Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I not extremely experienced with EVE and have been reading a lot about this bounty hunting thing and it being broken. I have compiled a bunch of ideas that I have read that together might work. No system is gonna be perfect, eventually people will learn how to abuse it; So read it poke as many holes in it as you can and I'll see what's left. BTW it's kinda long.

System setup using agent much like the current mission system. Agents would not be located in stations, but placed in location more like the Event or Incursion Agents.

Agent would have level 1 – 4 bounties. Levels could be determined by the lethality of the pilot. An algorithm that calculate the pilots rate of success in PVP and the amount of fights. Pilots with very low success or PVP fights would be lowest level. Pilots with high success and low number of fights would be tier2. Pilots with high success and a large amount of experience would be tier 4. The number of fights rating would relative to the average amount PVP of all active pilot accounts.

Pilot A would report to a bounty agent and request an assignment. The agent would randomly pull a bountied pilots name from the database. Only restriction would be distance in jumps from the agent. No one wants to fly 30 jumps to chase someone down. The restriction could be picked by the pilot (i.e. 1 – 5 jumps, 1 – 15 jumps) or be predetermined. This will keep pilots from attempting to cherry pick the bounties of their friends.

Once the bounty assignment is accepted both the hunter and the hunted will receive journal updates. The hunted will be notified that there is an active bounty issued for them. Bounties should have an expiration time just like missions. The hunter will receive a notification of where the pilot is currently located, their name, and the expiration date of the bounty.

If the hunter and the hunted pilot are in the same system, they will be marked in local chat just as if they were at war. This will allow the pilot being hunted to decide if they want to logoff and wait it out or take their chances, much like a War Dec between two Corporations. While engaged in combat it would follow most of the same rules as a duel. An attack by either pilot will be allowed without Concord interference. Bounty hunting would be a one -on-one PVP event until loss of ship or podded. Bounty can be considered complete at the destruction of ship with a “cool down timer” that would allow for combat to continue for a set amount of time allowing the surviving pilot to decide (those details could be debated), or there could be a bonus for podding. Call it hunter/hunted bonus given to whichever pilot survives.

Bounty payouts would be equal to the average market price of the bountied pilots lost ship. So if Pilot X has a 300 mil ISK bounty, and Pilot A takes the bounty assignment for Pilot X and destroys Pilot X in an Ibis the hunter will only receive the amount of the Ibis and that same amount will be removed from the total bounty. If Pilot X is flying a Fleet Issue Typhoon and Pilot A is successful, then payout and remaining bounty is affected accordingly. Only the pilot with the assignment can receive payment and can choose to share the payout, if fleeted, same as when mission running. This should solve the issue of someone having their Corp mate blow them up in a cheap non fitted ship and splitting the ISK. For the bounty to be removed a pilot would have to an amount of ships equivalent to the bounty balance of the bounty to pilots with active bounty assignments.

Bounty hunting pilots would only be able to decline a certain number of assignments over a given amount of time. This could help reduce the ability for pilot to continuously decline mission with an alt until they landed on one of their own characters. A hunter will also not be issued bounties for pilots who are members of their own Corp or Alliance.

Another concern is that being able to freely attack freighters in High Sec could be disastrous. The idea being that pilots could place bounties on freighter pilots, take the bounty assignment, and pop freighters at will. With the bounty assignments being generated randomly the likely hood of one Pilot or Corp being able to target another is very low. This could also be addressed by making the bounty hunting of freighters in Hi Sec not allowed.

Would it be an acceptable move to use the same mechanics as when 2 pilots whose Corps are at war run across each other? There probably is something that I am misunderstanding, but The last time my Corp was War Dec'd I got blown out of my Tyara leaving Jita. Concord didn't care.. cause we were at war. Couldn't the same exception be made for the bounty hunter, but only for the bounty that they a currently trying to complete. So basically a mini war between the bounty hunter and the hunted.