Yeh sure I guess. Let's talk about what the bounty system is, what's wrong with it and what it should be.
From my perspective, of course. I spare no expense of slant of personal view. But then you DID ask me.
- The bounty system is a mechanism by which one party may call down bad times on another party. These bad times generally come in the form of persons seeking to blow you up and therefor impact your game time. These bad times are theoretically summoned by you pissing off the wrong kind of person.
- What's wrong with the bounty system is the extremely lax system in place to govern the use of this mechanism. Specifically the way it can be used to cheaply bounty a large swath of players for virtually no cost at all to the person initiating the bounty. A good example of this is found in the case of n00bl3t who has placed kill rights for anyone who may claim bounties on virtually every miner in Discovery for almost zero cost to himself.
250k a kill, the base line, is 120 kills in return for one hour of trading. At 250k you would need to kill 10 miners to receive 2.5 million credits which is roughly one fourth the money one would make trading in the twenty minutes it will take to compile and post the necessary forum information. Which most people skip as claiming a bounty isn't worth it in most cases. This in turn allows for the absurd bounty to carry forth unchecked.
Additional examples of this are to be found in the house wide bounties. The Liberty boards offer you roughly 15 credits and a cup of coffee for kill rights on Xenos is a great way to enable wholesale hunting of these parties but provides almost no financial incentive to the hunter nor cost to the initiator. In short it's not a bounty system, it's simply a means by which to cut to the chase and get your pew pew on. Within any other context this would be considered griefing.
I am an avid supporter of pew pew. I feel that it's the core of the game and those who spread terms such as PVP whore and the like are very likely to have recently been subjected to a respawn. I am also an avid supporter of balance and fairness of thought. The current bounty system is very much so out of balance in favor of the person who wishes to sow a little chaos. Very small sums of money brings a very large return. Fairness of thought in that it enables griefing and, when I post a Sirius wide bounty on everyone in a few minutes for 50k a kill it will be shut down as a 1.2 violation but without being able to explain the difference between that bounty and if I had split it between 15 posts which say the exact same thing.
- Which leads me to how we can correct this. As you may imagine, given that economics are the central theme to my essay, it's about money. A minimum payout needs to be assigned to bounties in order to correct the system. Nublet would be hesitant to blandly decry the entirety of Discovery's industrial base if he had to shell out five million credits a pop. If he could afford that then all the better, that's five million credits a pop for a mercenary. It's suddenly an economically viable job as opposed to a means by which to target parties for griefing.
I understand that the BHG will be up in arms about this. They rely on the blanket bounties in order to be able to kill everything everywhere. Their argument isn't without merit: Unlawful pirate IDs are allowed to engage any lawful anywhere, so why not vice versa? That will need to be handled separately under review of ID changes or allowances for houses to dictate whom hunters may hunt within their space. The overall health of the bounty system cannot rest on that.
So to recap. Cheap bounties invalidate the bounty system on a number of levels. Both by making it primarily a mechanism of baseless griefing and by removing much of the possibility of being one who actually hunts others for a living. The implementation of a minimum bounty price per kill would resolve these issues handily.
Indeed, a bounty should be more profitable than that, it's barely enough to buy ammo and repair your ship. I think a rule should be created (yes, here we go again) which states a minimum bounty. It's fairer for the one who gets targeted and the Hunters could actually buy a meal with their earnings.
In addition, why not make blanket-bounties illegal? The ones who cause trouble should be targeted, not the smuggler who just happens to belong to a faction that's notorious for piracy.
I vote for bounties to be accorded to target's level and ship, so, giving 3 millions for destruction of 31 rank outcast with dagger that silently does missions when hunter with full packed manta caught him? Not sure.
I both agree and disagree with you dusty from a BHG and LPI perspective
While the larget bountys would make hunting a worthwhile alternative to trading or mining, the costs incurred by the LPI, BAF, rheinland people thingys would become huge, thats the main reason the LPI's bountys are so low right now, due to the huge numbers of criminals in liberty, it just ain't cost effective
IF there was a way to make it cheaper for the LPI (so we all dont have to take up mining to pay everyone) and payout more to the hunters, i would be all for that.
' Wrote:Come on, everyone!
Hark, the Bounty Hunters si-ing,
Death to all the pirate kings...
Goals: To be interviewed by Chris Hansen on Dateline NBC.
Which is why I suggest that the BHG fall under their own system without taxing the players.
I'm not 100% on the appropriate model for this. But the best system I've come up with so far in my headspace is one in which each house enables the BHG to hunt or not hunt certain parties.
Sort of like a house charter granting them permission to perform certain actions.
Kusari would tell them to, simply, gtfo. Liberty tells 'em to go to town, Bretonia says go to town but don't hunt Outcasts in our terf etc.
That way they're enabled to ply their generic combat craft and the server isn't burdened by useless bounties.
The cry in the past is that people don't wish to enable a team disco world police system... But at the moment such a system is in place and doesn't seem to be working insanely against anyone's favor. Furthermore 98% of the hunters are in Delta spooning their capships. Furthermore it's a logical antithesis to the team disco world bad guys represented by the pirate ID.
As a merc,. I'd say many many bounty boards are definately not worth it. In situations like that, it's worth asking the target to pay you in order to insure that you don't blow them up. It's extortion, but good god is it fun.
Currently, the Liberty Navy's bounty list looks like this...
We tend to avoid posting blanket bountys as that doesn't seem like the best use for mercs and hunters. We'd rather use them for giving special attention to those we especially dislike/have trouble with.
That said, being on the receieving end of a proper blanket bounty is great fun. You have to watch your back, keep your wits about you... The 4mill per kill bounty which was posted on the entire RoS some 18 months ago produced some of the finest memorys I have of my time here on discovery, that said, that was a decent paying bounty... Well worth it for a group of hunters.
Yes, the high paying blanket bounties such as the one posted against the Cartel are excellent. A lot of money was made and a lot of kills were scored. At one point each Cartel head was worth so much that we found ourselves honestly competing with other mercs just to sink the bastards before they could.
Another good one was the LH bounty on Bounty Hunters. Good money per kill and, what's this!? A prize for whoever scores the most kills before the bounty is exhausted? Delightful.
I'm not decrying bounties which target large numbers of persons at once. I'm decrying those that do so cheaply and perpetrate a harmful system.
And you could claim it from three different people... That was the best part about it. Ten mill from out group, five mill from another, three mill from some other folks. It was happy days for the mercs.
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