Crime & Punishment

I have read several posts about this topic and most people seem to agree that the current system is broken. The main reasons why the system is broken are:

1. Majority of bounties are paid out to people who are not bounty hunters by profession and would have killed the person regardless of the bounty.

2. Lack of useful information in the bounty office


In order to solve these issues I propose following:

1. To claim a bounty a player MUST be a member of NPC security Faction alliance
This will work in the same way as of Faction Warfare so CEOs can enrole their corp into an NPC Alliance.

2. To be able to claim a bounty a “bounty kill right” must be activated upfront. They are activated via the bounty office and any corp member can do it. (This will only allow you or any corp member to claim a bounty but NOT killing in high-sec without concord intervention)

3. Only players who are in Bounty hunter corps have access to the bounty office but now the information inside will be useful – the office should contain following information which is sort able:
3.1 Players with bounties (and how much)
3.2 Who is online and who is offline
3.3 Public kill right
3.4 Pilots who are in the same region as the bounty office you are currently using
3.5 Pilots who have undocked from a station in the last 1 hour
3.6 Pilots who have used a jump gate in the last 1 hour


To avoid all corps joining the new Bounty Corps some downside must exist:

1. High Tax – I suggest a 50% tax which is collected by the NPC alliance (bounties are of course tax exempt). These corps are for bounty hunting; NOT ratting or mission running.

2. Only pilots with +3.0 Security standing or higher can join a bounty corp (and pilot will be kicked from corp if standing falls below). After all, bounty hunters are supposed to be the good guys; NOT pirates 

3. +5.0 Faction Standing towards the faction which your corp is affiliated with.

4. A small fee of around 50,000 ISK to activate a “bounty kill right”

Wrong forum.

[Edit: Dammit, beat me to it.

Do you mean available only to individual hunters, or only to the proposed Bounty Hunter corps?

I like the OP's thoughts, and disagree with the idea that the bounty office should show who's online and who isn't, (that's what contact lists are for), but also feel that the idea wouldn't work. I just don't see that enough pilots would be interested in doing this as a career to make it viable, but I also haven't looked at the bounty boards in 8 years, so maybe there's potential there.

If the payout would be more than the destroyed value, someone would offer a "bounty removal service" - get bounty removed, split profit. We'll be going back to the previous system where putting a bounty on someone was a gift of ISK to them. No thanks.

Yes I agree with what you are saing -
Perhaps I was to naive to think that even with the increased Bounties and Incentives to place bounties under my suggestion, bounty hunters would be able to run a profit by ganking players with large bounties on them in highsec.

Another way to increase payouts would be allow 90% payout on ship cost.
However it would require the current insurance system to be closed and this may have some unintended consequences.

They could make it so bounties funds were not transferable, but that seems like it's a programming nightmare for a problem that doesn't really need to be solved.

Perhaps if they had 10-20% of bounty come from wallet of person with bounty on their head, though that would be ripe for abuse too.

I had similar thoughts as I was writing it, but, slow day at work so.....

Its all about definition, You have a bounty on your head because you did something to someone else, hence you deserve the "WANTED" tag and corresponding bounty.

Here is where is falls apart, when someone places a bounty on another because they can. This is out right prejudice, placing a possibly innocent capsule-er at unnecessary risk through no fault of their own. Its desirable for some freighters, miners etc. to keep a low profile, having an unwanted label and financial incentive no matter how small (as for some it takes only a little excuse.) to get blown away is not good.

So here how it goes whats good for one is good for all and if this issue is not taken seriously then everyone should place a bounty and wanted on everyone they feel like, its bad enough having to deal with morons, but when you play a game to relax (yes relax) then being pulled into the ****** side of things just ruins the fun. because someone dosn't like the look of you.

Here is my solution.

The only time you should be able to place a bounty on another is when they have committed a suspect action against you. ( you have the time it takes for the suspect timer to run out to think about and place a bounty.) simple as.

If however you don't like someone then you should go through the 'Contracts and place an actual hit on someone' which morons can find in contracts.

Hence we have the distinction of both "good bounty hunters" and moron hitmen.

Here is my thoughts on the bounty system, and a way to make it a viable profession. Drop the current bounty system completely, its worthless...Instead implement a contract system where a player creates a bounty contract on a person, Just like a market contract and when you kill the person after accepting the contract you get paid. No matter what kind of system you create in this game people will find a way to scam it or grief it so it doesn't matter, the point is to come up with a better system that can actually make this a fun aspect of the game instead of completely useless. That's just my 2 cents.