Engineers Tutumu community project requires bounty hunters of distinction.

[bullfrog]

The scum and villainy are out of control, camping the community delivery route in Tutumu and blowing up innocent traders just trying to make an honest living.

Seemingly unable to disable their prey and use limpets correctly they are racking up bounties for themselves. Its a shame but also... an opportunity... for those with that particular inclination to bring law to the lawless.

I just thought I would do my civic duty and let you know

 

[UnhappyDev]

The scum and villainy are out of control, camping the community delivery route in Tutumu and blowing up innocent traders just trying to make an honest living.

Seemingly unable to disable their prey and use limpets correctly they are racking up bounties for themselves. Its a shame but also... an opportunity... for those with that particular inclination to bring law to the lawless.

I just thought I would do my civic duty and let you know

Would love to help but I'm assuming gank squads with lashings of ginger beer, errr I mean reverberating cascade? No thanks

 

[bullfrog]

I understand your reticence, when the bounty on a known villain is a million or two at best and the top community project prize is 30m for doing a bit of hauling, because this is what it takes to get people out of bed, where is the incentive to group together to go bounty hunting?

Player bounties need a nought on the end of them.

 

[UnhappyDev]

Player bounties need a nought on the end of them.

I'm long past caring about making money, it's more the imbalances in PVP that are causing my reticence! Let's hope for a positive outcome from the current beta, where the gankers' toys are less powerful and skilful piloting is better rewarded...well we can hope

 

[bullfrog]

I suppose the problem is that killers can make pacts to claim each others bounty.

My suggestion would be to make pk bounties a special case not like NPC bounties and only allow player bounty hunters, who have been to bounty hunter training school for vocational training and received bounty hunter accreditation and not had wanted status since earning their certificate, to claim them. Then add two noughts to the bounty that accredited bounty hunters can take and permit them to deputise other players into bounty hunting wings to take and share the enhanced bounty, as long as the deputies are without wanted status or fines outstanding. It would be like a sheriff forming a posse to dispense justice.

 

[bullfrog]

I want to make an observation, I have been playing Tutumu for about three days now and seen only five Cmdrs of which three blew my little cargo ship up without any attempt at limpet gameplay indicating the sole intent was to destroy a human players ship. Each of these three were among the top 5 GalNet bounties for the system.

This is what a minority of players choose to do with the current ruleset.

Now there are allegedly over eight thousand players engaged with the Tutumu project and the tonnage is increasing rapidly indicating their presence, but they are not visible in play indicating they are not playing in the open.

The implication is that about half a dozen players playing open with destructive intent are keeping eight thousand players from playing open around Tutumu, preventing them from communicating and forming communities and doing cooperative ventures and there is no counterbalancing game mechanic.

Is this really functioning as intended Frontier?

Isnt it about time Frontier created counter mechanics which work?

 

[bullfrog]

For completeness and accuracy I feel I should add to the observation above that this was in the week, yesterday being a Saturday the situation was different and there were a lot more players visible in open play and the piratical were held in abeyance by the presence of bounty hunters with suitably equipped ships.

This implies that the piratical were overwhelmed by open bounty hunter players, but since the cargo hauled tally increased markedly during the week when open players were less in evidence it also implies it remains true that during times when player bounty hunters are not present, traders are probably not playing open for safety since there is no way at all for a trader ship to counter a player attack whereas an NPC attack can be survived more easily because the NPCs play by different rules and player attackers tend to destroy and regard their bounty as a badge of honour.

I hope @UnhappyDev that you are right and Frontier are aware of the end game they have created and are ready to grapple with it.