Proposed changes to Crime & Punishment - harsher consequences to criminals.

[CMDR Hagglebeard]

Foreword:

This 'proposal', or list of suggestions aims to make the galaxy more dangerous for criminals, in order to add weight to criminal actions, increase the impression of galactic 'topography' (galaxy having more diversity between government, controlling factions & superpowers, etc), and add challenge to those with high bounties - so that managing your bounty becomes more important. Here are the areas I would like to cover:​

• Bounties of any magnitude cause little trouble to criminals, with little response from system authorities, bounty hunters, or the navies. This is very obvious when you leave the system where the crime was committed.
• Follow-on to the above - bounties do not accumulate much at all until you receive notoriety, at which point they skyrocket.
• Criminal acts seem to have a very small effect on reputation. It's easy to commit several murders (say, during a mission, e.g no notoriety gain), and have the faction at the receiving end of the stick pay little attention to you have, often not even becoming unfriendly.

I've began this thread right after writing this thread, to add some spice to crime and balance out an activity that might be too easy.​

Suggestions:

First, I would change how standard bounties (excluding notoriety effects, for the sake of the argument) accumulate. My hypothetical formula would be:​

​

Ship default bounty * crime multiplier = bounty received; for example, if you're flying a Sidewinder and commit assault (numbers are somewhat arbitrary to demonstrate the point):​

500 * 1 = 500 Cr bounty; If you commit murder:​

500 * 10 = 5,000 Cr bounty.​

​

This takes into account the ship you used to commit a crime, and thus the threat the government perceives you to be. This ship default bounty could either be a per-ship value, or for the sake of simplicity, could be based the price range of the ship in it's default configuration, to it's order of magnitude. For example:​

​

Ship Base Price​	Ship Default Bounty​
0 - 99,999 Cr​	500​
100,000 - 999,999 Cr​	2,000​
1,000,000 - 9,999,999 Cr​	4,000​
10,000,000 - 99,999,999 Cr​	8,000​
100,000,000 - 999,999,999 Cr​	16,000​

Next, I would set triggers at different bounty values both globally, and in different jurisdictions. If, in any jurisdiction, your bounty rises to certain milestones, bounty hunters should periodically attack you; their equipment - the ship their in, the guns they have, and any engineering they've done - should be scaled based on the bounty. For example, with a 10,000 Cr bounty, you might expect Eagles, or maybe a pair of Eagles to attack you. At 20,000 Cr, this might be Vipers; At 50,000, Vultures. At 100,000 Cr, Fer-de-Lances, or Mambas. Additionally, at higher bounty levels, you may expect any crime to generate much higher reputation hits, you might expect more attention from the police, and with very, very high bounties, you could get attacked by the navy! For balance's sake, global bounties should have different 'milestones', requiring a higher global bounty total to achieve, to encourage players to spread out their crimes over many jurisdictions. Here's a table of hypothetical values considering these suggestions.​

​

Bounty Value​	Bounty Hunters (Per Jurisdiction)**​	System Authorities (Per Jurisdiction)​	Effect on Negative Reputation Effects (Per Jurisdiction)***​	Bounty Hunters (Globally)**​	System Authorities (Globally)​
0 Cr​	No Bounty Hunters​	-​	-​	No Bounty Hunters​	-​
5,000 Cr​	Sidewinders​	-​	-​	-​	-​
10,000 Cr​	Eagles; pairs of Sidewinders​	-​	-​	-​	-​
20,000 Cr​	Vipers; wings of above.​	Interdiction, scans more common​	1.5x Rep Loss for Criminal Acts​	-​	-​
50,000 Cr​	Vultures; wings of above.​	Authority ships hostile on sight​	2.0x Rep Loss for Criminal Acts​	Eagles, Sidewinders​	-​
100,000 Cr​	Fer-de-Lances, Mambas; wings of above.​	-​	-​	-​	-​
200,000 Cr​	Anacondas; wings of above​	Pirate-hunter task force event spawns​	5.0x Rep Loss for Criminal Acts​	Vipers; wings of above​	-​
500,000 Cr​	Wings of all Above.​	-​	-​	-​	-​
1,000,000 Cr​	-​	Naval interdiction; ships hostile on sight.​	10.0x Rep Loss for Criminal Acts​	Vultures; wings of above​	-​
2,000,000 Cr​	-​	Advanced Tactical Response to all crime​	-​	-​	Interdiction, scans more common​
5,000,000 Cr​	-​	-​	-​	Fer-de-Lances; wings of above​	-​

** or equivalent.​

*** another change - higher base rep loss for murder.​

​

Additionally, in order to add more consequence to crime within Independent space, I would add a 'neutral systems' reputation. This might be difficult to implement, but essentially it could be a hidden value that tracks your recent actions across independent space, and includes some of the above table's effects, such as higher rep loss, or increase the prevalence of bounty hunters when in independent, non-anarchy systems. This would hopefully add both more consequences to random killing sprees in independent space, and make privateering more appealing. That is, operating out of Federal space and attacking Imperial space, or vice versa.​

​

I would like also like to speak about smuggling in depth, as the changes I'd like overlap into Crime & Punishment... but if I do write that, I'll like it here. ​

​

Thanks for reading!​

 

[DemiserofD]

I like the idea overall, but I don't think using the ship's default value has the base for Bounty values is a good idea. The most common criminal ships are often in the mid to low end of prices, while some of the more expensive ships are not particularly good at criminal stuff, like a cutter.

Interestingly, ships currently have a hidden statistic that determines how often you get scanned by the police, with some ships being particularly ostentatious. You could probably use some multiplier of this value to determine the proper base Bounty value.

 

[cmdr milesred]

nice
that's a lot of plans for both threads.
nice though.

 

[Dragsham]

Cutter makes for an excellent multiload smuggler. Just fly manually. Alot of sinks req and defo silent running.
The average ganker is in a medium fdl or its sister the mamba.
Did get scanned by a cmdr (wanted but so am l) in a conda... all rails n beams.
Me in my krait ll. We went our separate ways...

 

[Screemonster]

I'd love to see more reasons to commit crimes (and ways to get away with them!) but yeah, bounties are basically only a nuisance right now.

• Bounties of any magnitude cause little trouble to criminals, with little response from system authorities, bounty hunters, or the navies. This is very obvious when you leave the system where the crime was committed.
• Follow-on to the above - bounties do not accumulate much at all until you receive notoriety, at which point they skyrocket.
• Criminal acts seem to have a very small effect on reputation. It's easy to commit several murders (say, during a mission, e.g no notoriety gain), and have the faction at the receiving end of the stick pay little attention to you have, often not even becoming unfriendly.

I agree with every single one of these points, and would like to add the following, in order:

• Bounties of any magnitude cause a lot of trouble to non-criminals. Even a 100-cr accidental friendly fire bounty will lock you out of station services.
• Once you have notoriety, while criminal missions don't incur further notoriety, the bounty costs associated with doing anything criminal will obliterate any payouts, making criminal missions worthless (especially since, with the exception of odyssey foot missions, they haven't seen any updates or maintenance since like... 2.2?) - and the real sticker is that ever since the C&P update there is no way to get rid of them without paying them in full, either at an IF, handing yourself in, or the rebuy screen.
• Even non-criminal acts have little effect on rep. If you're in an anarchy, for example, you can just kill a faction's ships all day and suffer no rep loss at all.

So yes, I am absolutely down for "bounties get bigger and have more consequences for having them, but also have some means of getting rid of them".
Especially if it's something that forces the players to make the choice between "I can get the heat off now by making a hefty bribe, or I can weather the consequences for a while and see if I can lose it".

Right now, there's no incentive, none at all, to not ditch your bounties the instant you pass through an IF with zero notoriety. Bizzarely, this can lead to people being wanted for less time than they were before the C&P update: waiting two hours and paying 5 grand is nothing compared to the week-long unshakeable timer that old-style bounties had.

Personally, I'd like to see the following:

• SOME means of avoiding bounties in the first place. The on-foot angle has been touched on a lot by people in odyssey threads, such as taking people out stealthily, disabling alarms to erase security footage, and so on - meanwhile "fleeing target" assassination targets seem to have flawless crime reporting in the middle of the desert. Meanwhile in space, we have areas with no active system link, but somehow crimes are still reportable despite authority responses being disabled?
• Bounties to decay into fines after a timer. For little minor offenses such as an accidental assault, this can be as short as 10 minutes so you just leave the zone, wait a while, come back, and it's the same as if you'd committed reckless weapon discharge (a fine). For murders, this could be as high as a week per point of notoriety after the murder. Murder someone at 10 notoriety and not only is your bounty going to be large, you're stuck with it for the next two and a half months minimum.
• Bounties decoupled from fines. This is mainly to get rid of potential exploits around getting yourself scanned with a hold full of stolen opals, dropping them off at a carrier, then committing assault against a wing of four friends to upgrade it to a 2M bounty so they can shoot you and earn a collective 8M then repeat.
• Some means to get your fines/bounties "reduced" at a better rate than paying them off. Perhaps a special mission reward where a faction contact agrees to "lose" some paperwork in exchange for doing a job for them? Primarily, this is to encourage flying around "hot" instead of getting rid of your bounties ASAP.
• More reputation consequences for crimes. ESPECIALLY crimes you "got away with" under point 1, above. For instance, if you blast a guy at a settlement but nobody saw you do it - they can still see that you touched down on an APEX shuttle to the settlement, or your ship was docked at the time, and someone saw you in a maverick suit and the victim's dorm was cut and zapped open - they know damn well you did it but all the evidence they have is circumstantial and won't stand up in court. Two dozen other ships visited that day. A good lawyer could easily get you off the hook. So they can't charge you with a crime. But they still hate you for it because it was obviously you, especially if it keeps happening.

 

[Dragsham]

Go pillage. Get 10 noteriety.
Go mine for a few days. It clears.
It's of no consequence at all c&p. Total farce.

 

[CMDR Hagglebeard]

Go pillage. Get 10 noteriety.
Go mine for a few days. It clears.
It's of no consequence at all c&p. Total farce.

I have 134,000,000 Cr in bounties from messing with the BGS, half of that from the past few hours. I've had a 55,000,000 Cr Bounty for months - I don't see any effect. That's why I made this post. I was bored a while back, decided to annihilate some Alliance faction for a little while, and logged off with at least a dozen murders - I should be hunted for a while, at least, but I didn't have any repercussions.

 

[Dragsham]

Highest l had was 1.8 billion bounty. Acquired when l was working for a player faction as a hired gun.
Mind you alot of winged hussars died that week, all history now. I work alone now. Prefer it that Way

 

[Rogue1474]

How about a kill on sight option? If you achieve that level of wanted, you automatically appear on players scanners as a hostile, NPC law enforcement automatically go for you and interdict you, all stations/platforms see you as a red and open fire as soon as you're in range, the only exception would be anarchy stations as that's how they role. Bounty Hunters really do hunt you, so even if you jump to an uninhabited system and go mine or try and wait it out, they're still looking for you, let's say bounty hunters will search up to 500+Ly to try and claim the bounty on you. Also if you achieve a kill on sight level of wanted, the bounty and kill on sight doesn't go away if you get killed, it lasts for a month of actual game playing, so if you log off for a month it's gone, if you log off for a month it's still there with a full month to go. If you're going to commit the crime, there should be consequences, proper ones.

 

[CMDR Hagglebeard]

How about a kill on sight option? If you achieve that level of wanted, you automatically appear on players scanners as a hostile, NPC law enforcement automatically go for you and interdict you, all stations/platforms see you as a red and open fire as soon as you're in range, the only exception would be anarchy stations as that's how they role. Bounty Hunters really do hunt you, so even if you jump to an uninhabited system and go mine or try and wait it out, they're still looking for you, let's say bounty hunters will search up to 500+Ly to try and claim the bounty on you. Also if you achieve a kill on sight level of wanted, the bounty and kill on sight doesn't go away if you get killed, it lasts for a month of actual game playing, so if you log off for a month it's gone, if you log off for a month it's still there with a full month to go. If you're going to commit the crime, there should be consequences, proper ones.

That might be too harsh for a game. Considering this game doesn't offer alternate saves, such a huge global penalty completely blocks you from doing anything besides the you're already doing, which can't fly. It makes perfect sense lore-wise, but gameplay wise, it's too restrictive. However, that's pretty much I'm going for if you commit the crime within one jurisdiction, like the Federation, Empire, or within one minor factions' space.

 

[SteveWW57]

That might be too harsh for a game. Considering this game doesn't offer alternate saves, such a huge global penalty completely blocks you from doing anything besides the you're already doing, which can't fly. It makes perfect sense lore-wise, but gameplay wise, it's too restrictive. However, that's pretty much I'm going for if you commit the crime within one jurisdiction, like the Federation, Empire, or within one minor factions' space.

Hanging out at anarchy stations would be still available.

If you have notoriety with one of the super powers, then you could have a station shoot on sight order in place in their space but not the others. Bounty hunters could still pursue you.

Steve 07.

 

[CMDR Hagglebeard]

Hanging out at anarchy stations would be still available.

If you have notoriety with one of the super powers, then you could have a station shoot on sight order in place in their space but not the others. Bounty hunters could still pursue you.

Steve 07.

Yes, I'd like that. Unless I misunderstood, Rogue1474 said that all non-anarchy stations in the bubble would deny you landing, which is too restrictive.

 

[Rogue1474]

Yes, I'd like that. Unless I misunderstood, Rogue1474 said that all non-anarchy stations in the bubble would deny you landing, which is too restrictive.

For me it could work a few ways, restricted to the area of the power play system you committed the crimes in, so access denied in all that area. Restricted to the super powers area of influence or if you're the number 1 on the most wanted then yes, only anarchy stations will deal with you.

Harsh crimes deserve harsh consequences as is the case in most places in the world currently.

 

[DemiserofD]

Y'know, something that could be pretty fun is if low security stations didn't have Standard Station defenses. If they didn't have super guns with Shield destroying lasers, then they could deny players docking at first, but then the player blows a few of their turrets up, and lo and behold, they would change their mind!

 

[Screemonster]

Harsh crimes deserve harsh consequences as is the case in most places in the world currently.

Don't let "muh realism" blind you to the fact that this is a game.
"These people are playing a video game WRONG and deserve to have it taken away from them" is a nonstarter from a game design perspective.

 

[V'larr]

I like the idea overall, but I don't think using the ship's default value has the base for Bounty values is a good idea. The most common criminal ships are often in the mid to low end of prices, while some of the more expensive ships are not particularly good at criminal stuff, like a cutter.

Interestingly, ships currently have a hidden statistic that determines how often you get scanned by the police, with some ships being particularly ostentatious. You could probably use some multiplier of this value to determine the proper base Bounty value.

Where did you hear this? Ships do have hidden arbitrary heat modifiers (see: Orca vs Diamondback), but this is the first I've heard of one specifically to do with being scanned by auth ships.

 

[DemiserofD]

Where did you hear this? Ships do have hidden arbitrary heat modifiers (see: Orca vs Diamondback), but this is the first I've heard of one specifically to do with being scanned by auth ships.

"It's less conspicuous"

“It’s also less ‘conspicuous’, meaning it’s less likely to get scanned by the police compared to other ships of that size and class. Wait -- are you telling me now that ships have a hidden stat that determines how likely they are to be scanned? Or do you think this is this just some weird way...

forums.frontier.co.uk

Hello Commanders!

Ships do have a conspicuous rating that authorities use to determine how quickly a ship should be investigated and scanned.

Someone tested it:

 

[V'larr]

"It's less conspicuous"

“It’s also less ‘conspicuous’, meaning it’s less likely to get scanned by the police compared to other ships of that size and class. Wait -- are you telling me now that ships have a hidden stat that determines how likely they are to be scanned? Or do you think this is this just some weird way...

forums.frontier.co.uk

TIL. Of course that would be yet another arbitrary hidden thing for players to be unaware about.

 

[LeatheryEggs]

How about a kill on sight option? If you achieve that level of wanted, you automatically appear on players scanners as a hostile, NPC law enforcement automatically go for you and interdict you, all stations/platforms see you as a red and open fire as soon as you're in range, the only exception would be anarchy stations as that's how they role. Bounty Hunters really do hunt you, so even if you jump to an uninhabited system and go mine or try and wait it out, they're still looking for you, let's say bounty hunters will search up to 500+Ly to try and claim the bounty on you. Also if you achieve a kill on sight level of wanted, the bounty and kill on sight doesn't go away if you get killed, it lasts for a month of actual game playing, so if you log off for a month it's gone, if you log off for a month it's still there with a full month to go. If you're going to commit the crime, there should be consequences, proper ones.

I like something like this as a consequence for ganking, maybe even prospective player bounty hunters get the system the offender was last seen in periodically, or it could be they're position is tracked in systems with security, and they're invisible in anarchy systems. The real big consequences would be for killing other pilots fed ships outside of conflict zones and self defence.

 

[EdzUp]

I hate to say it but a wing of sideys or a wing of eagles wont do much to a fully fitted gank tank, what we need is quicker response times dependent on how near the system is to a major system.