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[Aria Jenneth]

Split off from the discussion of pirate RP.

everything to do with the criminal side of the game needs work tbh, this is largely just symptomatic of that.  Piracy, bounty hunting, smuggling, police, drugs...it all needs an overhaul. ALL OF IT.

Hm. Just as a thought, perhaps bounties could be set so that they pay out on ship, not pod, kills-- and they pay out only upon receipt of a killmail (or a collection of killmails) worth, say, twice or three times what the bounty was. Don't count modules in the total that aren't destroyed, but grant the hunter the right to loot the wreck, as well.

Call it a bounty for infliction of substantial economic harm. You could structure it so that 1) individual component bounties in the total pay out on individual, smaller kills, one at a time, if the value of the kill is at least twice the value of the individual bounty; or 2) a single kill can collect the whole shebang if it is worth at least twice (?) the total value of all bounties on the target.

This could also be tied to CONCORD protections, and might even replace the current "outlaw" system: even in hisec, a pilot flying a ship that at least one bounty could pay out on could be unprotected from bounty hunters. Outlaws could be allowed to travel hisec freely, but at their own substantial risk.

Makes bounty-hunting potentially profitable, but 1) all bounty collections mean an economic loss for the target greater than the bounty received and 2) bounty-hunters would have adequate privileges for hunting a target to be potentially profitable/worthwhile.

Thoughts?

[Saede Riordan]

A decent start. Lets see if we can build off it.

Bounty hunting added in that way still doesn't make it any easier to be "the law" it just adds in the chaotic neutral element of bounty hunters. Its a good stopgap measure, but we should have something more overall. I'm thinking grand overarching criminal expansion with all manner of underworld activity.

I like the idea. But...I dunno, I feel like it needs more to it.

[Saikoyu]

Well, it sounds like Bounty Hunting should be a career, like mission running or mining kinda.  A pilot should be able to do many different careers, but should only be able to do one career at a time.  A pilot with a ship set up for mining, should not be able to use it to mission, at least not easily.  That seems to be the basic principle of careers in EvE. 

So follow that here.  You're in your station, you go to the bounty hunting office and say what do you got?  That brings up a listing of all active pilots with bounties and where they currently are withen the last five or so minutes.  Then you select one and enter into a temporary wardec with that person.  You then fly out to find them.  And every so often you get a general location like system or constilation.  If you find them and destroy their ship, you get part of the bounty, pod them and you get the full amount and the bounty goes away, like it does now.  I would also say that in setting a bounty there should be a non-trival minimum, say 50 million isk.  If someone destroyed the guys ship, that would drop to 25 million but remain up.  If he just kept having his ship destroyed it woudl go away when it got to a million or something, no one would have a half isk bounty on them.  At the end whenever you contact that bounty hunter agent and say I'm done, that is when you get the isk and the bounty, if he wasn't podded, goes back up.  And maybe have an option for fleets to focus on one bounty (maybe up to five pilots). 

This way, you and only you are the law for that bounty, kinda law of the wild west sort of thing, get your fleet together and kill that dam' veld' wrangler.

And this could open up other bounty opertunities.  Like go to the bounty office and get a license in a specific high sec system to be customes.  And in that system you can scan ships and if you find anything, you get the same personal war dec against them and can kill them or scramble them and do what you want, ransom, or have them jetison the goods, but if you don't turn in the contraband by a certain time then you get fined whatever the ammount is now or something.  Or on the other side, you can get pirate smuggling missions to try and smuggle stuff into high sec and you might meet up with a player costumes agent. 

[Z.Sinraali]

I like it, all in all, since it's reasonable for Teh Law to realize sooner or later that the way to hurt an egger is in his or her pocketbook, not by killing them.

My primary criticism at the moment would be that it seems to open up a slightly perverse incentive to get your bounty higher. That way it's harder for anybody to collect, since they can only do so much damage to you. And paying on component bounties seems like it would be a PITA and discouraging to anyone unless there was a way to publicize the individual bits. As an alternative, what if it were simply pro-rated, such that any one killmail would pay out an amount from the bounty pot equal to 1/x of the current market value of the losses?

[Aria Jenneth]

As an alternative, what if it were simply pro-rated, such that any one killmail would pay out an amount from the bounty pot equal to 1/x of the current market value of the losses?

... Simpler, and more functional. I like.

Say, [maximum bounty] = .5([total value of loss] - ([insurance reimbursement] + [surviving modules]))?

[Esna Pitoojee]

As an alternative, what if it were simply pro-rated, such that any one killmail would pay out an amount from the bounty pot equal to 1/x of the current market value of the losses?

... Simpler, and more functional. I like.

Say, [maximum bounty] = .5([total value of loss] - ([insurance reimbursement] + [surviving modules]))?

This has alwas been my favorite idea for a "new bounty system" - much like insurance, a bounty would be paid to the person who recieves the killmail, said bounty being made up of a fixed percentage of the lost ship's value until all the bounty has been payed out. It'd have to be adjusted for faction hulls, of course, and they'd also have to make sure that bounty payout in combination with insurance wouldn't make insurance/bounty fraud viable again... but yeah, I like this.

[Aria Jenneth]

Hm. As a thought-- to prevent bounty-hunting from just being a free-for-all, what would you all think of requiring bounty hunters to pay a "registration fee," payable on the individual or corp level, which would grant kill rights on bounty targets and permit payout on bounties? Could require them to have positive sec status, as well.

... Maybe deny bounty payout to random passersby with lots of big guns, or else limit how much of the bounty they can be paid?

Could also have a multi-tiered approach, allowing higher bounty payouts for higher fees / sec status, up to full credit on a 100+ million payout to a character with sec status 5.0 who pays 20 million ISK every 12 weeks.

Edit:

Should probably make it an "individual" thing and let individual members of a corporation just cover it themselves.

[orange]

[maximum bounty] = .5([total value of loss] - ([insurance reimbursement] + [surviving modules]))?

Based on what numbers are these values calculated?  market value?

Killboards calculate this value from some source (Forge Market updates to Eve-Central?).  The insurance values are not based on actual market value.  This leads to situations where the insurance payout for a ship (Raven) can exceed the market value!

This impacts the above equation by potentially making the bounty a negative number.

[Dex_Kivuli]

Back when I was an Eve rookie, we had a discussion about this.

The idea we had (that we liked) was that you could introduce a new "bounty hunter" skill tree that would work in a manner similar to locator agents.

For example, for one skill at level 1 you could find out the last station they docked at, level 2 would list the last 2 stations etc. You could chart out a path of where your target had been. Another skill might tell you the time a person last undocked, the time associated with the past 2 undocks etc.

We liked this idea, because we felt it could give the feel of hunting someone down.

The downside was that for the most part, the skills would probably be used for high sec war declarations. In fact, that was how we came up with the idea in the first place.

[Aria Jenneth]

Based on what numbers are these values calculated?  market value?

Universal average market value, is the thought. Should tilt sharply towards hisec prices.

This leads to situations where the insurance payout for a ship (Raven) can exceed the market value!

I believe they fixed that, actually. Insurance is now based on actual mineral prices needed to construct various ships, calculated semi-regularly.

This impacts the above equation by potentially making the bounty a negative number.

Potentially, but that's apparently now somewhat unlikely (barring extreme market fluctuations). If it happens, ah, well, you might (very rarely) get screwed-- but the minimum bounty to be paid out would (obviously) be zero in any case.

Edit:

Reposted, after some kindly comments by folks in C&P, to Features and Ideas. Please feel free to add support (if appropriate) and/or criticism or suggestions here:

https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=5474&find=unread

[lallara zhuul]

Allowing setting of bounties to people with positive security status would turn the bounty hunters into assassins/a tool for griefing.

While having a discussion about a new possible way of doing a mechanic, always think first of how it could be abused.

Because it will.

[Lyn Farel]

I endorse the bounty hunter subscription idea.

[Major JSilva]

I support the new idea of a bounty system.

I however do not support this seeing as when loot is dropped if not collected by you friends it collected by you enemies who can make money off it or replace to lost ship of a fleet member. What if you lose your ship but your fleet wins the day still the enemy is getting some form of isk.

This idea seem reputable but should stay to pods as Caspuleers they have no attachment to there ship, we all no this sure your crew dies but that the only thing, you lose a pod ,your implants along with it. The bounty is attached to a persons head not to a certain ships cept for npc ratting.



I w

[Saede Riordan]

link to an old idea I had a while back

Its not completely related, but I figured I'd throw my thoughts in with the rest and see if we could make something interesting fall out.

[Alain Colcer]

I've been a major supporter of a complete overhaul on the mechanic of bounties, and actually creating a profession based on the concept of bounty hunting.

The issue is always that it will lead to griefing, undescribable ammounts of griefing.

You could choose restrictions to the bounty system, such as having a -2.0 or less sec rating, only aplicable when in ships not pods, etc etc.

However it always comes down to this: the normal concept we have of bounty hunters is related to the fact i can capture or kill a person and its done, there is no way to opt out.

But capsuleers survive death by clones, we can jumpclone around, and as was said in this thread, the only way to hurt capsuleers is to make a hole in their wallets.

I think bounty hunting should be an extension of the contract system, you put up an offer valid for a number of days, someone can claim said offer and go kill one of the ships of the offender, you can also claim it on behalf of the corp, so its the corp that receives the isk once completed.

The point is, there can be multiple bounties for the same guy, and each ship killed will count towards it. However i would say there should be some small additive factor, depending on the size/type of the ship, no bonus to frigs, bonus to cruiser, major bonus to kill the target if he/she was flying a machariel.

Said additional isk is a faucet in eve, it will come from the bounty system, so you can have a net gain out of searching and killing people in the appropiate ships.

But the most important detail should be this: if no one claimed the bounty, the contract is void and the isk is returned to the person who published the offer, so it does not become this huge pool of tied isk that people like to drag around so that one day they can be killed by an alt and cash in the whole thing without any effort.

People who would like to have bounties on their head will neeed to be active, people who like to hunt down targets will regularly claim contracts, and seek to engage them in the target's most expensive ships.

The point in which im not sure the design sustains itself is deciding restrictions, why would i limit this to just outlaws? why not everyone? why not put a bounty on Itsvaan? probably the target i want inflict damage to does not have a bad sec rating, and lives in high-sec. Is it too much griefing?. Should the hunted be informed by an evemail first?. The concept of a contracted bounty is very appealing, and does resolve a number of issues in my view (as in who can claim the contract as completed for example), but its the ammount of griefing that can be done with it that make me think twice before actually going forward with it.