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But no matter how big that bounty is the payout will be limited to 20% of the what the n00b has lost.

Which ends up to be close to zero, then subtract the cost of the gank.

Yep, pretty pointless to spend money putting a bounty on a noob character. Nobody will be interested in collecting the pittance they would collect. Especially in high sec where you WILL lose your ship, and potentially have that noob make a profit by selling his kill right on you.

60M on an exhumer pilot means that they can get up to 60M or 20% of the destroyed value of the ship, whichever is less, for a particular kill.

For an exhumer, we'll assume 180M for the hull plus another 30M for fittings of which half drop. So the destroyed value is going to be around 200M of which 20% is 40M ISK. Which would only use up 2/3 of the 60M bounty fund on that pilot.

More thoughts:

- Bounties need to be able to cancelled. Maybe you only get back 80-90% of whatever is left (charge a 5/10/20% cancellation fee plus a base fee of 5M ISK).

- Bounties need to have an expiration date. Longer durations should charge proportionally higher taxes on top of the bounty amount. The same penalties should apply as cancellation if the bounty expires (only 90% of the ISK is returned). Charge a 5% tax for every 30 day period.

- Bounties need to be renewable at a cheaper rate (only charge a 1M ISK renewal fee instead of the full 5M ISK registration fee for a new bounty).

- There definitely needs to be a limit on how many bounties you can put out at the same time (see the Contracting skill for ideas).

Player X wants to put up a 60M prize pool. They are going to have to:

- Pay 60M into escrow, plus 5M handling fee, plus 5% of the escrow value for a 30-day contract as a tax for a total of 68M ISK paid in.

- They then decide to cancel it to get their 60M back because it never worked. They would get back 60M minus 5M cancellation fee, minus 10% of what is left - giving them 49.5M back.

- They decide to extend the bounty for another 30 days, they would pay a 1M ISK renewal fee, plus 5% of the bounty amount to extend the 60M bounty for another 30 days. So by putting up another 4M ISK, they can extend the bounty for another 30 days.

from http://poeticstanziel.blogspot.ca/2012/10/kill-rights-kinder-gentler-highsec.html

The march towards a kinder gentler highsec continues today with the full explanation of kill rights, one of the new features for the Retribution expansion, by CCP.

Transferrable Kill Rights
The only useful thing coming out of the kill rights section of the devblog is that kill rights will now be transferable This has been a long time coming.

Except that they're not really transferable. Rather, you can purchase the ability to activate a kill right for 15 minutes. This ability can be now purchased in space, with a right click, when you're on top of your target. If you happen to kill the target, the kill right expires immediately.

There's a big but coming, though. We all like big buts, right?

Highsec Gangbang
Kill rights are really gangbang rights. The one-on-one affair that kill rights used to be. No more. Activating a kill right means that anyone can attack and kill, without consequence. Activating a kill right is to apply the suspect flag onto that person.

The Punishment and The Crime
The punishment needn't fit the crime. Unlike the current system, where you actually have to blow something up for a victim to get a kill right, under the new system, simply aggressing a non-outlaw, non-suspect in highsec will give the "victim" a kill right.

Failed ganks are to punished, according to the new mechanics. Let's say you fail on a highsec gank. CONCORD kills you and you lose your ship (not too mention getting ridiculed in local for being fail.) CCP says that's not quite punishment enough, and will give the surviving victim the right to kill you anywhere anytime for the next month. But that's not punishment enough either, since a kill right is actually a license to gangbang. You'll also get a special icon (shaped like a target) that tells everyone that you can be killed anywhere anytime, and with a simple right click (and maybe payment of some ISK) the kill right on you can be activated.

Alts Voiding Kill Rights
Undock in a shuttle. An alt activates the kill right. Blows up shuttle. Kill right completed.

CCP will fix this cleverness quickly, since it voids the entire kill right system on zero day.

Kill Right Baiting
We can expect to see this nerfed in the future.

Load a blingy-ship up with warp stabs. Wait for someone to buy the kill right off your alt. Warp to station. Wait out the fifteen minute timer. Watch them curse. Earn ISK. Rinse and repeat for the rest of the month.

We'll see this done with blingy PvP fit ships and nearby logis, as well. I'm sure lots of different tactics to kill right bait will appear over time.

This is all perfectly, fine, but it will upset carebears, and CCP will respond. Carebears are naturally quite stupid, and CCP has determined it is their job to protect them.

Boiling a Frog
As I wrote previously, this is another step towards sunshine and rainbows in highsec. Kill rights, rather than encouraging PvP in highsec, will effectively reduce it over the long haul. There'll still be those people who don't give a **** about the mechanics, but there'll be more people who will give up their highsec criminality, because being gangbanged at any time and any place is not desirable.

CCP still gets to say that they have mechanics that allow highsec PvP. Wardecs. Bounties. Kill rights. But those systems also actively discourage highsec PvP, through mechanics that weigh far more in favour of the victims than the aggressors.

CSM7
Kudos to CSM7 for failing to recognize CCP's new philosophy for highsec development. For not speaking up. For rolling over and taking it. Nary a criticism from these clowns. Why? Because they fear loss of access to CCP devs. Access to development gives them a sense of power. Chatting up a celebrity dev nou doubt gives on a warm special feeling inside. Access alone is power, they'll tell us. But it's a false power, because they've nothing to back it up.

CCP tells the CSM that they plan to offer transferable kill rights. Someone on the CSM yells "Ship it now!" No questions asked. Just cheerleading.

The only the power the CSM can wield is that of public opinion. If the CSM cannot get the support of the playerbase behind them, they've zero leverage against CCP. It'll just be a few dudes, who think they're special, banging their head against a wall.

Better to be buddies with the devs while the game slowly gets ****** over, than to not be buddies. At least the CSM is making new friends. Extra Christmas cards in December.

In after "Durr, this is all to make EVE a carebear paradise!"

These changes sound fantastic, it would be excellent if they achieve their intended purpose and make bounties an actual profitable enterprise, as opposed to a way for 'bad guys' to make millions of ISK by getting a friend to gank them.

I especially like the idea of multiple payouts, based on ISK loss.

Have I stepped into an alternate reality, there is gonna be incentive to police space lanes? I will be able to actually become a vigilante and make money out of it?

Never thought I'd see this in New Eden. What's happening?

OK shields are getting some debuf how about armour getting a buff in theform of faction reinforced steel plates having the same HP as T2 ones? The reactive armour was a bust wasn't it?

You are correct that there will likely be several ways to avoid kill rights, usually by using an alt which in an interesting twist of Karma will be paying a fee to his previous victim.

You are correct that there will likely be kill right baiting, which may be addressed (although i doubt it) or go through as is. It won't take long for people that decide to specialize in pursuing known individuals using this tactic to bring enough tackle and DPS to deal with either the stabs OR the now shootable logi pilot. That will end up being a two way street, an interesting game of cat and mouse, and that's fine. There will be a lot more people out there with kill rights on their head that don't care to spend time away from their ganking hobby.

What WILL happen is that the suicide ganker's job (which was never intended to be easy, random, or profitable) will have a harder time of it. He will need to choose his targets and method of operation more carefully. He will have a much more difficult time provoking and profiting off of attacking targets that he can be virtually certain that he can easily kill.

On the other hand the person that provokes/attacks others to generate "good fights" is allowed to have a field day. He will be able to have combat whenever he likes against often multiple opponents of every conceivable level of skill and experience. He can still bring in logistic ships on his side to assist, although they no longer have a get out of jail free card, and still (so far) be boosted by a command or T3 from off grid. If he's good enough, and prepared enough, and picks his fight locations well enough he can rack up an impressive body count if up against the usual inexperienced High Sec crowd.

He can keep this up for 30 days, or until somebody finally gets him. Then, if none of these opponents mans up and sells or uses their new kill rights on him, he can always use an alt to generate and sell another kill right... recovering a bit of money by doing so. Not having to worry about being deprived of an insurance pay out.

So the guy looking for ganks is put in a tougher (but certainly not impossible) spot, while the person looking to engage in wild and hectic combat is given a golden goose.

I can live with that.

When it comes to their little PvE activities. When it comes to PvP, they're usually happy to just give away the opportunity to attack their aggressors/griefers. Wardecs taught us this last May.

I guess we'll find out come December/January how it plays out.

If you're right, and kill rights for ISK is the norm, then kill right baiting becomes a viable profession. Baiting people into paying for kill right activation to an alt, then docking up (or flying around between safes) for 15 minutes. Repeat.