As of now, your actions don't have a major impact to your own game. Go murder a bunch of people, wait out notoriety, no big deal. Let's change that.
I propose an activity scoring system. This will not be visible to the player; not even via the api. Every action taken in a system increases scores that are saved with all minor factions in the system; similar to rep. Scores for helping others (refueling, etc), trade (both buying and selling), mining (maybe broken down to the different types of minerals), killing clean ships, killing wanted ships, the kinds of missions you take, etc. Track every action and increase scores at the minor faction level.
The sum of all of your scores for a specific kind of action create a system score. In other words, if you go around murdering people in a system, you'll be known as a murderer to the factions in that system. If you spend a lot of time mining, you're known as a miner. Maybe you murder a lot of people while mining. You're known as both. You can't perform actions to lower it (i.e. clearing a bounty). The scores are saved with a timestamp for the last time it was changed and a timestamp of when a scenario was triggered (more on that later). It will degrade over time if you stop performing actions in systems with factions that know you. No upper bounds to your score, so the amount of time it takes to degrade will depend on how many points you've racked up.
Go to another system that has a single faction from your previous system. They still know you're a murderer, but your overall score is different because there are different factions in the new system. It's dynamic based on your actions.
Bonus points if you can get the score of systems you pass through to have a diminishing impact as you travel; a residual score. Jump in a system where you're known as a miner. Then jump to an anarchy system. You'll still have that reputation as a miner (and consequences of such a reputation). Think of it as people following you.
So now we can create scenarios around these scores to act as positive and negative consequences. You may have wings of pirates attacking if you're a known bounty hunter. You'll face more dangerous threats as your fame increases. At some point, it should be completely overwhelming regardless of what kind of ship you have. Your only option would be to get help from other players or GTFO of that system. If you have someone with a really high score and they're escaping without help, make it more difficult. Elite: Impossible. It should be difficult to reach this level.
On the other hand, you may have cops giving you a tip off about lucrative bounties in a HAZ RES (i.e. FDev spawns pirates as strong as those CZ captains and a few spec ops class ships when you drop in the RES and they all have a 10 million credit bounty). Fighting in open next to a "famous" bounty hunter will be dangerous, but incredibly lucrative if you can survive. Everyone in the instance would feel the impact of the famous bounty hunter; including comms chatter.
A miner would be treated like a celebrity. Drop in a ring and a lot of other miners will follow (can I write comms chatter for this? Please). You could then have pirates following the fanboys following you. Those pirates would all have decent bounties, but would be equal/stronger than those spec ops ships. As an incentive, you may get a tip off about a lucrative area in a ring (i.e. FDev jacks the amount of asteroids with the high paying material, lots of cores, etc), ad hoc mining mission requests, etc. You might want to ask other players to watch your back; and they'll have good bounties to chase. None of these 100k bounties. It not only would make sense to ask for protection, you wouldn't have much of a choice if you wanted to stay in the system.
A known pirate would have cops following them. Interdict someone in a lowsec system and you might have an unexpected, immediate response. Anarchy factions might give a tip about a ship you might want to pursue or offer a high value pirating mission for 30 million credits. A murderhobo would have people out for revenge. Anarchy factions might offer them a 50 million credit job to slaughter some helpless NPCs (further increasing your murderhobo score). You can have minor scenarios. Someone known to speed and fly recklessly in the no fire zone might trigger an announcement to everyone in the area, "Attention Pilots. Be on the lookout for the erratic Python coming in to dock. The pilot is known to fly under the influence of Lavian Brandy." Store scores for every little thing.
We're just talking about storing a few more bits of data with each faction and then using the score to dictate the difficulty, the reward and a weighted random chance of occurrence. Jump in a system. Gather current scores. Check the dates and do math to decrease the score if needed. Then set a timer to randomly trigger events based on the scores. A low level pirate might have a 1% chance of cops bothering him that recurs every 3 days. A well known pirate may have a 90% chance to recurs every 3 minutes with cops that go after his FSD. A newbie bounty hunter might have 4 sidewinders attacking at random once in a week. A well known bounty hunter wouldn't be able to go 3 minutes without having a wing of pirates trying to interdict him, and those pirates would all be SpecOPedAF. Then again, they'd all have great bounties. No garbage 500k bounties; so it would be worth the effort if you can handle it. If you succeed, it would increase your score and create a more difficult scenario the next time. Your score doesn't drop if you fail. Eat the rebuy and get out of the system if you can't handle it; or get other players to help (increasing their scores). You'd get a cool down between the activities occurring, but it would be completely based on your score. Go to a system where no one knows you and everything is back to normal (unless someone has a successful expansion).
I propose an activity scoring system. This will not be visible to the player; not even via the api. Every action taken in a system increases scores that are saved with all minor factions in the system; similar to rep. Scores for helping others (refueling, etc), trade (both buying and selling), mining (maybe broken down to the different types of minerals), killing clean ships, killing wanted ships, the kinds of missions you take, etc. Track every action and increase scores at the minor faction level.
The sum of all of your scores for a specific kind of action create a system score. In other words, if you go around murdering people in a system, you'll be known as a murderer to the factions in that system. If you spend a lot of time mining, you're known as a miner. Maybe you murder a lot of people while mining. You're known as both. You can't perform actions to lower it (i.e. clearing a bounty). The scores are saved with a timestamp for the last time it was changed and a timestamp of when a scenario was triggered (more on that later). It will degrade over time if you stop performing actions in systems with factions that know you. No upper bounds to your score, so the amount of time it takes to degrade will depend on how many points you've racked up.
Go to another system that has a single faction from your previous system. They still know you're a murderer, but your overall score is different because there are different factions in the new system. It's dynamic based on your actions.
Bonus points if you can get the score of systems you pass through to have a diminishing impact as you travel; a residual score. Jump in a system where you're known as a miner. Then jump to an anarchy system. You'll still have that reputation as a miner (and consequences of such a reputation). Think of it as people following you.
So now we can create scenarios around these scores to act as positive and negative consequences. You may have wings of pirates attacking if you're a known bounty hunter. You'll face more dangerous threats as your fame increases. At some point, it should be completely overwhelming regardless of what kind of ship you have. Your only option would be to get help from other players or GTFO of that system. If you have someone with a really high score and they're escaping without help, make it more difficult. Elite: Impossible. It should be difficult to reach this level.
On the other hand, you may have cops giving you a tip off about lucrative bounties in a HAZ RES (i.e. FDev spawns pirates as strong as those CZ captains and a few spec ops class ships when you drop in the RES and they all have a 10 million credit bounty). Fighting in open next to a "famous" bounty hunter will be dangerous, but incredibly lucrative if you can survive. Everyone in the instance would feel the impact of the famous bounty hunter; including comms chatter.
A miner would be treated like a celebrity. Drop in a ring and a lot of other miners will follow (can I write comms chatter for this? Please). You could then have pirates following the fanboys following you. Those pirates would all have decent bounties, but would be equal/stronger than those spec ops ships. As an incentive, you may get a tip off about a lucrative area in a ring (i.e. FDev jacks the amount of asteroids with the high paying material, lots of cores, etc), ad hoc mining mission requests, etc. You might want to ask other players to watch your back; and they'll have good bounties to chase. None of these 100k bounties. It not only would make sense to ask for protection, you wouldn't have much of a choice if you wanted to stay in the system.
A known pirate would have cops following them. Interdict someone in a lowsec system and you might have an unexpected, immediate response. Anarchy factions might give a tip about a ship you might want to pursue or offer a high value pirating mission for 30 million credits. A murderhobo would have people out for revenge. Anarchy factions might offer them a 50 million credit job to slaughter some helpless NPCs (further increasing your murderhobo score). You can have minor scenarios. Someone known to speed and fly recklessly in the no fire zone might trigger an announcement to everyone in the area, "Attention Pilots. Be on the lookout for the erratic Python coming in to dock. The pilot is known to fly under the influence of Lavian Brandy." Store scores for every little thing.
We're just talking about storing a few more bits of data with each faction and then using the score to dictate the difficulty, the reward and a weighted random chance of occurrence. Jump in a system. Gather current scores. Check the dates and do math to decrease the score if needed. Then set a timer to randomly trigger events based on the scores. A low level pirate might have a 1% chance of cops bothering him that recurs every 3 days. A well known pirate may have a 90% chance to recurs every 3 minutes with cops that go after his FSD. A newbie bounty hunter might have 4 sidewinders attacking at random once in a week. A well known bounty hunter wouldn't be able to go 3 minutes without having a wing of pirates trying to interdict him, and those pirates would all be SpecOPedAF. Then again, they'd all have great bounties. No garbage 500k bounties; so it would be worth the effort if you can handle it. If you succeed, it would increase your score and create a more difficult scenario the next time. Your score doesn't drop if you fail. Eat the rebuy and get out of the system if you can't handle it; or get other players to help (increasing their scores). You'd get a cool down between the activities occurring, but it would be completely based on your score. Go to a system where no one knows you and everything is back to normal (unless someone has a successful expansion).
