I've been giving some thought to the whole bounty system, which is, at the moment, far from optimal. I've searched through the forum a bit, read some old threads about potential fixes to the bounty system, and none of them seem particularly feasible or practical. And as far as I know, there has not been any FLHook based bounty system properly proposed before (if there has, please correct me). So what I've done is I've drawn up an idea for an ingame bounty system via FLHook, which would, if added, turn bounty hunting into a viable way of making money without having to slave over paperwork.
The idea would involve 8 commands, those being:
/addbounty <target name> <amount you wish to add> - This would add a particular amount of money to the character being bountied, which would be kept in a 'pot' by the server, accumulating with any other bounties added until his ship is destroyed by a Bounty Hunter or Mercenary IDed ship, who collects the money. The amount of money being added to a character's bounty would be removed from the bountying player's credits when the bounty is assigned.
/addfactionbounty <target ID> - This would remove a set and predetermined (by the admins) amount of money from your account, and apply a permanent bounty of a predetermined (again by the admins) amount to all ships using the targeted ID. For example, I'd suggest it would cost 1 billion credits to bounty a faction, setting a permanent 1 million credit payout on every ship using that faction's ID, meaning if [LN]Armoury-001 faction bounties the Liberty Rogues, every Liberty Rogue IDed ship in the game would have 1 million credits on its head permanently (if the bounty is not removed), no matter how many times it is killed.
To prevent abuse however, faction bounties would not stack, meaning once an ID is bountied, it can't be faction bountied again until the previous faction bounty is removed.
Faction bounties would also have a timer before a destroyed ship is re-bountied, to prevent abuse, say 30 minutes. This would mean that for 30 minutes after it was last destroyed, a ship would not have any faction bounty on its head, however, once the 30 minutes is up, the bounty is re-applied automatically.
/removebounty <target name> - This would remove any bounty your character has placed on the target character, refunding your money if the bounty has not yet been claimed.
/removefactionbounty <target ID> - This would remove a faction bounty your character has placed on a particular faction, however, it would not refund your money, due to the fact that faction bounties' payouts potentially greatly exceed the amount of money you deposit.
/showbounty - This would display the bounty you currently have on your head.
/showbounty#t - This would display the bounty of the person you currently have targeted while in space.
/showbountyall - This would display the names and bounties of everyone currently on your scanners (within 14k of your ship).
/showbountytop10 - This would display the 10 characters with the highest bounties at any given time, and the amount they are bountied for.
Rep restrictions
As it would be done via FLHook, it could be made that you only get the pay-out if you're hostile to the ship you engaged. This would prevent RP rule breeches when it comes to mercs not being hostile to the people they're shooting.
Claiming a bounty
Once a bountied player is killed by a ship using a Bounty Hunter ID or a Mercenary ID, the bounty they have accumulated up until that point is cleared (if their ID is faction bountied, they will be automatically re-bountied after a set amount of time, for example, 30 minutes), and the bounty they have accumulated up until that point is added to the wallet of the Bounty Hunter or Mercenary that delivered the final blow.
To give an idea of how this would be put into practice, here's an example of what could happen ingame:
Bowex)Wheatstone is happily flying through Omega 3 with a load of ore, singing gaily to himself as he rides along the lanes. Suddenly, half way down a lane, a disruption is encountered, and sitting there, waiting for Wheatstone is a dastardly Corsair Praetorian by the name of Montezuma, who demands that in return for sparing his life, he hands over two million credits. The good Bowex captain refuses, and in return suffers some antimatter abuse at the hands of the Corsair.
Back in Dublin, aboard the Battleship Essex, the Bowex captain suddenly appears, his ship seemingly intact, but his cargo of ore sadly absent. In his sorrow, he swears revenge upon the Corsair who was mean to him, and decides to place a bounty upon his head. He opens his chat window and begins typing... /addbounty Montezuma 1000000 ... Then pressing enter on his keyboard, he notices one million credits being removed from his wallet.
Meanwhile, in Omega 3, the nasty Corsair pilot is on his way back to Cadiz, smiling as he plans more fiendish attacks and villainous raids, as he flies, he opens his chat window and types... /showbounty ... And to his horror, he receives a message telling him that he has one million credits on his head! Suddenly, a Bounty Hunter ship appears ahead of him, a heroic and mentally disabled pilot going by the callsign BHG|22nd-Bang. Bang quickly disrupts the Corsair's cruise engines, and hurriedly opens his chat window to type... /showbounty#t ... To his joy, he receives a message informing him that the Corsair has one million credits on his head. After contacting the Corsair to gloat over his impending payment, the Bounty Hunter engages the Corsair, his Sea Serpent easily destroying the Corsair's Praetorian bomber. As he fires the last shot to end the Corsair's career of skulduggery, at least for the next four hours, he is greeted with a message informing him that he has received one million credits for his work, and when he checks his wallet, he notices it sits one million credits fatter.
Blissfully happy with himself, Bang exclaims in system chat that he is one million credits richer, at which point, several Corsair capital ships appear, exclaiming that they have come to engage red in the name of mother Russia, and put and end to his momentary outburst of joy. And so, no one lived happily ever after. The end.
So, that's basically a summary of the idea. I think it would be a major boon for the Bounty Hunter and Mercenary element within the community, and would make it a viable way of earning a living without having to spend hours doing paperwork, which is the main discouragement when it comes to people playing Bounty Hunters.
It would also give people, especially newer players, the ability to use the bounty system without having to be very versed in forum etiquette and protocol. Because as things stand, posting a simple 5 million credit bounty on some random pirate that destroyed your mining ship is an extremely laborious process, especially for a new player that is unaccustomed to forumlancer, and actually hinders the use of the bounty system as people just don't want to spend all that time on the forum creating and maintaining a bounty thread.
Plus it would remove the need for all bounty related rules, as if the system is made nigh impossible to abuse, which is not difficult, given that it is a rather simple system, then the rules are no longer necessary. And from what I gather, the eventual replacement of the majority of the rules with ingame mechanics is one of the main goals of the FLHook development.
So, after all that...
Is this possible?
Is it feasible?
Can you spot any ways that it can be abused that I've not noticed?
Finally and most importantly, what do you, the community, think of the idea?
Well, if you are a prolific pirate, you will no doubt be bountied by a number of traders and miners, which will make you a more enticing target for Bounty Hunters and Mercenaries, which is the whole idea of having a bounty system in the first place, is it not?
' Wrote:I see Montezuma in Omega 3.
/addbounty Montezuma
Log off
Log on a merc fighter go for Montezuma
wouldn't this be abused too? Like oorp hate
Well, if you put a 1 mil bounty on Montezuma, as you do so, 1 mil will be deducted from your wallet, which you'll get back when you kill him, so you're not actually profiting by killing ships you bounty yourself.
As for the PvP side of it, yes it means you'd be able to bounty Montezuma then run over to Omega 3 and kill him to claim it, but as things stand, you'd be able to do that anyway, as blanket bounties already mean you can engage just about any pirate (or lawful, depending on your affiliation) just about anywhere. What it would change though is instead of having to then log off, upload pics of the kill and make a forum post, then wait a few days for your payment, you'd just kill him and get the money right away.
And keep in mind, this mechanic wouldn't change the rules about reps and player conduct. You still have to be hostile to anyone you shoot, or you're risking a sanction.
' Wrote:I see Montezuma in Omega 3.
/addbounty Montezuma
Log off
Log on a merc fighter go for Montezuma
wouldn't this be abused too? Like oorp hate
People can do that without making a Bounty Hunter / Mercenary char atm. If someone hates the malicious Corsair Montezuma OORPly, it'd be easier for that someone to make a Hessian / anyone else who can shoot Corsairs. However, there might be a way for abuse indeed. Although it is likely that the someone we're talking about won't even have to make a bounty, since Corsairs would definitely be faction-bountied by some faction.
The issues I can see are mostly related with the current bounty rules. E.g., one would be able to make bounties without IRP justification at all (or at least without showing that justification to the rest of the community). Although I wouldn't mind having such anonymous bounties (it's better when you don't know IRP and OORP who sent the hunters and mercs after you), I'm not sure that all people would agree with my point of view.
P.S.: also, it seems that the current write-up of the system doesn't support reputation restrictions for the mercs (so mercs wouldn't have to care much about their rep with the factions placing bounties, they would just take the cash from the 'pot', no matter who put the cash into it).
P.P.S.: and yes, despite the drawbacks, I wouldn't mind having such bounty system definitely. But right now the devs are busy with the final tweaks for 4.86 anyway, and I'm not sure whether creating such system is possible. But anyway, I like that hypothetical system.
Well, I don't quite know how it could be made so that you can only claim bounties from people who you are neutral/friendly with. I think that anonymous bounty pots would just be simpler and much easier to create, and make just as much sense in RP.
Though, one thing I do think can be done is that it be made so that you only get the pay-out if the ship you killed was hostile to you (i.e. IFF was red to you), which I'm sure would not be too difficult. I added a little part about that to the main text.
Edit: Well, I'm not entirely sure how it would be possible to restrict the areas where one could get a pay-out from a particular faction (as I'm not a FLHook expert), I'm also not sure quite why one would want to restrict where the hired killer of one's enemies can be paid for doing so.
![[Image: montezuma1.png]](http://i581.photobucket.com/albums/ss260/Gaelic_Aztec/montezuma1.png)
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