help those who are new to the game, or be used to open up an additional space for further thoughts and discussions with the veterans :)

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When committing crimes in the Elite Dangerous galaxy, you have always faced either fines or bounties, depending on the gravity of your actions.

Fines
For some considerable time now, fines are able to be paid off at Space Stations owned or associated with where the minor faction fine is recorded against, while using anonymous docking in your ship and then using a designated station security contact (or administrative contact) to pay the fine from both your ship or, as of Odyssey, at a social space terminal.
  • Fines are usually assigned for smuggling, carrying around illegal items, loitering in station space and other smaller offenses.

Bounties
For bounties Commanders have to visit the Interstellar Factors Service (present since Horizons release as part of a refactor of the Crime System, as a way to make crime feel more interesting by Commanders needing to retreat to darker corners of galaxy), which operates in grey area of the law within the Galaxy and can be found in systems and stations with low security and anarchy.
  • You can find anarchy systems nearby your location using the galaxy map by filtering for the system government type.
  • You can reach a location with the Interstellar Factor Service either by travelling there with your own ship, as a crew member, or using the Apex taxi service.

Notoriety
You will gain notoriety as a criminal if you decide to embark on massive crime sprees.
For on foot crimes in Odyssey, Commanders will only gain notable notoriety only after a serious murder spree (you will recieve some, but not as much as in ship), due to ships being considered a more serious weapon of destruction and mayhem.
  • For example, destroying one ship is equal notoriety to killing numerous people on foot.
Increased notoriety means you will attract much bigger interest on yourself from system security and special police forces, called Advanced Tactical Response.


‘Notoriety "Cool Off"’
You can start to pay off your bounties at Interstellar Factor Services after your notoriety has cooled off.
  • You will need to hang out in an anarchy system for a little while and maybe even find yourself a useful job there while waiting for the Interstellar Factor Services to become accessible for you.

‘Wanted’
In Odyssey, your ships are marked as ‘tools of crime’ when committing crimes whilst piloting them, while bounties and fines are recorded against you directly.
Your ship will be noted as ‘Wanted’ by corresponding system security if your bounty for a recent crime has not yet been cleared, however if you committed a crime on foot without involving your ship it will stay clean in the eyes of system security.

Bounty hunters however will be able to reveal a full list of your crimes if they scan your ship whilst you are flying it, using the Kill Warrant Scanner.

A majority of bounties are applied when you are involved in attacking and destroying ships, SRVs or killing or gravely injuring other person. Fines can also turn into bounties after some time, so be warned about sitting on them for too long!


Prison
When being caught and sent to prison (do not pass go...do not collect $200), all of the ships which you have previously piloted as part of criminal activity and still hold uncleared bounties against, will be marked as impounded and you will have to pay for their release.

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Commited a crime?
  • Is it a fine? You can pay this off at a relevant social space terminal or ship station interface via the station security contact, using anonymous docking if in your own ship.
  • Is it bounty? You can pay this off at a station hosting an Interstellar Factors service, after notoriety has worn off (if there is any) using your own ship, APEX taxi or being flown there as crew member

Completely appreciate that this is a lot to take in and all feedback, as usual, is welcome
(smile)

o7
 
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What is still confusing, is the fact you get NO notoriety when doing missions in your ship. I can explode 10 passenger liners without getting any notoriety, as long as I have a mission asking me to murder 10 passenger liners. On foot, I still get notoriety regardless of doing a mission or not.
 
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I can confirm that no major changes or updates should have happened in the "Criminal Activity field" as part of Update 6, but it does concern me that some elements of Crime are sparking conversation and confusion, following update 6.
What does this mean? Is what we are seeing now intended behavior or not?
 

sallymorganmoore

Senior Community Manager : Elite Dangerous
What does this mean? Is what we are seeing now intended behavior or not?

What it means is the main info in the body of the post is what should be happening and the intended behaviour. If you're seeing something which does not comply with that then there's an issue there. For example your mention of:

"What is still confusing, is the fact you get NO notoriety when doing missions in your ship. I can explode 10 passenger liners with getting any notoriety. On foot, I still get notoriety regardless of doing a mission or not."
 
Thanks Sally!

Hmm, not completely convinced this hasn't changed recently, but I need to test more, I don't recall every becoming Notorious from on-foot actions before, but maybe I wasn't naughty enough. Luckily my alt needs to do heists to unlock an engineer so I'll get to test this out :)
 

sallymorganmoore

Senior Community Manager : Elite Dangerous
Thanks Sally!

Hmm, not completely convinced this hasn't changed recently, but I need to test more, I don't recall every becoming Notorious from on-foot actions before, but maybe I wasn't naughty enough. Luckily my alt needs to do heists to unlock an engineer so I'll get to test this out :)

Main thing I'm saying is nothing has been deliberately changed :)
 
Thanks Sally!

Hmm, not completely convinced this hasn't changed recently, but I need to test more, I don't recall every becoming Notorious from on-foot actions before, but maybe I wasn't naughty enough. Luckily my alt needs to do heists to unlock an engineer so I'll get to test this out :)
Unless that has changed too, you need to do COVERT missions to unlock the engineer. If you do them right, no one will know except you and your shadow. ;)
 

sallymorganmoore

Senior Community Manager : Elite Dangerous
What is still confusing, is the fact you get NO notoriety when doing missions in your ship. I can explode 10 passenger liners without getting any notoriety, as long as I have a mission asking me to murder 10 passenger liners. On foot, I still get notoriety regardless of doing a mission or not.

Crime - location etc would be really useful here :) - if you're in an anarchy system, the 'no notoriety in your ship' is correct.
 
What it means is the main info in the body of the post is what should be happening and the intended behaviour. If you're seeing something which does not comply with that then there's an issue there. For example your mention of:

"What is still confusing, is the fact you get NO notoriety when doing missions in your ship. I can explode 10 passenger liners with getting any notoriety. On foot, I still get notoriety regardless of doing a mission or not."
Right, ok. I hope whoever is functionally responsible for these changes is aware that getting notoriety on foot while carrying out a mission is not consistent with doing missions in a ship.
 
I would point out that crime sprees do not always result in notoriety. If you shoot (but don't kill) people you'll get a bounty but no notoriety- which is a loophole in the C + P system for BGS actions.

Also on the topic, Archon Delaines rank 5 bonus renders all fines and bounties 0, but also has a bug where the BGS effect of that action is not counted either. Its never been said if this is intentional or not.
 
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sallymorganmoore

Senior Community Manager : Elite Dangerous
Right, ok. I hope whoever is functionally responsible for these changes is aware that getting notoriety on foot while carrying out a mission is not consistent with doing missions in a ship.

But I mention this in the post right?

Notoriety
You will gain notoriety as a criminal if you decide to embark on massive crime sprees.
For on foot crimes in Odyssey, Commanders will only gain notable notoriety only after a serious murder spree (you will recieve some, but not as much as in ship), due to ships being considered a more serious weapon of destruction and mayhem.
  • For example, destroying one ship is equal notoriety to killing numerous people on foot.

OR I may be a bit scrambled right now with so much going on but happy to try and help more with your specific situation :)
 
But I mention this in the post right?

Notoriety
You will gain notoriety as a criminal if you decide to embark on massive crime sprees.
For on foot crimes in Odyssey, Commanders will only gain notable notoriety only after a serious murder spree (you will recieve some, but not as much as in ship), due to ships being considered a more serious weapon of destruction and mayhem.
  • For example, destroying one ship is equal notoriety to killing numerous people on foot.

OR I may be a bit scrambled right now with so much going on but happy to try and help more with your specific situation :)
Its not what I mean.

If I take a ship mission from the board, asking me to murder 10 passenger liners, I get a bounty when murdering 10, but NO notoriety.
When I take a mission on foot asking me to clean out a settlement, I get a bounty AND notoriety.
 
What it means is the main info in the body of the post is what should be happening and the intended behaviour. If you're seeing something which does not comply with that then there's an issue there. For example your mention of:

"What is still confusing, is the fact you get NO notoriety when doing missions in your ship. I can explode 10 passenger liners with getting any notoriety. On foot, I still get notoriety regardless of doing a mission or not."
Massacre missions in-ship explicitly mention on the mission screen that notoriety will not be incurred for killing mission targets.

The big difference is that in your ship it's exceedingly rare that you'll be forced to kill someone that fired on you first and didn't become wanted in the process during the course of carrying out any other mission, and can bail on the entire situation in under 15 seconds at nearly all times, which is not the case in Odyssey at all where even a collection mission will require you to go into a restricted area sometimes and you can very easily end up in a situation where it's kill or be killed.

Notoriety in itself isn't a problem (I don't mind having to lie low before I can pay off my bounties) but the fact that it amplifies every subsequent bounty can very rapidly push criminal missions into becoming economically unviable - so if I do a foot massacre mission, that locks me out of doing ship massacre missions because my notoriety means the bounties incurred exceed the mission reward.
 
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