Crime & Punishment

Hi all, just a few of my thoughts to ponder....

You would all no doubt be aware of CODE's recent campaign to wreak havoc among the High-Sec traders, Miners, and Missioners of value.

First of all, congrats to CODE and associates for making our gaming a little more interesting. I find it all very amusing and think it adds another dimension to the game. I've enjoyed pointing my guns at you

However, i see a "one-sided" flaw that, in my mind, could be improved upon.....

Most of, if not all of, the aggressors have both terrible security standing (-10.0), and large bounties (often multi-billions of isk)
I find it interesting that the game mechanics are such that you can shoot the ship and pod of someone with a multi-billion isk bounty and yet receive a paltry 10'000 isk or less!!

These large bounties are certainly a badge of honor to be worn by these players...and rightly so.

CCP, I would love to see larger payouts in high-sec from people with terrible standings.
eg. The varying system security multiplied by the severity of the players standing equals the increased / decreased bounty received.

This could work and would no doubt changed how criminals operate in high-sec vs the risk of losing your badge of honor over time if you persist with your actions..

No doubt this will create a spirited discussion from players far more clever than me.
Your thoughts please......

Major

The bounty system used to work in the way that bounties were paid in full. It made the entire bounty system useless, since everyone just claimed the bounties with their alts.

I am afraid this cannot be solved in a way that does not lead to the bounty system being abused. The current system is infinitely better than the old one, since at least SOME bounties are claimed by hostiles, unlike before.

Get rid of bounties, re-instate SP loss with no medical clones , nerf cheap ships with too much fire power for their size aka destroyers (even 5 small turrets is enough, 7-8 with damage bonus on a sub 1.5 million isk hull....balance in favor of the guy willing to throw them away like hamburger wrappers, cause its what was in side that was of value aka gank target), remove auto pilot except for laying out the path (aka no jumping and 15km coasting) and reintroduce the concept of risk vs profit instead of lulz. Only problem there is, aside from removing barges/exhumers and freighters that pop way to easily with a large cargo capacity using piñata style paper-mache tanking ability (put a gold brick in a piñata and give some a shot gun instead of a stick to take it out, yup that's ganking cause they are so greedy and its so easy). Freighters should just have reduced cargo capacity even further to about 150m3, more tanking ability, faster align time currently (not saying frigate speeds), with no low slot mods to not encourage stupid shitfits (cause it was such a stupid good idea to do it in the first place) and the pilots need to travel even more trips to get to market. Profit, screw bounties and let them blink while they blow up freighters with less loot...force the pilots to use at least battle cruisers while they go blinky, less people but same fire power for less risk, want more isk then do as level 4 missions nerfs and exploration buffs (good guys got screwed last couple years for living in highsec, bad guys should take a turn ); put your butt on the line instead of sitting in highsec surrounded by CONCORD....go take a moon, go hunt the null alliances or worm hulls, farm FW instead of stupid lazy players (aka remove the incentives to be lazy).

tl;dr : Go outside highsec and earn the isk where same dudes demand highsec dwellers be forced.

I certainly got off topic by the above mentioned comment.....my apologies.

The point that I'm ultimately attempting to make is that when you do take up arms and fight, that the bounty rewards are paltry at best within the current game mechanics. I believe that modifying this would make the game more interesting and rewarding for those individuals / groups who do make the choice to fight : )

I remember when people mined in battleships. Ganking wasn't an issue back then.

Thinking adversarially, how do your proposals work if CODE decide to gank themselves in their cheap pods? They would be able to convert their bounties into cash. So this proposal fails: the money gained by a bounty must always be less than the value of the ship or pod destroyed.

Code is a part of the New Order of High Sec. I think it's safe to say we'll be present until they turn the lights out, or more likely, until they end up suddenly declaring suicide ganking an exploit. Not that CCP have ever ruled something ok in the past and then turned round and called it an exploit all of a sudden.

Great points and good ideas guys....thanks for your input.

The common thread that has arisen from this topic is about self collection; a very valid point.

I think the one way to minimize this is to not have the payouts too high (as apposed to the current very low ones). Maybe 10-50 mil isk maximum??, dependent on the system security status and character security status, as previously mentioned, for example.

Naturally the payout figure would increase as the value of the criminals ship increases as is currently the case, and rightly so.

I still believe that most players that have bounties on them in the 100's of millions or multi-billions of isk would care more for that as a "badge of honor" and pride than to self collect...i know i would

Pods self on alt, recieve 85b isk.
Lets do this.

Heeeeyyy...I voted for Obama!