KILLER criminal flag

[Ubiquitous Che]

I've noticed a general consensus among forum posters that there's a problem with the balance between traders, pirates, and bounty hunters.

I'm a pirate. I want more traders in open. Specifically, I want more traders in open that are willing to take the risk that I won't blast them out of the sky if they peacefully hand over some cargo.

The general problem is that there's a community of people out there who kill people just for fun. However, bounty hunters lack the tools needed to address the problem.

This means that traders are less willing to trade in open. So there's less people for pirates to prey on. Which compounds the problem of the bounty hunters not having good tools for tracking down CMDR pirates in the first place.

There's an ecosystem between the different roles. A deficiency in one hurts one or both of the others.

So here's my idea: If a CMDR incurs a bounty for murdering another CMDR (not in anarchy space, not if it's a fair bounty kill, etc) then that CMDR acquires an additional bounty with the Pilot's Federation. The value of this bounty is equivalent to the insurance costs of the victim COMBINED with the insurance costs of the aggressor would have been, with some modifiers thrown in so Frontier can play with the balancing.

a = aggressor's ship
v = victim's ship
x = any ship
IC(x) = Insurance Cost of ship, using that ship owner's insurance %
m1(x), m2(x), m3(x,x) = modifiers specified by Frontier for balance
PFB(a,v) = Pilot's Federation Bounty when aggressor murders victim

PFB(a,v) = (m1(a) * IC(a)) + (m2(a) * IC(v)) + m3(a,v)

The Pilot's Federation bounty would apply in every non-anarchy system.

Currently, carrying a bounty marks you as WANTED. Carrying an active Pilot's Federation bounty win a non-anarchy system would mark you as a KILLER.

If a ship is just WANTED, then scanning them reveals their local bounty. If a ship is just a KILLER but not wanted locally, then scanning them reveals their pilot's federation bounty. A player that is both WANTED and a KILLER would have the sum of the two bounties revealed after scanning.

For non-KILLER CMDRs that scan a KILLER, the target's KILLER label would take priority over WANTED or HOSTILE in the event that more than one was valid at a time.

For KILLER CMDRs that scan another KILLER, the target's WANTED or HOSTILE label would take priority over the KILLER label in the event that more than one was valid at a time.

Normally, to discover that a ship is WANTED you have to target them and point your ship at them for about 5-10 seconds (or whatever it is). KILLER ships should be more easily identifiable so Bounty Hunters can know exactly where to go. KILLER ships flying in non-anarchy space should be marked in some way on other people's navigational radar. Perhaps a different color, or a line on either side of their ship token. The UI designers at Frontier are amazing, I'm sure they can come up with a good idea for this.

The point of all of this would be to make it immediately clear to bounty hunters where their targets are, so that KILLER players would be more likely to be hounded by CMDR bounty hunters.

You could even leverage the PowerPlay mechanic of being hunted down by your previous faction whenever you defect. Have a similar system of Pilot's Federation Enforcer NPCs that hunt down players with KILLER flags in any non-anarchy system. Threat-level of Pilots Federation Enforcer wings scales with the size of the Pilot's Federation bounties in a wing with one or more KILLER commanders.

The mechanics I have in mind for Pilot's Federation bounties would be very similar to the rules for standard bounties, with some tweaks.

Firstly, a dormant Pilot's Federation bounty can be re-activated when scanned by any system authority NPC or a Kill Warrant Scan from any CMDR.

Secondly, KILLER bounties can only be claimed by Pilot's Federation Enforcer NPCs, and by Commanders that do not themselves hold a live or a dormant Pilot's Federation Bounty. Once claimed, that KILLER bounty becomes a legacy fine across all non-anarchy systems.

If you pay off your dormant KILLER bounty, that dormant bounty still becomes a legacy fine across all non-anarchy systems. So you run the risk of paying for it twice if you take this route.

My expectation from this is that billionaire griefers that like to pick on noobs with their top-end ships wouldn't stay billionaires for long. It would encourage fairer fights between aggressors and victims, because going after them in a cheaper ship loadout would incur smaller penalties. It would encourage KILLER players to stick to anarchy systems where they can't instantly be identified as KILLERs. It would give bounty hunter players more and better tools for hunting down player killers. And it would provide player killers with a higher challenge level to overcome.

The whole purpose of this is to empower and reward bounty hunters, and place a challenge burden on player-killer murderers, so that traders will feel safer moving into open.

Thoughts?

---------------------------------------

There's also a more general problem of helping bounty hunters to track down the whereabouts of players with large bounties while the criminal player in question is logged in. I don't have any good answers to that challenge right now, but I'm interested in other people's thoughts.

 

[Khelder]

Not bad. The crime and punishment system(s) definitely need improving on. But right now we're all busy in dune buggies.

I would love to have some form of reputation system (not just flags) where you can gain (and decay) a reputation for being a pirate, murderer, etc. I think that should be more power/faction based rather than Pilots Federation. It makes sense to me that if a pilot continually murdered other pilots in Federation (for example) territory, eventually you would gain a reputation for those actions, and be hunted accordingly (with appropriate bounties).

 

[Chip Patton]

I've noticed a general consensus among forum posters that there's a problem with the balance between traders, pirates, and bounty hunters.

I'm a pirate. I want more traders in open. Specifically, I want more traders in open that are willing to take the risk that I won't blast them out of the sky if they peacefully hand over some cargo.

The general problem is that there's a community of people out there who kill people just for fun. However, bounty hunters lack the tools needed to address the problem.

This means that traders are less willing to trade in open. So there's less people for pirates to prey on. Which compounds the problem of the bounty hunters not having good tools for tracking down CMDR pirates in the first place.

There's an ecosystem between the different roles. A deficiency in one hurts one or both of the others.

So here's my idea: If a CMDR incurs a bounty for murdering another CMDR (not in anarchy space, not if it's a fair bounty kill, etc) then that CMDR acquires an additional bounty with the Pilot's Federation. The value of this bounty is equivalent to the insurance costs of the victim COMBINED with the insurance costs of the aggressor would have been, with some modifiers thrown in so Frontier can play with the balancing.

a = aggressor's ship
v = victim's ship
x = any ship
IC(x) = Insurance Cost of ship, using that ship owner's insurance %
m1(x), m2(x), m3(x,x) = modifiers specified by Frontier for balance
PFB(a,v) = Pilot's Federation Bounty when aggressor murders victim

PFB(a,v) = (m1(a) * IC(a)) + (m2(a) * IC(v)) + m3(a,v)

The Pilot's Federation bounty would apply in every non-anarchy system.

Currently, carrying a bounty marks you as WANTED. Carrying an active Pilot's Federation bounty win a non-anarchy system would mark you as a KILLER.

If a ship is just WANTED, then scanning them reveals their local bounty. If a ship is just a KILLER but not wanted locally, then scanning them reveals their pilot's federation bounty. A player that is both WANTED and a KILLER would have the sum of the two bounties revealed after scanning.

For non-KILLER CMDRs that scan a KILLER, the target's KILLER label would take priority over WANTED or HOSTILE in the event that more than one was valid at a time.

For KILLER CMDRs that scan another KILLER, the target's WANTED or HOSTILE label would take priority over the KILLER label in the event that more than one was valid at a time.

Normally, to discover that a ship is WANTED you have to target them and point your ship at them for about 5-10 seconds (or whatever it is). KILLER ships should be more easily identifiable so Bounty Hunters can know exactly where to go. KILLER ships flying in non-anarchy space should be marked in some way on other people's navigational radar. Perhaps a different color, or a line on either side of their ship token. The UI designers at Frontier are amazing, I'm sure they can come up with a good idea for this.

The point of all of this would be to make it immediately clear to bounty hunters where their targets are, so that KILLER players would be more likely to be hounded by CMDR bounty hunters.

You could even leverage the PowerPlay mechanic of being hunted down by your previous faction whenever you defect. Have a similar system of Pilot's Federation Enforcer NPCs that hunt down players with KILLER flags in any non-anarchy system. Threat-level of Pilots Federation Enforcer wings scales with the size of the Pilot's Federation bounties in a wing with one or more KILLER commanders.

The mechanics I have in mind for Pilot's Federation bounties would be very similar to the rules for standard bounties, with some tweaks.

Firstly, a dormant Pilot's Federation bounty can be re-activated when scanned by any system authority NPC or a Kill Warrant Scan from any CMDR.

Secondly, KILLER bounties can only be claimed by Pilot's Federation Enforcer NPCs, and by Commanders that do not themselves hold a live or a dormant Pilot's Federation Bounty. Once claimed, that KILLER bounty becomes a legacy fine across all non-anarchy systems.

If you pay off your dormant KILLER bounty, that dormant bounty still becomes a legacy fine across all non-anarchy systems. So you run the risk of paying for it twice if you take this route.

My expectation from this is that billionaire griefers that like to pick on noobs with their top-end ships wouldn't stay billionaires for long. It would encourage fairer fights between aggressors and victims, because going after them in a cheaper ship loadout would incur smaller penalties. It would encourage KILLER players to stick to anarchy systems where they can't instantly be identified as KILLERs. It would give bounty hunter players more and better tools for hunting down player killers. And it would provide player killers with a higher challenge level to overcome.

The whole purpose of this is to empower and reward bounty hunters, and place a challenge burden on player-killer murderers, so that traders will feel safer moving into open.

Thoughts?

---------------------------------------

There's also a more general problem of helping bounty hunters to track down the whereabouts of players with large bounties while the criminal player in question is logged in. I don't have any good answers to that challenge right now, but I'm interested in other people's thoughts.

You would still have to address those getting huge bounties and then getting a friend to kill them in the starter sidewinder.

My suggestion is to attach bounties to the ship itself, but allow players to collect the bounty globally.

Going with your idea, if a player kills someone that has a bill for say 10mil using a fur-de-lance then that player can never remove that 10m bounty unless someone kills them while in the fur-de-lance while at the same value (or more) than it was at the time the bounty was occurred (so the player can't game the system by remove all of its components and letting it get blown up by a friend).

Even still the system needs some constant policing to ensure players aren't gaming the system as they are now.

 

[Adept]

Good start OP, I have been campaigning for this for quite a while. It's specifically murder of clean commanders that the Pilots Federation should be against, that is just bad for business all around.

The thing that nerfs all this, and made the gold-selling exploit possible comes form a few features. Sandro defended them back in the day, something about not wanting to make "a criminal lifestyle" too difficult. Criminal lifestyle is fine, I'm a tarnished Han Solo type myself (you can't prove 'nuffin though), but ganking other players for fun is something that has to be solved by the devs. It's defining the very nature and soul of the game, and it's directly against DB's often expressed goal of not wanting players to suffer griefing.

Anyway. The key is that when somebody dies with bounties on them, they should have to pay them off themselves as well, with a processing fee on top. It has to be at most a zero sum game. When that doesn't happen, the bounties add free money into the system, and exploits are easy.

So, a few additional tweaks are needed.

a) When a player dies, the escape capsule takes them to (or the clone wakes at) the _nearest_ station. For an easier implementation, they wake up at the main station in the system.

b) When a player has been killed, all bounties in the current jurisdiction are automatically extracted from their credit balance regardless of whether they were killed by an NPC or another player.

These two will fix most of the problems. The built in exploits of never landing on a station in the system you are wanted in and not having to pay off your bounty when it's claimed by another player are built into the system currently, and I very much doubt the current situation is what was intended. As a result we now have the "fix" against gold selling where all the bounties we players get are local, and PvP bonty hunting has become quite meaningless (and the bounties have little effect on player behavior).

*drops mic*

 

[CMDR-Bullsey]

how many post's about this has there been now , got to be getting on to 100
give it a rest guys if FD haven't heard you by now they never will

 

[Mephane]

The killer status is an interesting idea, but there should be exceptions, for example, if a player pledged to one power kills a player of a hostile power, the former shouldn't be flagged as a killer, only as wanted if the action was a crime in the system it happened. Because attacking opposing, pledged ships is a legitimate form of gameplay.

And yes, the bounty should always automatically be removed from the player's balance, before they even can choose to pay the rebuy cost. If they have too little money for the rebuy cost after the bounty has been deducted... time for a Sidewinder.

 

[Adept]

how many post's about this has there been now , got to be getting on to 100
give it a rest guys if FD haven't heard you by now they never will

It seems like your solution is to retreat to the Mobius group. I'm sorry but that's not good enough for me, and it's not really good for the game as a whole.

(Not that I have anything against the existence of the Mobius group, or those who play in it. That's not my point).

 

[DragoonKnight]

The general idea is that there should be harsher penalties than a meaningless 6,000 credit fine in one system for killing other players. You can argue all day about the specific details of that implementation, but we need something to be done by FD to punish player killing. There need to be consequences.

 

[Trasher]

Hmm... as a trader, get pointlessly ganked in Open; or make risk free money in Solo/Mobius. Hmm...

 

[tawittle]

The current crime system is completely broken. Any change would be welcomed. There are 3 massive problems:

1) You can commit a crime, change system and be clean
2) you can commit a crime, die in a sidewinder and be clean
3) killing an NPC looks exactly the same as killing a CMDR

Additionally, it is a huge disadvantage to actually put KWS or cargo scanners on your ship because you are going to be fighting against people with pure combat builds. Would be nice to see a special slot reserved for KWS/Cargo/Discovery Scanners so that people actually use them in pvp.

 

[Adept]

The general idea is that there should be harsher penalties than a meaningless 6,000 credit fine in one system for killing other players. You can argue all day about the specific details of that implementation, but we need something to be done by FD to punish player killing. There need to be consequences.

Exactly. It is the stated aim of David Braben, and it's quite prominent in the Design Archive. I don't know what has gone wrong since. FD seem unsure about what to do, and are relying too much on private groups and solo mode. Abandoning Open to the worst behaving minority is very unsatisfying.

 

[Khelder]

Exactly. It is the stated aim of David Braben, and it's quite prominent in the Design Archive. I don't know what has gone wrong since. FD seem unsure about what to do, and are relying too much on private groups and solo mode. Abandoning Open to the worst behaving minority is very unsatisfying.

I'm going to take a guess and say that for now they just wanted to keep things simple. That's what I'm hoping anyway. That the current situation is only really a placeholder for more depth to come.

The problem is that you can't automatically slap someone hard for murder. There has to be an element of criminality. And particularly if you treat NPCs and commanders the same, there are plenty of missions that require that you murder other pilots. So you can't simply raise the penalty for murder.

There needs to be a more complex system based around reputation gained from actions where a commander will (likely somewhat exponentially) build up to the point where they will be hounded mercilessly by authorities, etc. You would also factor in where crimes happened, etc. This, to me at least, would make more sense from a 'realism' point of view. Getting away with one murder might be one thing. But if someone was to make a habit of say, camping in a noob area and taking out multiple sidewinders, they will swiftly gain such a reputation that the authority/bounty hunter response would make their game all but unplayable until they have paid their due.

That's just my thoughts though. Maybe they like things the way they are.

 

[Ubiquitous Che]

I'm going to take a guess and say that for now they just wanted to keep things simple. That's what I'm hoping anyway. That the current situation is only really a placeholder for more depth to come.

The problem is that you can't automatically slap someone hard for murder. There has to be an element of criminality. And particularly if you treat NPCs and commanders the same, there are plenty of missions that require that you murder other pilots. So you can't simply raise the penalty for murder.

There needs to be a more complex system based around reputation gained from actions where a commander will (likely somewhat exponentially) build up to the point where they will be hounded mercilessly by authorities, etc. You would also factor in where crimes happened, etc. This, to me at least, would make more sense from a 'realism' point of view. Getting away with one murder might be one thing. But if someone was to make a habit of say, camping in a noob area and taking out multiple sidewinders, they will swiftly gain such a reputation that the authority/bounty hunter response would make their game all but unplayable until they have paid their due.

That's just my thoughts though. Maybe they like things the way they are.

I like the 'keep it simple' philosophy. That's in part what I was going for.

The fundamental problem right now is that players that want to be bounty hunters that track down and kill griefers aren't currently empowered to do so.

I think that the only solution to black-hat player-based harassment is to give white-hat players the tools needed to harass them right back.

 

[marcusdavidus]

pff i kill ppl just for fun becasue whyen i manage to find another CMDR after 10 hours of gameplay I GOT THE FREEKING CHANCE TO AT LAST ONCE PER 10 HOURS PVP WITH SOME ONE WITH SOME BRAIN becasue npc suck badly in combat

 

[Jukelo]

Although coming from a good sentiment, any change to the bounty system is ultimately pointless. You need to find and kill the target to collect the bounty. Instancing will make the finding bit very problematic, while high-waking will make the killing near impossible.

 

[Adept]

I'm going to take a guess and say that for now they just wanted to keep things simple. That's what I'm hoping anyway. That the current situation is only really a placeholder for more depth to come.

The problem is that you can't automatically slap someone hard for murder. There has to be an element of criminality. And particularly if you treat NPCs and commanders the same,

That's the beauty of it. All the players are members of the Pilots Federation, which usually only includes those ranked Elite. We are silver spoon proteges, backed by the shadowy Elite Federation.

As Braben talked about it, the Pilots Federation helps us out in a lot of ways, but they take a dim view of us attempting to murder each other. The structure is already in place, as is the justification. Blowing up the ship of a clean commander (aka another player) in a non-anarchy can result in a hard slap-down. Combat can be had without such considerations in warzones and in lawless areas. Elsewhere the person commiting an unprovoked attack should have to at the very least compensate the target for their insurance claim.

- - - - - Additional Content Posted / Auto Merge - - - - -

pff i kill ppl just for fun becasue whyen i manage to find another CMDR after 10 hours of gameplay I GOT THE FREEKING CHANCE TO AT LAST ONCE PER 10 HOURS PVP WITH SOME ONE WITH SOME BRAIN becasue npc suck badly in combat

Not good enough. If that is the kick you need, log into CQC or look for a warzone. There's plenty of opportunities to fight other humans, and no justification for blowing up peaceful traders for fun.

- - - - - Additional Content Posted / Auto Merge - - - - -

Although coming from a good sentiment, any change to the bounty system is ultimately pointless. You need to find and kill the target to collect the bounty. Instancing will make the finding bit very problematic, while high-waking will make the killing near impossible.

That's not the real issue. The problem is that the criminal doesn't have to pay off that bounty even when the law catches up to him or her.

 

[pippo]

My suggestion is to attach bounties to the ship itself, but allow players to collect the bounty globally.

This is a great idea…
That would answer the friendly bounty bagging issue as well as giving cmdrs a proper warning.
example: If a pilot murdering cmdrs for fun uses a PvP fitted Python on those occasions, the murderer flying around in this Python would flag up on the victims systems, as opposed to when he's not being a threat, like in a T9 while trading.

 

[Mephane]

pff i kill ppl just for fun becasue whyen i manage to find another CMDR after 10 hours of gameplay I GOT THE FREEKING CHANCE TO AT LAST ONCE PER 10 HOURS PVP WITH SOME ONE WITH SOME BRAIN becasue npc suck badly in combat

Yeah and the unsuspecting guy you just jumped will always be so totally prepared and willing to engage in PvP.

 

[Khelder]

That's the beauty of it. All the players are members of the Pilots Federation, which usually only includes those ranked Elite. We are silver spoon proteges, backed by the shadowy Elite Federation.

As Braben talked about it, the Pilots Federation helps us out in a lot of ways, but they take a dim view of us attempting to murder each other. The structure is already in place, as is the justification. Blowing up the ship of a clean commander (aka another player) in a non-anarchy can result in a hard slap-down. Combat can be had without such considerations in warzones and in lawless areas. Elsewhere the person commiting an unprovoked attack should have to at the very least compensate the target for their insurance claim.

Well, I guess it would make flying a lot safer.

It would be an interesting concept to govern though from a game adjudication point of view. Example: Cmdr A accidently fires on Cmdr B (while engaging an NPC or something - it happens). Cmdr B mischievously takes this as an opportunity to destroy Cmdr A. From a human standpoint, we would most likely lay the 'blame' for this encounter on Cmdr B. But the game AI will likely consider Cmdr A at fault as he was the first to attack. And if you force it the other way and have the Cmdr who makes the kill shot the one at fault, then that precludes anyone from fighting back (and winning) against an aggressor.

 

[Ubiquitous Che]

Well, I guess it would make flying a lot safer.

It would be an interesting concept to govern though from a game adjudication point of view. Example: Cmdr A accidently fires on Cmdr B (while engaging an NPC or something - it happens). Cmdr B mischievously takes this as an opportunity to destroy Cmdr A. From a human standpoint, we would most likely lay the 'blame' for this encounter on Cmdr B. But the game AI will likely consider Cmdr A at fault as he was the first to attack. And if you force it the other way and have the Cmdr who makes the kill shot the one at fault, then that precludes anyone from fighting back (and winning) against an aggressor.

We've already got that problem right now. I've had situations when bounty-hunting in RES sites where I'd accidental clip a system defense ship with friendly fire, then they'd all turn around and blow me out of the sky. Although from what I understand, the game is more friendly-fire tolerant than it was the last time it bit me.

This is the same problem, just with a greater impact. Personally, I think it's a more acceptable than the more general problem of the CMDR ecosystem in Open feeling imbalanced.