Currently bounty hunting is poorly rewarded.
Currently piracy is poorly rewarded and risk-free.
As an attempt to address these, I'd suggest introducing a criminal warrant.
The criminal warrant would act like a bounty, and attract reward, but also have a time element to it.
Not all crime types should attract warrants.
Unlike bounties, there would be no way to clear a warrant as the person who has it, other than either waiting it out, or succumbing to a bounty hunter.
The time taken for a warrant to expire should vary depending on
a) The severity of the crime in question, with ship destruction being the highest, with higher timings for indiscriminate murder (e.g. large-on-small ship, or elite-on-harmless)
b) The criminal history of the pilot (more history = longer warrants, warrants stack, potentially exponentially)
But I would suggest that a warrant should persist for no less than 24 hours.
A bounty hunter can collect a warrant by way of -
a) If the bounty hunter locates the criminal, then they can tag them with a KWS. At this point, if the criminal has cash to serve as payment, the payment is deducted directly [insert some game-relevant mechanism here for roleplay purposes]
b)If the criminal has no cash to pay, or has elected using some mechanism not to pay, the bounty hunter can collect the warrant by way of destruction of the criminal. [Game related mechanism should decide whether the money comes from the criminal after death, or from the issuing jurisdiction.]
This increases risk for long-term criminals dramatically, and increases payouts to bounty-hunters, by way both of the warrant payment itself, and that they will actually be able to chase criminals down without them being able to really easily wipe their records.
There should also be some reward for pirates as their profession would then carry extra risk. I'd propose to make it possible to allow pirates somehow to extort payment from other ships (and allow cmdrs to make such payments). Of course, this becomes a balancing act between pirates wanting cash and the victims knowing that, if they are destroyed, there are lasting consequences to the pirate. But I never said it should be easy to be a pirate.
Currently piracy is poorly rewarded and risk-free.
As an attempt to address these, I'd suggest introducing a criminal warrant.
The criminal warrant would act like a bounty, and attract reward, but also have a time element to it.
Not all crime types should attract warrants.
Unlike bounties, there would be no way to clear a warrant as the person who has it, other than either waiting it out, or succumbing to a bounty hunter.
The time taken for a warrant to expire should vary depending on
a) The severity of the crime in question, with ship destruction being the highest, with higher timings for indiscriminate murder (e.g. large-on-small ship, or elite-on-harmless)
b) The criminal history of the pilot (more history = longer warrants, warrants stack, potentially exponentially)
But I would suggest that a warrant should persist for no less than 24 hours.
A bounty hunter can collect a warrant by way of -
a) If the bounty hunter locates the criminal, then they can tag them with a KWS. At this point, if the criminal has cash to serve as payment, the payment is deducted directly [insert some game-relevant mechanism here for roleplay purposes]
b)If the criminal has no cash to pay, or has elected using some mechanism not to pay, the bounty hunter can collect the warrant by way of destruction of the criminal. [Game related mechanism should decide whether the money comes from the criminal after death, or from the issuing jurisdiction.]
This increases risk for long-term criminals dramatically, and increases payouts to bounty-hunters, by way both of the warrant payment itself, and that they will actually be able to chase criminals down without them being able to really easily wipe their records.
There should also be some reward for pirates as their profession would then carry extra risk. I'd propose to make it possible to allow pirates somehow to extort payment from other ships (and allow cmdrs to make such payments). Of course, this becomes a balancing act between pirates wanting cash and the victims knowing that, if they are destroyed, there are lasting consequences to the pirate. But I never said it should be easy to be a pirate.