Update Kill Warrant Scanner Feedback

[withnail]

Hello Commander!


The limit is 2 million credits per faction, which allows bigger payouts using the Kill Warrant scanner as it can detect multiple faction bounties.

Interstellar bounties are "unpacked" foer the claimant, meaning that these too can give 2 milliion credits per faction.

What is the problem with this?

 

[wstephenson]

One set of questions left over from the previous thread around out-of-jurisdiction-but-present-in-system handling of bounty components:

Commander A has 2MCr Federal Interstellar bounty and 2MCr Imperial Interstellar bounty.

He is in a system with both Imperial and Federal minor factions' jurisdictions. Components of these interstellar bounties were issued by both of the local factions.

He is KWSed by Commander B while in the Imperial jurisdiction. B now has a license to kill A.

Q1) Does this now detect the Imperial and the Federal interstellar bounty? (1 mark)

Q2) Or does this detect the Imperial interstellar bounty and the local component of the Federal interstellar bounty, issued in the Federal minor faction's jurisdiction? (1 mark)

Commander B kills Commander A after the KWS.

Q3) Which Federal bounty vouchers does Commander B receive? (2 marks)

Commander A respawns at Imperial Incarceration Institute and has to pay his 2MCr Imperial Interstellar bounty.

Q4) Which Federal bounties does Commander A have to pay to get out of jail? (3 marks)

Q5) If there is partial detection and claim for the local components of the Federal interstellar bounty, are the remaining components still live bounties? If the claimed components reduce the total Federal bounty below the Interstellar threshold, is this now no longer treated as an Interstellar bounty, but a set of small faction-local bounties? (5 marks )

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

Yup, nowhere did Sandro say that this process/effect was changing:


We can hand individual bounties in, as per normal, and the above effects occur.
(emphasis mine)

Right?

Edit, even better:

Yep. All looks really good. And for those that are busy selling of their KWS, well more fool them.

 

[raymondo the great]

Ok that looks a lot better - and easier to explain to new players.

 

[CMDR _BigJay_]

Curious to see how this new system will affect CG's where the best(if not only) place to get bountys that count towards the CG is not the system in which the CG is 'sponsored' from..

This is the only real issue I see as well. And Sandro did say in the other thread that they should only be placing CGs in systems where they can be completed. So barring human error it shouldn't be a problem. I guess we'll see.

 

[Jynessa Loraeyn]

Hello Commanders!

I've started a new thread and unstickied the previous for the sake of clarity.

Looking into the how the Kill Warrant scanner worked and how we want it to work, we have to consider both new and old Interstellar bounties.

Players using the Kill Warrant scanner will note that we have already been using a lightweight version of Interstellar bounties. These show up as “Federal”, “Empire” or "Alliance" bounties, and have no faction associated with them.

The way the system worked is that a ship had the chance to spawn with a local bounty for the current jurisdiction, and a number of bounties for other factions present in the system, as well as the chance for a number of these lightweight Interstellar bounties, which would replace the faction bounties.

When you hand in a normal bounty, you:

• Increase your reputation with the faction that issued it, which also trickles some reputation to its associated superpower unless it was an independent faction.
  [*]Increase the influence of the faction you hand the bounty claim in to.
• Receive credits from the claim.

Because the lightweight Interstellar bounties had no faction, only a superpower, they:

• Had no faction to give reputation to, so only increased superpower reputation (and by too much).
  [*]Could be handed in at any faction associated with their superpower
  
  • After which they then distributed their influence to all factions in the system according to each faction’s current portion of influence. So the faction with the most influence in the system would get the biggest cut from the lightweight Interstellar bounty, and so on. Any faction not aligned with the bounty’s superpower would then discard its share.
• Could be handed in at Interstellar Factors, which would (unintentionally) apply the same rules of sharing out influence to the system where the Interstellar Factors was.

Whilst this allowed you to support factions in the background simulation, it did so in a messy way. For example, a Federal faction in system where it was the only Federal faction could benefit more from a Federal lightweight interstellar bounty than if other Federal factions were present. You could also pour huge amounts of influence collected from all over human space into a single system, which was manifestly unfair to independent factions as well as being illogical. It was a confusing system that allowed complicated and undesirable results.

The new Interstellar bounties will use the following rules:

• When a ship’s total bounty value of all bounties and fines for factions associated with a single superpower exceeds 2 million CR, they will become a single Interstellar bounty, valid in all jurisdictions associated with the superpower.
  [*]When you claim a superpower bounty, you will receive all of the bounties as individual claims, allowing you to choose which ones to cash in.
• Alternatively, you can use the Interstellar Factors to claim them all at a reduced value and loss of influence.

Because the new Interstellar bounties are actually collections of normal bounties they are handed in and dealt with no differently from normal bounties; giving the correct amount of influence to the faction that issued them and the correct reputation to the player. They will also be a lot bigger as they have minimum trigger thresholds, and are a feature that is primarily aimed at Commanders, allowing the game to make them wanted across huge swathes of space.

Initially, NPC ships will not have these new Interstellar bounties. Instead, every time we would have generated a lightweight Interstellar bounty, we will instead generate another bounty from a faction in the system.

Whilst this does reduce the amount of influence you can bring to a system, it makes the process simpler, predictable, focused and legible. Fundamentally it can be summed up by the following statement: to support a faction, hand in claims issued by that faction to that faction.

We’re also fixing the Interstellar Factors so that they (correctly) do not apply influence to the system where they are based. Reputation and Credit rewards will continue to work as normal.

The Kill Warrant scanner will have the following functionality, shortly after launch:

• It will detect all bounties issued by all factions in the system.
  [*]It will grant a license to kill any ship that has a Federal bounty if in a Federal jurisdiction, any ship that has an Empire bounty if in an Imperial Jurisdiction and any ship that has an Alliance bounty if in an Alliance jurisdiction.
• Detecting any bounties with a Kill Warrant scan will prevent you losing reputation with the ship’s faction when you destroy it, unless it belonged to a criminal faction.

Making the Kill Warrant scanner work in this way neatly differentiates its use from Interstellar bounties, whilst retaining a strong case for using one, in terms of credits, reputation and influence gaining.

Oh! Thank you so much for explaining how the current system works in so much detail.

More fool me for trying to support independents in a system with a Federal faction in it, heheh. Though I got there in the end.

Okay, that clears a lot of stuff I was uncertain about up, and yes, it's clear the system needed cleaning up.

It also appears that the new system only reduces the amount of influence you can bring to a system if you were supporting Federal, Empire or Alliance factions. For those of us who support fully independent factions, it actually levels the playing field

I'm glad that's happening.

Can I ask for a clarification? It says 'you can use the Interstellar Factors to claim them all at a reduced value and loss of influence'. Is the 'loss of influence' total? So while correcting the Interstellar Factors spreading influence around their own system when bounties were handed into them is obviously something that needs fixing, does that mean in the new system that handing in bounties at Interstellar Factors no longer gives any influence at all to the original bounty issuing faction way off in its own system, or simply that the influence gain is reduced, just like the credit value is reduced at the Interstellar Factors?

 

[Mengy]

I have to admit that by this point I'm so confused that I can't tell if Sandro's description is better or worse than the old KWS. I'll just have to try it out when it goes live and see for myself I guess.

 

[Sandro Sammarco]

Hello Commanders!

This is the only real issue I see as well. And Sandro did say in the other thread that they should only be placing CGs in systems where they can be completed. So barring human error it shouldn't be a problem. I guess we'll see.

Yes, we will continue to take care where CGs are placed to ensure they can be completed. The Kill Warrant scanner will still be able to help, as it will detect all bounties in the CG system.

Q1) Does this now detect the Imperial and the Federal interstellar bounty? (1 mark)

The Kill Warrant scanner will detect only bounties issued by factions in the system. The Interstellar bounties will be revealed on a basic scan as long as they match the jurisdiction's superpower.

Q2) Or does this detect the Imperial interstellar bounty and the local component of the Federal interstellar bounty, issued in the Federal minor faction's jurisdiction? (1 mark)

I believe it will detect local component bounties, which is to say, bounties that were part of the Interstellar bounty that were issued by a faction in the system.

Commander A respawns at Imperial Incarceration Institute and has to pay his 2MCr Imperial Interstellar bounty.

Q4) Which Federal bounties does Commander A have to pay to get out of jail? (3 marks)

A respawning Commander always has to pay for all bounties valid for the jurisdiction in which they died that were detected, and any Interstellar bounty linked to the jurisdiction.

Q5) If there is partial detection and claim for the local components of the Federal interstellar bounty, are the remaining components still live bounties? If the claimed components reduce the total Federal bounty below the Interstellar threshold, is this now no longer treated as an Interstellar bounty, but a set of small faction-local bounties? (5 marks )

I believe they will remain as part of the Interstellar bounty, which will remain an Interstellar bounty.

 

[Jynessa Loraeyn]

Goodbye to increasing your Federation\Empire\Alliance reputation via bounty hunting.

"Thanks".

Goodbye? Seriously? As in, you're saying in the new system you cannot increase your superpower rep via bounty hunting? That's obviously wrong.

You know that your superpower rep goes up if you simply claim bounties issued by superpower-aligned minor factions right? None of that's going to change.

 

[Old Duck]

I think some people replying to this thread have equipped a Salt Warrant Scanner (SWS), because they seem to be finding things to salt that aren't showing up on my quick scan of the OP.

 

[Sandro Sammarco]

Hello Commander Jynessa Loraeyn!

Oh! Thank you so much for explaining how the current system works in so much detail.

Can I ask for a clarification? It says 'you can use the Interstellar Factors to claim them all at a reduced value and loss of influence'. Is the 'loss of influence' total? So while correcting the Interstellar Factors spreading influence around their own system when bounties were handed into them is obviously something that needs fixing, does that mean in the new system that handing in bounties at Interstellar Factors no longer gives any influence at all to the original bounty issuing faction way off in its own system, or simply that the influence gain is reduced, just like the credit value is reduced at the Interstellar Factors?

It will be completely loss, as it really does not make sense. The reason we can't give influence via the Interstellar Factors is that we dont store the locational data of the bounty, only the faction, and use the starport location to select the faction that will gain the influence. Whilst this is normally fine (and allows an amount of tactical choice if a faction has a presence in multiple systems), it means that the Interstellar Factors would be giving influence to the wrong faction.

 

[biohazard15]

Goodbye? Seriously? As in, you're saying in the new system you cannot increase your superpower rep via bounty hunting? That's obviously wrong.

You know that your superpower rep goes up if you simply claim bounties issued by superpower-aligned minor factions right? None of that's going to change.

Yes, I know that.

But in old system, you could increase reputation with all three superpowers simultaniously. In new system, you can't do this. And before you or Sandro or anyone go "this is wrong" - no. Ever heard of Interpol?

 

[NSR2]

Something of a side issue.
But are there any plans to allow NPC crew to use the KWS?
So I can fly about and pew pew in a fighter, while my NPC crew does a KWS on my target?

 

[withnail]

I think some people replying to this thread have equipped a Salt Warrant Scanner (SWS), because they seem to be finding things to salt that aren't showing up on my quick scan of the OP.

Some of us have just been hit by a nasty 5c and are wondering when that sort of thing is going to get attention, whereas this looks like something that gets more attention than it deserves.

 

[Jynessa Loraeyn]

Hello Commander Jynessa Loraeyn!



It will be completel loss, as it really does not make sense. The reason we can't give influence via the Interstellar Factors is that we dont store the locational data of the bounty, only the faction, and use the starport location to select the faction that will gain the influence. Whilst this is normally fine (and allows an amount of tactical choice if a faction has a presence in multiple systems), it means that the Interstellar Factors would be giving influence to the wrong faction.

Ah, got it. Yeah, that does make sense. After all, you're not actually claiming the bounty, you're selling off the claim to some illegal underhand fixer in a dodgy system... so it's questionable whether that broker is even working in the interests of the faction they're buying the bounty claim for. They might simply be working for a rival to conceal the effectiveness of the bounty from the original issuing faction, for all we know.

That's pretty cool - it means if all you care about is the money, and don't want the inconvenience of going back to the original issuing factions, you've got a not quite legal option to just get some creds. Makes sense with the Factors being in low security space. So yeah, you're basically choosing to forgo the influence effect of your bounty claims in order to conveniently get all the sweet moneys.

 

[MadDogMurdock]

Your post makes absolutely no mention of how the KWS currently obtains bounties for minor factions in other systems.

This functionality is being completely lost, so it'd be nice to not ignore that in the explanation, given that the KWS will only work at all in populated systems after the update.

 

[rootsrat]

Yes, I know that.

But in old system, you could increase reputation with all three superpowers simultaniously. In new system, you can't do this. And before you or Sandro or anyone go "this is wrong" - no. Ever heard of Interpol?

Maybe, but this final proposal is a good compromise. You get something, you lose something. Gains (new C&P system) outweighs the loss (can't increase rep with all 3 SP at the same time) in this case IMHO. It doesn't render it completely ineffective in rep gaining though.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

Yes, I know that.

But in old system, you could increase reputation with all three superpowers simultaniously. In new system, you can't do this. And before you or Sandro or anyone go "this is wrong" - no. Ever heard of Interpol?

While I have heard of interpol, it is up to FDev to decide if they think it's wrong or not. Personally it didn't make sense to me. If you want rep in empire, work in empire space and the same goes for Fed and Alliance.

 

[Moesis]

So the KWS detects all bounties for factions in the local system. Can it ever detect Interstellar Bounties ?

For the sake of argument say you have an Interstellar Fed Bounty, and are in system not aligned with the federation, but it does have a fed minor faction, my guess is NO the Interstellar Bounty won't be detected, only the local bounties.

I hope I'm wrong here, as what this would mean is the KWS, which has the sole purpose of increasing the rewards for Bounty Hunting, could possibly do the exact opposite and also potentially lower the overall fed bounties to below the $2m threshold, thus also take some heat of the criminal by revoking an interstellar bounty.

So my hope is yes, but the question remains.

Will the KWS be able to detect Interstellar Bounties ?

Edit: seems this was answered above. Oh well, best bounty hunting method is just hunt in Fed/Imp/Allied controlled systems, KWS not required.

 

[Alec Turner]

Ok that looks a lot better - and easier to explain to new players.

Err, yeahhhhh ... riiggghhht. Here's how that's gonna go:

[video=youtube_share;03ekrhxvJSE]https://youtu.be/03ekrhxvJSE[/video]