I'm not suggesting to replace the current bounty system but rather have an additional somewhat-player-influced bounty system. This incorporates the ability to place bounty on players/commanders whom you have qualms or pure dislike with and want them to suffer in a way that you probably suffered (because of your tempting bounty). This bounty can not be written off by paying fines. It can only be claimed/removed by killing the bounty. Why, you might ask? The simple reason is if a player kills you in unprotected space there should at least be some form of justice apart from direct confrontation or adding to ignore list or karma. Maybe also this kind of system makes more of a player interaction, probably.
Here are some rules and yes I am basing this off of eveonline
. First off where this kind of bounty is represented. This bounty system will be considered as a sub class of bounty system already in place. It is sort of like icing on the cake. The player bounty (or black bounty - I'll explain later on) adds onto the bounty placed on alliance/system, it is like having a bounty in a system you're not currently in. In fact it is very similar. You will not be wanted because of a black bounty, it is a bounty that is put up by an individual not a organization (or maybe it will with guilds... I pray). Players can only claim a black bounty by using a kill warrant scanner. The scanner adds the black bounty to the bounty pool, it does not add a separate line of info for black bounty. Once bounty is killed you have to find a black bounty broker to collect your black bounty (its under 'Contacts' of the station menu). The reason why I call it black bounty is because it isn't an official means of placing a bounty, it could be placed not because it was infringing on law. You place a black bounty in the same way you collect it except you specify the name and the amount. (May be in the future you could keep a combat log detailing who attacked who so its easier to find who you want to place a bounty).
Now moving onto technical details to prevent something like insurance fraud. There are limits and fees that must be paid during the process of putting up a bounty and killing one. There is a minimum of 1k credits when putting up a black bounty, also bb can only be set in the thousands, i.e. 1k, 2k, 3k... 11k etc. The black bounty has no limit however and is pooled from multiple player placed bounty (you could say there is a black bounty pool). There is a fee for placing bounties, 1% of the bounty being placed/added. Which means if you place 1k credits you pay an additional 10 credits as broker fee. The main reason for doing this is to prevent spamming. Unless you want to add bb on a player on a daily basis (ritual). Furthermore if they really are adding credit transaction there will be a need for preventing all the black bounty going into the wrong place. For example, a friend kills you whom has a black bounty, the bb is larger than your insurance cost of your ship. If all the black bounty goes to the friend and he has the ability to share credits with you he could potentially share the bounty with you and in essence you're profiting from your own bounty. This was seen as a problem in eveonline (there were more reasons). The way they tried to fix it but essentially killed the bounty system in that game was by reducing the actual bounty you could gain from the bounty pool. You only get a fraction of bounty from the pool; in reality you only get a bounty equivalent to the price of the ship he died in. This prevented people from asking a friend or an alt account to kill off their bounty in a free ship (which they get every time they're in a station in their escape pod).
And so the black bounty system should also tweak itself to prevent such situations as mentioned before. Since ship and outfitting prices are mostly static and prices for insurance pay off is exactly done by the system it is much more practical to a reduction in bounty pay off. So my idea is to reduce the black bounty being paid off by exactly the insurance cost of the ship the dead player has to pay to replace their destroyed ship (fully fitted but excludes the extra cargo/fuel). This is subtracted from the black bounty pool, if the black bounty pool has less than what it needs to give all the black bounty in the pool is rewarded. There is also another brokers fee which takes 0.5% of the bounty being rewarded (and not from the pool). The lesser fee of 0.5% should mean there would be less paid off compared the ship lost but still is better than 1% additional fee to make it seem more worth while for the kill.
I believe this will make an interesting bounty system in the future when this game becomes an actual mmo (with more player to player interactions. However until then I don't think the current game which feels almost a single player experience would allow for such mechanism.
Summary, since it's a wall'o'text 'n ranting.
Black Bounty System
> Black Bounty is a sub class of Bounty in the game
> It is an addition to the bounty placed by players, not authorities
> Black Bounty does not alarm authorities (i.e. does not trigger the Wanted flag on your ship - but doesn't mean your immune to hostile attacks)
> It cannot be removed by paying a fine
> It can only be lessened by getting killed
> It can only be claimed by kill warrant scanners
> NPC might attack you if they scan your ship
> It can only be placed by players through 'Contacts' > 'Black Bounty Broker'
> It can only be removed by players through 'Contacts' > 'Black Bounty Broker'
> The minimum for Black Bounty placements is 1k credits
> Additional BB placements are in the thousands (i.e. you must always round up to a thousand, else the system does it for you)
> Placing a BB has a fee of 1% of the bounty being placed (Fees are not added to the BB pool)
> BB reward will be reduced to be equal to the ship's exact insurance value which the target was in
> BB reward is taken from the BB pool of the target
> If insurance value is greater than the BB pool, all of the credits in the pool is awarded
> The insurance value for this case is the target's insurance value, if the target is a founder/alpha/beta backer they will definitely have reduced bounty pay off
>>(I personally don't like how insurance reduction for backers may affect pay offs)
> BB reward also has a fee that is taken off from the reward itself (fee of 0.5%) - it is not taken off from the BB pool
> Fees, minimum placement and the BB system itself may or should change, that's up to you guys to discuss
> And what comes of this may or may not appear in the game
Here are some rules and yes I am basing this off of eveonline
. First off where this kind of bounty is represented. This bounty system will be considered as a sub class of bounty system already in place. It is sort of like icing on the cake. The player bounty (or black bounty - I'll explain later on) adds onto the bounty placed on alliance/system, it is like having a bounty in a system you're not currently in. In fact it is very similar. You will not be wanted because of a black bounty, it is a bounty that is put up by an individual not a organization (or maybe it will with guilds... I pray). Players can only claim a black bounty by using a kill warrant scanner. The scanner adds the black bounty to the bounty pool, it does not add a separate line of info for black bounty. Once bounty is killed you have to find a black bounty broker to collect your black bounty (its under 'Contacts' of the station menu). The reason why I call it black bounty is because it isn't an official means of placing a bounty, it could be placed not because it was infringing on law. You place a black bounty in the same way you collect it except you specify the name and the amount. (May be in the future you could keep a combat log detailing who attacked who so its easier to find who you want to place a bounty).Now moving onto technical details to prevent something like insurance fraud. There are limits and fees that must be paid during the process of putting up a bounty and killing one. There is a minimum of 1k credits when putting up a black bounty, also bb can only be set in the thousands, i.e. 1k, 2k, 3k... 11k etc. The black bounty has no limit however and is pooled from multiple player placed bounty (you could say there is a black bounty pool). There is a fee for placing bounties, 1% of the bounty being placed/added. Which means if you place 1k credits you pay an additional 10 credits as broker fee. The main reason for doing this is to prevent spamming. Unless you want to add bb on a player on a daily basis (ritual). Furthermore if they really are adding credit transaction there will be a need for preventing all the black bounty going into the wrong place. For example, a friend kills you whom has a black bounty, the bb is larger than your insurance cost of your ship. If all the black bounty goes to the friend and he has the ability to share credits with you he could potentially share the bounty with you and in essence you're profiting from your own bounty. This was seen as a problem in eveonline (there were more reasons). The way they tried to fix it but essentially killed the bounty system in that game was by reducing the actual bounty you could gain from the bounty pool. You only get a fraction of bounty from the pool; in reality you only get a bounty equivalent to the price of the ship he died in. This prevented people from asking a friend or an alt account to kill off their bounty in a free ship (which they get every time they're in a station in their escape pod).
And so the black bounty system should also tweak itself to prevent such situations as mentioned before. Since ship and outfitting prices are mostly static and prices for insurance pay off is exactly done by the system it is much more practical to a reduction in bounty pay off. So my idea is to reduce the black bounty being paid off by exactly the insurance cost of the ship the dead player has to pay to replace their destroyed ship (fully fitted but excludes the extra cargo/fuel). This is subtracted from the black bounty pool, if the black bounty pool has less than what it needs to give all the black bounty in the pool is rewarded. There is also another brokers fee which takes 0.5% of the bounty being rewarded (and not from the pool). The lesser fee of 0.5% should mean there would be less paid off compared the ship lost but still is better than 1% additional fee to make it seem more worth while for the kill.
I believe this will make an interesting bounty system in the future when this game becomes an actual mmo (with more player to player interactions. However until then I don't think the current game which feels almost a single player experience would allow for such mechanism.
Summary, since it's a wall'o'text 'n ranting.
Black Bounty System
> Black Bounty is a sub class of Bounty in the game
> It is an addition to the bounty placed by players, not authorities
> Black Bounty does not alarm authorities (i.e. does not trigger the Wanted flag on your ship - but doesn't mean your immune to hostile attacks)
> It cannot be removed by paying a fine
> It can only be lessened by getting killed
> It can only be claimed by kill warrant scanners
> NPC might attack you if they scan your ship
> It can only be placed by players through 'Contacts' > 'Black Bounty Broker'
> It can only be removed by players through 'Contacts' > 'Black Bounty Broker'
> The minimum for Black Bounty placements is 1k credits
> Additional BB placements are in the thousands (i.e. you must always round up to a thousand, else the system does it for you)
> Placing a BB has a fee of 1% of the bounty being placed (Fees are not added to the BB pool)
> BB reward will be reduced to be equal to the ship's exact insurance value which the target was in
> BB reward is taken from the BB pool of the target
> If insurance value is greater than the BB pool, all of the credits in the pool is awarded
> The insurance value for this case is the target's insurance value, if the target is a founder/alpha/beta backer they will definitely have reduced bounty pay off
>>(I personally don't like how insurance reduction for backers may affect pay offs)
> BB reward also has a fee that is taken off from the reward itself (fee of 0.5%) - it is not taken off from the BB pool
> Fees, minimum placement and the BB system itself may or should change, that's up to you guys to discuss
> And what comes of this may or may not appear in the game
