One element that frequently comes up in C&P discussions is what to do with detention ships. As things stand currently, they're in a weird place, as all they really do is provide a different respawn point if your ship was destroyed with a bounty. Due to the ease of obtaining credits, bounties meanwhile are mostly meaningless except for the newest or most lawless players. I suggest that they would be far more interesting if detention was itself an opportunity for gameplay. Presented here, an idea for reworking the detention center megaship that relies almost entirely on existing mechanics, and sets up new gameplay around the choice to decide between paying with time, or escaping via skilled piloting.
Without introducing space legs or anything else we don't have yet, here's how I imagine prison might work:
1) You respawn at the prison ship. Unlike previously, your bounties have not been paid off, although you can still lose your ship if you didn't have the rebuy. However, you don't respawn in your ship, but a loaned "prison work" ship, maybe a Hauler or similar.
2) You get a welcome message summarizing the situation - welcome to prison, you are here to work off your bounty of XYZ, you are in a loaned work ship. Perhaps a breakdown of what crimes were committed, which might help new players understand the legal system. The work ship has a disabled hyperdrive (SC works, but no high wake), so you're stuck in the system. Your own ship is stored in the shipyard and you can visit it at any time, but it is a crime and you will be attacked if you take off in it before your "release". But note that megaships have much less firepower than stations - with suitable equipment and piloting, it is quite possible to survive for a time in proximity to a hostile megaship.
3) The mission board offers you prison missions that are viable with the work ship (scan stuff and return data, go scoop stuff and return goods, go mine something, etc). The mission payment is a reduction in your bounty. When your bounty reaches zero, you are legally clear and free to go. For minor things like pad loitering, doing one or two of these would be the optimal way out. As your reputation with the local faction improves, they will give out better missions, so large bounties are also possible to pay off. However, if you owe millions for an epic murder spree, getting out the legal way would probably take unreasonably long.
4) The following details are hidden somewhere, maybe in the station news feed, or at a local beacon: the hyperdrive on your owned ship is also disabled, but only with a software lockout. You can reenable it and escape if you collect the right data. Perhaps a sequence of data points you have to scan on the prison megaship or visit and scan beacons in the system. Obviously this is illegal, and you will be hunted from the moment you take off in your ship. In practice this would mean you are treated as wanted at lawful facilities in the system, and will be interdicted by system authority ships in supercruise. If you fail and are apprehended, the situation resets and the escape attempt is added to your bounties to work off. It's not meant to be easy, although the difficulty is readily adjustable - perhaps it could be easier to escape from remote frontier prisons, but very hard to escape from high security facilities near the core worlds.
5) If you were let go, then you are free. If you escaped, then you are wanted just as before, although probably with a larger bounty. But IF services would continue to work as they do now. So provided you avoided gaining notoriety, it's a simple matter of money to get rid of your legal troubles once back on the outside.
Without introducing space legs or anything else we don't have yet, here's how I imagine prison might work:
1) You respawn at the prison ship. Unlike previously, your bounties have not been paid off, although you can still lose your ship if you didn't have the rebuy. However, you don't respawn in your ship, but a loaned "prison work" ship, maybe a Hauler or similar.
2) You get a welcome message summarizing the situation - welcome to prison, you are here to work off your bounty of XYZ, you are in a loaned work ship. Perhaps a breakdown of what crimes were committed, which might help new players understand the legal system. The work ship has a disabled hyperdrive (SC works, but no high wake), so you're stuck in the system. Your own ship is stored in the shipyard and you can visit it at any time, but it is a crime and you will be attacked if you take off in it before your "release". But note that megaships have much less firepower than stations - with suitable equipment and piloting, it is quite possible to survive for a time in proximity to a hostile megaship.
3) The mission board offers you prison missions that are viable with the work ship (scan stuff and return data, go scoop stuff and return goods, go mine something, etc). The mission payment is a reduction in your bounty. When your bounty reaches zero, you are legally clear and free to go. For minor things like pad loitering, doing one or two of these would be the optimal way out. As your reputation with the local faction improves, they will give out better missions, so large bounties are also possible to pay off. However, if you owe millions for an epic murder spree, getting out the legal way would probably take unreasonably long.
4) The following details are hidden somewhere, maybe in the station news feed, or at a local beacon: the hyperdrive on your owned ship is also disabled, but only with a software lockout. You can reenable it and escape if you collect the right data. Perhaps a sequence of data points you have to scan on the prison megaship or visit and scan beacons in the system. Obviously this is illegal, and you will be hunted from the moment you take off in your ship. In practice this would mean you are treated as wanted at lawful facilities in the system, and will be interdicted by system authority ships in supercruise. If you fail and are apprehended, the situation resets and the escape attempt is added to your bounties to work off. It's not meant to be easy, although the difficulty is readily adjustable - perhaps it could be easier to escape from remote frontier prisons, but very hard to escape from high security facilities near the core worlds.
5) If you were let go, then you are free. If you escaped, then you are wanted just as before, although probably with a larger bounty. But IF services would continue to work as they do now. So provided you avoided gaining notoriety, it's a simple matter of money to get rid of your legal troubles once back on the outside.
![[VR]HaywirePhoenix](https://d2aefvhu2f0gi9.cloudfront.net/data/avatars/m/235/235721.jpg?1591611117){kind=avatar}
