Assembly Hall

If your standing with a faction drops below -5 with a faction you will be shot at by NPC. This is getting outdated, and its time to give the control to the players. Its time to bring the Old West to Eve.

Space shouldn't be safe, not even in High Security, it should only be safer. So I want to revamp the bounty system so it adds a little more gameplay variety.
Also limiting space in such a binary way as just to disallow people access to certain space and using NPC to enforce them is kind of boring.

So I propose that bounties should be used to show how unwelcomed you are in a certain part of space, but not to replace standings in other parts of the game.

We have to separate between two kinds of bounties for this to be viable.
Player issued bounties and NPC issued bounties.

While all bounty should be summed together when showed in your profile like today though.

NPC issued Bounty
If you do things that would give you a standings decrease with a faction, said faction will put a bounty on your head.
Even missioners should have to think about their bounties

Player issued bounty
Today bounty seems to be a way of bragging instead of being at risk. Which I think is wrong. It shouldn't be cool to have a big bounty. It should be cool to have a big bounty and not die.

This can also be a good tactic for wartargets who are unable to fight for themselves. Issue bounties on wartargets which would allow others to butt inn.

There are a few things has to be fixed along with it though.

1. Bounty Hunters should have to register as a bounty hunter for a fee based on his standing with a faction
If this was free, everyone would register as a bounty hunter and kind of defeat the purpose.

2. Bounties should only decrease by the amount lost when a ship was wrecked or inpounded or based on percentage
If not, everyone would just get into a cheap frig and make their alt blow them up and get tons of free ISK

3. Bounty Hunters with kill rights on you should be identified in the overview either with a different symbol or by blinking.
It should be hard to identify a bounty hunter before you encounter one that actually is out to get you. It should be hard and risky to move in spaces you aren't allowed today, but not impossible.

4. A Player issued bounty should have a timer.
So that you can't get a fleet together and just impose bounties on people and instantly kill them. But should you really want someone dead and have the money, you can make it happend.

5. Killrights to anyone with a bounty in a system should be possible at a price.
But if the person is below the shoot to kill threshold you have to inpound the persons ship and not kill them.

Inpounding
A module simular to a webifier. When the armor alarm goes off, the module can be activated and the ship will be taken into custody by concord. This should yield a higher payout than killing the victim(for example a set percentage of the inpounded value), but will allow the victim to pay to get his stuff back.
Another variation i came up with was to have a timer after the module was activated before concord comes and takes the ship away. During that time corpmates and alliance mates are allowed to intervene with the hunters and their mark.

Pros:

1. It brings more player control to the game
2. More Pew-Pew, and even high-secers like me will have to deal with hazards of flying around
3. Its a way for industrialists and griefer-targets to "fight back" in situations where they previously could not.
4. Will bring more (Hopefully good) PvP to the ones that want it
5. People can opt in and out as bounty hunters when they want, and can serve as a good way to nibble at PvP
6. Open eve up to a new way of playing it.
7. Open up the high sec regions to people with to low standings.

Cons:

1. Im sure there are a few, but i cant think of some right now.

If would also be easier for missioners who have poor standings with some factions to actually go to that place and do missions/etc to remedy that. Given that should you lose enough ships in a region your bounty will drop to a point where you are not a legal target anymore.

Bounty Hunter is required to have a Concord Charter in their hold to avoid Concordokken.
To obtain a charter, you must be in good standing.
Base price for a charter will be 100 million but pilots will receive a discount equal to their security status.
1.0 will recieve a 10% discount. 5.0 will be a 50% discount

Also, having the Charter generates a bonus to the bounty in accordance to their Sec status?

I like the idea of impounding the ship.
The mechanics could be a bit iffy in space.
How about,
when the module is activated, the ship is flagged and not allowed to use the jumpgates.
If the pilot docks, the ship is impounded there. The system would flag it like it has contraband.

If it happens to be in a stationless system, the chase is on. If he has friends, it could get interesting.


Thoughts:

Can the pilot exit ship and undock then?
Who get's the ship? Auctioned off or pay fine to (like a repair) to remove bounty?

Can the bounty hunter go after corpmates or allies if shot while in the act of apprehending the mark?

The way I envisioned impounding was to have some module that would completely lock down the ship after a set ammount or time or when certain parameters was reached(like getting armor to 10% or something like that.)
I envision it actually being harder to inpound a ship compared to just blowing it up, but it should give you a fraction of the ship cost in addition to the bounty.

This is the reason i wanted a separate module for this job, because that would require bountyhunters that want that little piece of extra ISK to make room for that in their fleet/fittings which would set themselves in a small disadvantage. Therefore i didn't want this to replace a point, but be used in addition.

As far as help from corpmates and such goes. I think normal rules for today should apply. People should be allowed to help out their corpmates fight of bounty hunters. One sideeffect of this could be that their own bounty would rise as well, when they interfere.

I was also pondering Incarna related tie-ins for these elements. This business should be somewhat shady. It must be. Bribing and possibly randsoming should be possible, but I guess that already works out well.

It could be cool with a some sort of cat and mouse game in the station. Where you could actually make someone surrender or they would be forced out of the station after some negotiations. But i really dont like this idea to much,

The biggest issue with bounties has been that if someone places a large bounty on someones head, they can use another character or alt or friend to pod them and collect the bounty.

Anyone with sense wouldn't place a large bounty because essentially they are paying the person they're after and giving them profit.

Only way I can see to combat this would be to have some sort of contract system for bounties that the issuer can assign to players around eve. This ISK would be secured and locked by the game, just as with contracts to sell ships etc. You could have the bounty displayed publicly much as it is now, however only bounty hunters assigned can collect, the target wouldn't know who it is that's after him.

This would protect the person issuing the bounty and it would protect the bounty hunters assigned and it would hopefully go a way towards a valid bounty system.

I liked your first statement; the rest was okay. I agree that NPCs providing "security" is not really fun for anybody. Players should be tasked with this wherever possible. Meaning that if you have low standing with an NPC faction or with CONCORD (negative security status) then players should be intercepting you rather than faction navy spawns. Criminals should fear going into high-security space for the same reason non-criminals fear going into low-security space: there may be a gate camp waiting for them.

I think your player bounty idea will only be used to grief and I'm not a big fan of that. We have war declarations for that purpose already (which is another topic entirely).

I like the idea of NPC faction bounties (I assume you mean somebody who runs Caldari missions and has poor Gallente standing can be engaged by Gallente agents) but the bounty hunters shouldn't just have free reign to parade into NPC sovereign high-security space and take out targets based on faction standing. If anything, maybe require players who want to do this to register with a particular faction and thus allow members of the opposing faction to engage them freely (I guess that's a lot like faction spyfare or something).

I do, however, think CONCORD issued bounties would be pretty cool and motivate PvP conflict. I wrote about this on my blog quite some time ago.

Good blog paritybit.

Food for thought.

What constitutes a bounty?
Simple, the pilot is now a fugitive until caught or surrenders to the authorities.
Automatic bounty for a Concord infraction or invoke a Concord response like a ganking a hauler or miner.
Time bonus like missions?

Requirements for Bounty Hunting?
Something like a positive sec status and/or permit from Concord.

[How to prevent abuse of the Bounty Hunter bounties?
Taken from the paritybit's blog, the cost of obtaining a replacement clone should be affected.

Other thoughts:
Should insurance be available to the pilot with a bounty?

Getting replacement gear/ship.
How easy would it be for a criminal to walk into a Walmart and buy a gun?
Now that won't stop indivual selling items to the fugitive.
Can a station report the location of a sale when the fugitive buys something like a gun or ship??