Crime and Punishment, Trade and Piracy
These systems have been largely unchanged for years now, despite being critically flawed in many ways. While some of these have been ostensibly advantageous in some regards, I believe that things could be BETTER - even for the people who would ostensibly be 'harmed' by the changes I'd like to see. First, let me explore the flaws in the current systems.
1. Notoriety - Notoriety is unduly punitive against law abiding players, while being largely ineffective against criminal players who already have anarchy settlements or an FC bookmarked to repair and rearm.
2. Piracy - Piracy is virtually irrelevant, giving tiny profits and taking far too long. Not only does this restrict this activity as a playstyle, it encourages ganking and discourages organic pvp.
3. Smuggling - Smuggling is virtually pointless, giving less profit than trading in most cases, while also having virtually no risk.
4. Player Bounty Hunting - Bounty Hunting is pointless, doing nothing to hinder gankers or pirates and rewarding bounty hunters precious little, either.
5. System Security - System Security is virtually irrelevant in everyday play, outside Anarchy systems for very specific niche purposes. But Anarchy factions are almost completely gone thanks to Odyssey.
6. Trade - Because Trade has such a low cost of entry, it has virtually no sense of progression. A brand new player can jump straight into trading the most valuable trade routes with no growth or challenge.
7. Salvage - With goods virtually free at commodities markets, why would anyone bother doing salvage? Just buy some new. Salvage is basically pointless.
Essentially, the entire system is profoundly unbalanced, and needs a holistic rework. While things like Notoriety are easily the most 'broken' of the problems, to properly fix them, it will take a more holistic change to these systems, starting with Trading.
Trading
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The problem with Trading is ROI. Players can buy a commodity for 30 credits in one system, and sell it for 30,000 credits one jump away. That's a 1000x ROI, which not only renders piracy and smuggling virtually pointless, it also means there is no sense of progression or risk - or, really, skill - to trading. While risk should not be undue, risk also is a major driver behind excitement and fun. In essence, making trading slightly more risky and thought intensive not only won't make the activity LESS fun, it is far more likely to make it MORE fun.
The answer here is to increase the prices of these goods on both sides of the equation substantially. A typical good that earns you 500 credits of profit, like beer, might go for more like 2500 credits per ton, giving you a 20% ROI. More profitable goods would have progressively lower ROI, creating an ebb and flow between how much you can carry and how much you can afford. For example, a poorer starting player would be better off buying a large cargo of higher-ROI Beer, rather than a smaller cargo of lower-ROI narcotics. However, a player with plenty of credits would instead make more overall money buying the lower-ROI Narcotics.
The highest-value goods would have quite low ROIs, making them the most profitable but also profoundly more risky. Trading in something like Gold, for example, can currently offer a profit of around 64000 credits per ton - but are purchased at around 5000 credits, and sold at ~65000 credits. With a 60000 credit profit, this makes gold trading absolutely ridiculous, rendering gold MINING virtually pointless. Who is mining gold when you can buy it for next to nothing? Anything offering such massive profits per ton should properly cost at least 10x as much, and possibly more than that still.
Notably, this WOULD require the restructuring of some trade goods, either in their profits in the commodity's market, or their availability from mining. If gold were going for 600k/ton but could be mass mined from pristine metallic rings, you'll create problems of extremely broken profits.
The net result would be that commodity prices would scale far more profoundly; instead of ~50 - 50k, closer to 50 - 2,000,000.
Piracy and Salvage
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By default, this creates an immediate resolution to the problems with Piracy and Salvage. It SHOULD be more profitable to steal goods(or salvage them) than to buy and sell them. The problems with this, of course, would be the bounties that would go with it, not the profits themselves. Or, in the case of Salvage, the time investment. Nevertheless, if one can steal 500 tons or so of 2m+ credit goods per hour, that's pretty overpowered, and would need to be kept in check.
One obvious answer would be that Black Markets should have fairly limited demand. Black Markets currently have no demand mechanic, which hasn't been a problem because so few people have done it, but that would rapidly become an issue with larger sales. In limited quantities, they should be offering decent prices, but obviously they'd have a hard time moving infinite stolen merchandise. This would rapidly diminish the profits past a certain point. Another would be that bounties should correlate with the value of the good stolen or destroyed. This would mean blowing up a full trader would give a huge bounty, and piracy would be a far more preferable course.
One problem with Piracy, however, is the rote nature of it. Because historically the values of stolen goods have been so low, it has been built around mass-theft over long timeframes. Rather, I'd like to see hatchbreakers reworked, each one ejecting masses of cargo at once, but also having a fairly prolonged cooldown. A pirate should be able to steal enough cargo in one limpet, but be encouraged to let the trader go instead of keeping them and draining them completely.
Hatchbreakers need to be changed from ejecting 5-10 tons and having no cooldown, to ejecting ~25-50 tons and having a fairly prolonged 'hatch jammed' effect, preventing further piracy. This answers both problems at once.
Smuggling
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These changes also impact Smuggling, which could have higher profit margins than ordinary trading, in exchange for the now much higher risk of getting caught and losing the cargo.
In order to make smuggling challenging, however, there would need to be some changes to police behaviors. For one, it should be possible to be cargo scanned WITHOUT being interdicted. It should take quite a while to happen, however, so players have a time to either evade the scan in supercruise, or drop out of supercruise and evade the cops in real space. The security of systems should offer both a price multiplier as well as a difficulty multiplier. Additionally, on dropping in near a station, cops should converge on you from all sides; it should be advantageous to drop in a few dozen kilometers away and cruise in cold, perhaps from the back. New optionals like Smuggling Cargo Racks could also be available, disguising contraband beneath legal goods, limiting total cargo capacity but offering security.
Crime and Punishment
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Now to the meat of the problem. Crime and Punishment.
The key here to simplify the entire system down to one metric. Many of the best and most enjoyable mechanics are organic results of a relatively simple system. For example, Odyssey's stealth gameplay arises almost entirely from the simple idea of security clearance and the ability to steal it, and is perhaps the best part of Odyssey gameplay.
As such, instead of Notoriety, Fines, and Bounties, we simplify down to one simple metric: Bounties.
Bounties now take the role of all of these things. Bounties beneath a certain level(say, 50k), can be paid off. Over that level and up to a certain point, they can be paid off with an interstellar factor. However, going over that level requires deliberate criminal action. And go TOO high, and there's only the option of waiting for it to naturally decay.
Any time a player is beneath the initial threshold, they can at any time retract their weapons, indicating surrender. Cops will then cease hostilities and direct them to proceed to an administrator as soon as possible to pay off their bounty. Accidentally shoot a cop? Just retract your weapons and they'll stand down. You can even do this a few times and be fine - but go over that lower limit? Now you're in real trouble.
Now, let's back up. The key of Crime and Punishment is to be FUN. That's the thing many forget. Even as a criminal, even as the game discourages you from certain actions or areas, it should be doing so in a way that is fun for EVERYONE, INCLUDING the criminal.
