Assembly Hall

Firstly, supported. The player bounty system is terrible and needs iteration.

This proposal is effectively a transferable killright in the form of a contract. I wonder whether instead of limiting who may accept a contract, the preferred method of providing that killright could be to make a private contract. That is, a person has legitimate grievance from being ganked, finds the forum post of a bounty hunter group, then discusses terms with them (or just makes the contract). This would be along side an open(ish) contract system as you propose.

This way the injured party could find a reputable group and give them the rights to kill the bad guy. Reputation would be gained/lost in similar ways to 3rd party services are now.

Also, the focus of your proposal is on highsec, so one addition I would like to suggest is the ability to add nullsec only (because everybody effectively has killrights on everybody else in nullsec) open "contracts" for aliance members/allies (based on standings) to collect. It would be useful in wartime to have a system where an alliance can put bounties on all members of an enemy corp/alliance to encourage their members/allies to engage those enemies. If it were paid out as a portion of ship insurance or pod value in the same way as has already been suggested with a player defined pool and cap per kill, it would allow a direct in-game method to take alliance level income and distribute it to members for their activity.



I think in the case of marketing the bounty hunter "profession", they're meaning ratting (hunting NPC pirates for CONCORD bounties)

I love the idea of the bounty-payer stipulating who can collect on the bounty, this is sound and cool in every way. The one concern I have is that there is still a loophole whenever you involve the player economy. Let's say there's a 500mil bounty on player X, open to everyone. Player X manipulates the market for small t2 sentry drone rigs (or any rarely used module that you like) up to 1 billion isk. Player X puts this 200k module on a 200k Imicus, has alt blow it up, and WHAM he gets the whole payout. If this devious mastermind Player X wants the bounty gone because it's just annoying, he can do the same thing and just fly around a hub in his "1 billion ISK Imicus" . Sure, someone will actually get the 500mil, but at negligible loss to Player X.

I agree this system is better than the current one, but the current one is a dated piece of trash.

Maybe the fix is simple - calculate payoffs based on mass of the ship and tech-level. That is to say, killing a bigger ship would entitle the players into bigger portion of the payout, and a t2 frigate is more valuable than a t1 cruiser, and a t3 cruiser is more valuable than a t1 BS, et cetera. When adding a bounty, perhaps allowing the bounty-payer the ability to stipulate how many times he wants the target killed (up to a certain cap) could be a cool tweak.

I see a lot of people saying "now that we have implants on pod mails, yada yada yada". The bounty system, ideally, would be a low-sec thing. This is low-sec, a competent low-sec pilot only gets podded going through Rancer (or your favorite smartbombing pipe system) or when he wants to. We shouldn't base a new system on the foundations of the broken one.

Not quite. The whole point of bounties is to avenge a grievance, whether that was from a crime or otherwise. Law only comes into the picture when it's a legal autority placing the bounty. Underworld crimelords put bounties on people's heads regardless of the legality of said bounty. Think Jabba's bounty on Han Solo.

Hence a wardec being a requirement would simply be a nuisance (outside of empire).

If there is a "rebel" group operating in NPC nullsec raiding sovereign space, then the sov holding alliance would benefit from having the ability to provide incentives (through an in-game mechanism that works) to their members or allies to hunt down said group. If a wardec is a requirement, then allies wishing to cash in on the bounty would also have to wardec the other alliance to claim payment, even though they're fighting in 0.0 anyway.

Again, tying it to a portion of the ship's value would avoid exploitation, although exploiting it in this case may require burning a spy too.

Fair enough. It seems like a pretty marginal hole to me anyway - manipulating the market across the entire game in order to reduce the cost of clearing off a bounty seems like a hell of a lot of effort to me unless it's a truly massive bounty. If someone has the expertise and is prepared to go to all the trouble & expense of doing that, then maybe they're entitled to scrape off their bounty.

It occurrs to me that we could also further mitigate that hole by basing the bounty value of a ship or module on a 30-day rolling average sale price of the components of that module. That way controlling the small sentry rig market isn't enough; you need to control the Drone Transceiver, Tripped Power Circuit and Burned Logic Circuit market too. Much harder to do!

It would be more developmentally expensive than using the insurance price, but this method would also solve the issue of realistic bounty values for T3 and T2 ships.

It fails on assigning "proper" values for faction/officer mods & ships though, unless you wanted to count them as their own component and just take the rolling average price. Theoretically this allows for manipulation, but I think not in any practical way.

You have my support for this.

That runs into the problem of the perp just not logging on.

I like the idea pretty much. Some random thoughts.

Mitigating the impact of a bounty placed on me by manipulating the market - I see no problem. It is hard to next to impossible to do and will be not 100% effective anyway. If a hunted person wants and is able to do that - props for him. Harming a global mafia boss is a harder task than hitting back some street gang schmuck.

However, this highlights most serious problem in this idea, how to measure a value of a kill. There are no "official" price indices, accepted by CCP and permanently monitored. Or rather there are, but completely formal and unrealistic. The only more or less realistic system exists for T1 hulls (insurance), but they will be of a rather small importance.

Maybe it is a time to officialy embrace the fact that Jita price is a best benchmark. But then again, what with deadspace or officer modules, etc. Or imagine, I kill my bounty target in a supercap. There is no Jita price for it

Second, multiple copies of a bounty contracts. I should be able to hire a few independent mercs to kill the same person. Thus defensive strategy like accepting a contract with an alt of a hunted, or his friend, will not work. It will also create competition amongst hunters. It should induce additional costs however.

Theorising further, a hunted may have an ability to get some info about status of his hunt - are the bounty contracts accepted or something. Something in the line of using locator agents. Sure, some standings and payments must be involved.

Third, further granularity of a bounties. Kill right gives you an ability to declare a bounty on anyone, but you also are able to declare bounty without it - but only if hunted has negative status. If it is small, you need to bribe a Concord (like a small criminal deserves only a warning, not a capital punishment, but a bribe may change the attitude). If it is -5, or something, you are bounty hunted at will - law enforcement system should encourage a personal initiative. Numbers are arbitrary of course.

I have idea to fix loopholes or exploits

have it be that the payout is based half of anything that is 'lost' and doesn't come back in insurance or drop.

For example fully insuring a ship and losing it will cause you to lose some money. The payout will be half of the amount that would be lost regardless if a person fully insures the ship or not. . If they have a alt kill themselves they still need to spend twice as much isk to remove the bounty through bounty hunting fraud, and will not gain more then they lose.

Another thing that can contribute to the payout for a kill is the cost of a clone, half off the cost of a clone. So even if they kill themselves and pod, they would still be out on half the money needed for a new clone. (being something that frowned on in empire, doing so might flag you with a bounty, which gives incentive to do dirty work elsewhere or pay the price of being a outlaw hunter who themselves is a outlaw).

Same with implants. maybe even mods and rigs can be added into the system too, half the value of the mods destroyed (drop not counting).


by paying half of the value that is burned will make fraud unfeasible and unprofitable, compared with paying 100%.


Also with a new bounty system, tied to kill rights makes greifing others (non-pirates) with bounties unlikely. Unlike killrights in current form, bounties should last forever until paid out. Only the person who lost a ship or pod may place a bounty on a target with positive sec status in a week window frame, and its a one time deal (no forever additions unless the are negative sec status).

They should also allow people with bounties on head to be shot at anywhere without penalty untill the bounty is gone. No highsec hiding for outlaws.

Player sec status can still play a role, in that if it is at all negative that ANYONE can place bounties on them at anytime. How deep they are in the negative will determine how chronically they are stuck in it for grinding out of it. Having a high sec status does not excuse a person for past crimes, and the still may be hunted by players without penalty (killrights or concord), until it goes away.

Big reforms in bounty hunting will not only make it be a real profession but encourage those who are outlaws to stay out of highsec (save clandestine incursions). Bounty hunters looking for the targets will venture into dangerous space themselves.

I did, you suggested if a person has 20 million clone the killer gets 20 mill (so if a alt kills the bountyed target they lose nothing, and they take down the bounty). What I suggested is half of the value of isk lost (that does not come back through insurance) is given to the killer. Would make farming ones self with a bounty a money losing venture.

One tweek to payouts removes a huge portion of exploits.

Hi there. I apologize in advanced if what I am about to say has already been said (I haven't got the time to read through the whole thread, especially given the length of the average post in here. Although I have skim read over most of it.)

First, I would like to say that I support this suggestion. But I think if you are going to make "bounty contracts" they should be kept separate from the system that is already in place. I was in the process of writing up a very similar suggestion when I found this thread so for the sake of simplicity I am going to post what I was going to post anyway below for you guys to consider.



Splitting the bounties this way solves some problems you were discussing earlier. If you use contracts only for people who you trust, then you dont have to worry about people accepting the contract just to void the money (also, why not just have the money in escrow and have it returned if the contract expires or is cancelled). Public bounties would never run out, so you wouldn't have to worry about that.

I would also like to say, that I don't think having kill rights on someone should be an essential part of making a bounty contract. If someone scams you, or war decs you repeatedly, or tricks a n00b into stealing from a can and blowing them up etc etc, it would be nice for them to be able to put a meaningful bounty on that person. It will help newer players feel empowered where at the moment they feel helpless. I also think that adding killrights into the equation over complicates matters. Also, having the bounty payout as a % of their total loss is important because otherwise players can use it like the old insurance scam, where people used to pay for platinum insurance and then kill themselves (because it saves selling the ships out in empty nullsec or whatever).

I was also going to suggest that Locator Agents be added to the Agent Finder to make Bounty Hunting a more plausible profession. I am always surprised to find that even some older players have never used a Locator Agent, or some didn't even know they existed.