Player Features and Ideas Discussion

PROBLEM: Uncollectable bounties

As things stand its not worth hunting folk who never fly anything big or T2 hull - especially in high sec.

Collectible bounties are small. And since kill rights are in limited supply, hard to find in a timely manner, and you lose your own ship without them...

practical high sec bounty hunting is limited to when the target is flying BC or BS or T2 hulls.

Some of the biggest bounties are on people who never fly anything bigger than destroyers. Basically their bounties cannot profitably be collected and as such the bounties essentially do not exist.


(Even lo sec and lossless kill right free collection doesn't encourage shooting people in frigates due to probability of ambushes or missing bigger better targets. Always better to let them pass and keep searching for bigger targets. )

#2 Simple % bonus for small T1 ship bounty payouts.

Say 35% for cruisers, 50% for destroyers and 60% for frigates.

That helps.

If you have Kill Rights and see cruiser - you are definitely going to think about using them. Big enough bounty to split between 2-3 teammates as well. Not sure how long you would chase cruiser or track crusier that you only heard by rumor of locator agent.

Still kinda of light for seeking out destroyer. But solo bounty hunter might take him if just stumbles over destroyer and has overwhelming might to kill in 30 seconds or less. Depends on what kind of bounty pirates have already put on you!

Frigates...probably still pass in hopes of seeing them in something bigger.

Issues I see:

If you don't have kill rights this change alone is not likely to set professional bounty hunter on the track of small ship specialists with bounties.


Plus I suspect CCP would worry a little about frigates bounty becoming larger than price of frigates bulk purchased somewhere unusually cheap. I suppose last market purchase prices could be made sticky to a particular ship and lowest EVE hi sec market prices used otherwise. Although this keeps pirates from exploiting bounties for profit, its self-defeating in that bounties paid to pro bounty hunter are made less attractive. Frankly I suspect T1 frigate kills are too much work for most players either pirate or bounty hunter.

However, this % change might simply be applied to ship values in general rather than particular hulls. Ramp up percentage of payout when below certain thresholds to keep interest from falling too far.

The negative side? Less painful to those bounty was placed upon -- BUT only if they sometimes fly bigger ships.

#4 Place Kill Rights in Market or Contracts


This would be a BIG boost for everyone in bounty business. Victims to hook up with interested bounty hunters. Bounty hunters to find Kill Rights on bounty targets they know where to find. Maybe even timely enough matches to catch someone in rare more expensive ship. Current station postings of individuals who collected highest total bounty amounts is not very useful if small ships are being flown in hi sec.

Would need to keep players from buying their own Kill Rights in market if such things are selling are reasonable price.

But maybe could be a wide open thing for auction contracts. Or lead to bounty targets simply bidding Kill Rights up to unprofitable levels. Though if you have HUGE bounty and fly expensive ships occasionally I can see some folk paying kill right holder more for Kill Rights than victim lost!!! But totally would not help with destroyer/cruiser only hi sec gankers.

#6 Split security status into enforcement (CONCORD Attacks) and defense (CONCORD responds) status.

The enforcement status works like current criminal system where for a small handful of ISK you can restore yourself in the eyes of CONCORD such that they won't attack even if you warp into their gunsights.

The defense status is % percentage chance that CONCORD will warp to your defense, freeze enemy ships from warp/dock and criminally flag them - when you are out of sight. Defense and criminal flaggings would remaining 100% if you are attacked in sight of CONCORD without kill rights or wardec or limited engagement...and maybe in sight of stations with large groups of public witnesses.

Defense status starts at 100% and drops 0.5% for each kill right awarded and 2% for each pod kill. At some point kill rights become option for clever bounty hunter.

Possible Pro Argument:

Just maybe its time for EVE to consider the social impact of being a career criminal -- even one who has paid his bribes or turned enough state evidence. That being that CONCORD may permanently lose interest in hot pursuit of those who attack you out of sight of CONCORD. Considering that each account has 2 alts and that you can dispose of any toon that you are no longer interested in playing...its not really unreasonable to impose on those with long and repetitive criminal career of ship kills and poddings.

Behavior behavior of repeat criminal would be similar to treatment of NPC rats in hi sec -- only players mess with bountied zero defense status players.


This addresses the final problem for bounty hunters not having kill rights to avoid CONCORD killing their hunting ship when small ships yield bounties far less than the price of any ship or fleet likely to be able to kill them before CONCORD. Still far better to have kill rights in case defense status is not zero or bounty hunter sees bounty target in front of CONCORD.

Best side? Pirates can still hunt pirates for bounties!!!

Thats the problem.

Right now, there are only 3 types of PvP'ers
1) Ganking Alt: Not really valid bounty hunting target because they will rarely be logged in, never in anything more expensive than a cheapest-fit catalyst, and likely about to be biomassed to create a new gank alt because its sec status got too low and they cant be arsed to have an orca in system

2) Lowsec PvP'er: Most often again, in frigates, often times cheap, will rarely engage unless they hold a vast advantage over the opponent (i mean like T2/faction fit Daredevil versus meta 0 punisher big), so extremely difficult to bounty hunt, rarely profitable, especially since youll also be fighting everyone else in system who dont even give a **** about collecting bounties, just jumping fights to get 2 easy kills

3) Nullsec PvP'er: Self-explanatory, will rarely see them outside of a 50+ man blob, and unless you join an opposing faction for the off-chance you not only get into a fight with a fleet, but they get called primary, AND you manage to get a shot off, you better hope to enjoy that 6 or 7 mill to be split up between 50-200 players.

All in all, bounty hunting is a useless time sink, since there arent any actual valid targets (unless were just going to start putting bounties on Exhumer pilots and ganking them with catalysts for maybe-profit)

bounties without perma death...what were u expecting?

u cant make the bounty worth while or players will kill themselves for their own bounties.

Think of it as a tip for a kill.

Oh, I totally agree. I don't pay attention to bounties because:
- putting them on somebody means nothing - I put bounties on my corpies just for fun and because I don't count every ISK I have. Not so long ago I added almost 50mil to bounty of some dude whining about having a bounty on him just because his current bounty was not nice number so I made it nice round 100mil. And what? Nothing.

- having a bounty on yourself means nothing - I would really like system that would make me care about whatever bounty I have on me right now. True, I mostly fly thrashers worth maybe 14 mil but if I would fly golden machs would that make any difference for me? Nope. I live in lowsec, I am flashy red - people can shoot me any time they want, having 1 bil on me would not change it. Ask Santo Trafficante if he cares about his bounty :)

Bounties were advertised as conflict driver, way to revitalize mercenary market - what we have now is equivalent of likes on facebook, nobody who has brain cares.

I suggested private bounties a while back which actually was a promised feature back when bounties were revamped.

This would allow you to choose who could collect the bounty, and what % of ISK it would pay out. This would work because you could choose who can collect the bounty, so the odds of gaming the system are much lower.

There would even be room for corps who are professional bounty hunters etc etc.

I like #2 and #4 a lot!!! Maybe #3 in high sec, I could see an argument that if you lose your own ship to CONCORD, you should be able to claim a percentage of the victim ship and your ship from the bounty. It would still be a percentage, even with insurance you should still come out with a loss, IMO.

To please who said no one really hunts for bounties. That is not a reason to ignore this, it is a reason to improve it!

So long as the payout is less than the cost of the module minus broker fees and minimum tax rate, minus at least another 10 or 20 percent it'll always be a loss over just selling the module.

Edit: I shouldn't say that, since there are ways to manipulate the market to still make it work. I should say that it'd be difficult and probably too time consuming to do on a large scale.