So is the bounty scanner worth it?

[Gwyvern]

Heyo, been tryin out a lot of new things today on the oposite side of the law (some AI piracy, illegal salvage operations, smuggling) that middle one has netted me more money than anything ive ever done so far, but im not one who feels comfortable operating on the wrong side of the law, so i want to know if bounty hunting has *any* money it it. (since the combat missions certainly don't)

*also pro tip, don't try and blow the hatch off of a lone space cow, it probably has space horse flies buzzing around near by that will bite your space face off.

 

[Jenner]

I've had lots of fun bounty hunting in the Viper with the cargo and warrant scanner. If I hang around the stellar nav beacons and just scan all of the passing ships I'll catch quite a few criminals.

Several thousand credits in bounties in 10-15 minutes I suppose. It's nothing compared with trading in the larger ships, but hey? It's a lot more fun.

 

[BFNK]

Bounty hunting will not net you a lot of money. I tried it out and I managed to earn about ~15k in an hour, camping one of the nav beacons next to a star (not really trying hard, already have some money banked for insurance and gear). There is pretty much no other way to gain money from killing other ships, though. So I plan to keep on using it.

If you are after cash - you can easily obtain ~2-3 million creds in a few hours (4-5, maybe 6), using the cobra and then the type-6 for trading. That's what I did.

Then, having 2+mil, I bought and equipped the Viper. Trading is quite boring atm, so ship hunting is pretty much the best option. I've placed my bets on the cannons and so far I am extremely happy with them. I found out that two setups are the most fun for me: 2xC3 m-cannon (g) + 2xC1 m-cannon (g), or 2xC4 cannon + 2xC2 cannon.

Both are a joy to kill with. You can kill any ship in the game with these (1v1), and probably easily deal with 2v1, maybe 3v1 scenarios if there aren't many missiles around.

Regardless, if you are in it for the money - don't expect much. If you want to have fun - get the scanner and scan any ship you meet. Try to keep a distance of 900-400m while scanning them, then immediately fry them if you see that they are wanted (lower left corner will update from CLEAN to WANTED in red).

I wish I could do this with someone else, as this game has been great fun for me, but has to be the loneliest mmo I've ever played.

 

[Kernel Kwatz!]

So Viper over Cobra for bounty hunting?

 

[Asp Explorer]

So Viper over Cobra for bounty hunting?

Depends.

Cobra has better range and cargo hold for scooping up "leftovers" from knocking out horrid criminals.

Viper seems easier to cool, is faster, better weapon aiming.

I love them both.

 

[lefty1117]

How do you camp nav beacons and attack ships that are passing by? Aren't you in supercruise?

 

[Tiggo]

you leave supercruise at the nav beacon signal source.

 

[Malactus]

Its pretty nifty, thought Id love to either be able to do without drawing my weapons (seems to make the npcs panicky) or have a slightly longer distance (<900 m is really hard to keep at, 1.5 km would be better imo)

 

[Kernel Kwatz!]

I'll stick with the Cobra for now. Maybe try the Viper after I take a little break from Elite. Cheers.

 

[Jackie Silver]

I heard some people had very good luck in PB after scanning down "innocent" CMDRs and discovering them to have huge bounties in other jurisdictions. I haven't seen any especially high NPC bounties in SB; in PB there were some in the tens of thousands (from ships trapped inside stations racking up trespass fines, or somesuch) and it's harder to get bounties at extraction sites (etc.) so overall it seems less profitable bounty hunting at the moment.