Proper bounty hunting.

[xxThe_Dice_manxx]

Legendary bounties!

Not a mission but a galaxy wide search for legendary criminals that have huge bounties placed on them and are extremely difficult to find let alone kill.

News of said criminals appear on galnet then you may see tidbits of info appear on station news bulletins giving info that may be true or just hearsay on the targets general where abouts.

Targets may be alone or in wings and have strongholds.

They will often run instead of fighting so the full bounty hunter arsenal will be required.

This new type of bounty could also require you to capture them ALIVE which would mean disabling their ship.

Capturing or killing the target would result in news on galnet news of which you can make comment on at a station.

 

[VR CMDR Novindus]

+1

Puts the hunting back in bounty hunting.
A standardised capture mechanic like the one you’ve mentioned would also be good, as then you can have dead or alive bounties, just dead, or alive only.

Something like taking out their power plant without destroying their ship should automatically be considered as “captured” by the game. I don’t know if they’d want to include transport logistics as part of the mission, whereby you actually need a cargo hold or passenger cabin to bring in the prisoner, but it would be a great improvement either way.

Don’t know how that would work with capturing actual players though, but I guess it would be a mechanic restricted to bounties on NPCs only.

 

[xxThe_Dice_manxx]

+1

Puts the hunting back in bounty hunting.
A standardised capture mechanic like the one you’ve mentioned would also be good, as then you can have dead or alive bounties, just dead, or alive only.

Something like taking out their power plant without destroying their ship should automatically be considered as “captured” by the game. I don’t know if they’d want to include transport logistics as part of the mission, whereby you actually need a cargo hold or passenger cabin to bring in the prisoner, but it would be a great improvement either way.

Don’t know how that would work with capturing actual players though, but I guess it would be a mechanic restricted to bounties on NPCs only.

The capturing would need extra mechanics added for example a beacon you drop which alerts the police of the targets location?

 

[VR CMDR Novindus]

The capturing would need extra mechanics added for example a beacon you drop which alerts the police of the targets location?

That could work, even if it were just a beacon you switch on in your ship like you do with Wings.

Personally though, I’d prefer an elegant way for us to bring in the bounty ourselves.
Boarding would have been nice, but that would require Space Legs first, so I’d settle for something like disabling their ship and then having a short sort of “cut scene” that’s actually just an automated routine of your two ships aligning, both your bottom bays opening, and the prisoner coming out in something like an escape pod that moves into your ship. Then you go and hand them in.

There’s probably a better way, but that’s all that comes to mind. Worst case scenario, you disable their ship and then get a notification that they’re now on board.

 

[Galactic Fork]

The capturing would need extra mechanics added for example a beacon you drop which alerts the police of the targets location?

An escape pod with a Bounty Target flag could drop when you destroy the ship, requiring you to pick up the pod and turn it in for the bounty. Of course that means the hunters would be required to have a cargo container on their ship.

 

[Daynen]

I like this idea. It's basically everything that's missing from bounty hunting. Using Galnet to find hints of his movements, checking station news to track his location, going into unknown systems, scanning ships, looking for anomalies in our warrant scans that tip us off to his identity, avoiding environmental hazards, dodging asteroids, trying to catch him while he's fuel scooping, losing him when a thargoid interrupts you, picking him up again a few systems over and the chase is on until you drop his shields and score a good hit on his drives! He surrenders, only to call in friends--who are then quickly met by YOUR friends as you try to prevent his escape! It's all such a juicy idea I couldn't possibly say no.

Payouts better be damned impressive though. Like we'd better receive ownership of his craft and all the engineering he has on it along with our credits...

 

[wetwire]

I like the idea.
Seeing a warning noticed in the stations news of a high valued threat in the area and what type ship. along with targets last known direction. "Last seen leaving towards Sol"
Using that information you can start plotting a course from this station to Sol.
Looking for any ships that match the ship description, or checking stations for an updated status if the ship type docked at said location. or notice from the local news board.
If a CMDR managed to follow the bread crumbs and get within interdiction range the real chase is on. The bounty could randomly try to flee to another system, flee to a nearby ring, Call reinforcements, stay and fight or any combination there of.
Once the target has take enough damaged, surrenders via chat or destroyed the (Wanted) occupied escape pod is released which can be taken back to the authorities for payment.
Unless the target jettisons an "empty" escape pod then jumps out.

Could also make it a mission critical message notice when in the same system as one of these high valued targets to prompt emergent gameplay.

for background mechanics it would likely be best that only a few of these spawn at a time and remain until captured/destroyed. They fly in the bubble with a series of logical objectives that make sense for the target to preform. ie. Pirate would tend to follow the high value trade routes moving from one system to another, once cargo full or some background threshold is reached, visit stations with black market, maybe stopping in anarchy systems for "rest" then resuming.