Risk vs. Reward and Blending Roles.

[Xodz]

Risk vs Reward
Higher value targets should come with greater risk. This includes bounties and it includes actual cargo value.

Increase the risk involved for carrying high value cargo. Right now there isn't much risk, if you are interdicted the NPCs apparently suck at interdicting. And even if they don't you can just jump away. I'd have more difficult and/or higher quantities (wings) of NPCs (dynamic based on value and area [high security vs lawless]). This would make it more difficult to make massive credits safely, but it should be more difficult (risk vs reward) and prompt more balanced builds (have some combat ability) or more cooperation (friends!).

Blending Roles
This was slightly touched on above (adding a reason for combat for non-combat roles based on the risk involved).

Add a reason to have miners/cargo haulers (let's call them scavengers) in combat. Right now, you have limpets and you can just kill them, but if you do kill them it doesn't involve any specialized equipment (beyond collector/cargo space). Allow miners (or similar equipment) to break down the debris.

 

[Elyssaen]

Re: blending roles, I was just today playing with an idea. Ships could leave behind a 'Debris Field' object, appearing as a single object in the Navigations tab but with a sub-target tab. The sub-target tab would contain, generally, 1 Black Box, a few Escape Pods and then a range of high tech scrap. The type and amount would depend on the type and amount of damage dealt to the hull and modules of the ship. You'd need to use collector limpets to extract scrap from the Debris Field.

Combining a bounty hunter and scavenger role would then require collector limpet controllers and a decent cargo back, but pay a significant bonus over just the bounty. Pure bounty hunters might still be asked to grab Escape Pods to bring criminals to justice. Other missions might need you to extract Black Boxes.

The Debris Field object obviously isn't needed, but it keeps the Navigations tab from being cluttered up enormously.

 

[Xodz]

Re: blending roles, I was just today playing with an idea. Ships could leave behind a 'Debris Field' object, appearing as a single object in the Navigations tab but with a sub-target tab. The sub-target tab would contain, generally, 1 Black Box, a few Escape Pods and then a range of high tech scrap. The type and amount would depend on the type and amount of damage dealt to the hull and modules of the ship. You'd need to use collector limpets to extract scrap from the Debris Field.

Combining a bounty hunter and scavenger role would then require collector limpet controllers and a decent cargo back, but pay a significant bonus over just the bounty. Pure bounty hunters might still be asked to grab Escape Pods to bring criminals to justice. Other missions might need you to extract Black Boxes.

The Debris Field object obviously isn't needed, but it keeps the Navigations tab from being cluttered up enormously.

I already bring collector's with me when bounty hunting (for materials), but I don't really consider that "scavenging" as I am not interacting with the debris itself, just gathering the dropped canisters.

There is already debris left behind on destroyed ships, they'd just need to let us do something with that. My idea would be to get mining related stuff from the parts - so you can actually get those through combat too and not just mining/SRV.