I've been bounty hunting with a Vulture on and off for more than two weeks, and for most of that time I used a Kill Warrant Scanner, but I've always had the nagging feeling that, strictly from a time-management perspective, it simply wasn't worth using.
First there's the initial use - those ten seconds of uninterrupted scanning to get your reading. With the slower, tougher targets you can do it in combat, but against anything too weak like a Sidewinder or Eagle you run the risk of killing your target before the scan completes, and if there are already police or other players involved, you run the risk of losing the bounty if you hold back long enough to finish the scan.
Then there's collecting the extra winnings. I used to bounty hunt mostly at the RESs in Reorte, because it's conveniently close to Federation systems, and there's at least one Imperial system half-a-dozen jumps away, so every once in awhile I could make the round trip to hand in the intersystem bounties from the other two major factions. But even then, whenever I made that trip, I'd be thinking that if I just stayed back at the RES, I'd (a) be having a better time, and (b) be making more money. And as for the individual system-level bounties, even if you can determine which system they belong to, you could be racking them up for a week and still not make enough from them to be worth the time taken to cash them in.
And then, of course, there's the fact that if you do take the time to accumulate a large value in bounties, it can all be wiped out if you lose your ship.
So I'm wondering, has anyone really crunched the numbers, or put in some time experimenting, to see whether the KWS really does earn you more money when you factor in the time it takes to collect it?
Meanwhile, I'm going without the KWS, and being thankful for the extra power I can juggle into other modules.
First there's the initial use - those ten seconds of uninterrupted scanning to get your reading. With the slower, tougher targets you can do it in combat, but against anything too weak like a Sidewinder or Eagle you run the risk of killing your target before the scan completes, and if there are already police or other players involved, you run the risk of losing the bounty if you hold back long enough to finish the scan.
Then there's collecting the extra winnings. I used to bounty hunt mostly at the RESs in Reorte, because it's conveniently close to Federation systems, and there's at least one Imperial system half-a-dozen jumps away, so every once in awhile I could make the round trip to hand in the intersystem bounties from the other two major factions. But even then, whenever I made that trip, I'd be thinking that if I just stayed back at the RES, I'd (a) be having a better time, and (b) be making more money. And as for the individual system-level bounties, even if you can determine which system they belong to, you could be racking them up for a week and still not make enough from them to be worth the time taken to cash them in.
And then, of course, there's the fact that if you do take the time to accumulate a large value in bounties, it can all be wiped out if you lose your ship.
So I'm wondering, has anyone really crunched the numbers, or put in some time experimenting, to see whether the KWS really does earn you more money when you factor in the time it takes to collect it?
Meanwhile, I'm going without the KWS, and being thankful for the extra power I can juggle into other modules.
![[VR] Mad Mike](https://forums-cdn.zaonce.net/data/avatars/m/27/27910.jpg?1553527108){kind=avatar}
