Yes, lets totally ignore that no bounty system you come up with that is ran completely by players can be circumvented easily - and when I mean easily - your system is no better than CCP's current system because it doesn't stop anyone with a bounty on their head from being taken out by a friend in game.

Stuff

+100500. This needs to have been done years ago. Corp thieves and other miscreants that do not produce kill rights will just need a completely different system, is all, but this one will already fix numerous problems.

1. So assume I went ratting and got lowsec ganked by a concerted action of corp X. Unfortunately the killing blow was laid by their new recruit, so I only got kill rights on him. Will I be able to address my grievance against the entire corp X, instead of the new recruit? Or, I'm wrong, and I get kill rights on the entire list of people who shot me? (and if I don't, why not?) Can I bulk multiple killrights into one contract under a total bounty, then? Are there any good reasons not to allow this that you can think of?

2. Assume I'm a new player, mining in a cruiser while my support skills train and I'm doing my homework, (let's avoid discussion of how reckless this is, people just do it) until I abruptly get highsec ganked. Enraged, I go buy a PLEX and place a bounty on my killer. Only, I don't know which bounty hunter corps are reputable, and there's nobody nearby to tell me, and the killer has a conveniently advertised bounty hunter corp right in this station, which happily takes my contract and proceeds with laundering the money... So, how can this sort of thing be prevented?

I dont see any reason why not. It would create more consequences for shooting at people illegally. I always like that.

I believe that the current corp landscape is plenty paranoid enough already, so the only solution that seems reasonable to me is to produce kill rights on everyone who shot the aggrieved party at all (and their logi!) and make it possible to bulk package them in a single bounty contract.

I'd been thinking on this a bit too but I had a slightly more... brutal and cruel approach in mind, which you may find possible to incorporate in yours.

The idea was to scatter bounties - if you have low standings with a faction/SOV holder, a bounty could be executed on your head.

As such, my almost 5.0 sec status would not prevent someone from being able to put a bounty on my head with a faction I was negative with - but only in that faction's SOV would I be a "no concord" fair target, though still "bountied" if killed in other space (gank style - but concord = sec status loss ...)

Also it would allow SOV groups to use the bounty system directly to place bounties on enemies heads - kind of a "contract fulfillment" gig where the funds are held "NPC" style until someone collects on it or it expires.

As such, you could be "wanted dead in all of highsec" via sec status or just "bountied in Amarr, Caldari (jita)" etc.. based upon your standings with a faction. As such, any bounty hunter could legally shoot you in that space - no concord, no GCC, etc. A "legal retaliation".

You could have various bounties in different sectors of space - "wanted" where someone could only collect the ones they had access to.

(wild west style - bounties in different states, cross the state line and the bounty is invalid but you could kill and go collect but you'd be violating another "sovereign state's territory" with all the potential repercussions of that.)

Build a skill tree for how many bounties you can go after, tie the sizes of them to faction standings and allow bounty hunting in a factions space to actually raise your standings with that faction. A "registered bounty hunters" style sub-profession.

Lots of potential for various uses and abuses. A bit less ... "kind" in its applications and it potentially takes "building/rebuilding standings" from "go ratting/mission running" to "go kill other players".

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I never really fleshed it out all the way but that's the general gist of it - allow bounties and bounty hunters to be setup very broadly and make it much more "EVE" like - not a two-edged sword but more a morningstar with lots of jagged spikes sticking out.

BUT, this good idea, like many others still needs to address the fundamental flaw with bounty hunting profession today, which is, how do you keep people from collecting on their own bounties.

Without a fix for this, no bounty hunting feature will work.

You obviously havn't read any of the thread. Stopping people from collecting their own bounties has been adressed, over and over and over.

Yeah, I have no time to read 9 pages of people ranting one way or another. Enlighten me, how? (or point out the page its on so as to spare me reading through pages of fluff) If you are referring to the 'simple' system, it said it only prevents BLUE or same alliance people from collecting bounty. Exactly how did it propose to prevents neut alts from collecting bounty on yourself? If it doesn't the system is useless. If I have a bounty on my head, I collect it myself with my alts until it is zero.

My only loss is the insurance premium on the ship.

There's an easy fix to bounty hunting.


Keep the current bounty system. Simple. But instead of people being about to see the bounties on their head deny everyone access to that knowledge. Nobody gets to see the bounty placed on their head.


Add a skillbook to become a bounty hunter. Allows you access to bounty hunting mission agents. Agent gives you a mission to hunt down a random person in your region with a bounty. The bounty hunter is not told the sum total of bounties placed on the wanted person's head, just that they have a bounty and that they need to die. Say a time limit of a month or so to complete the bounty. You also get specific bounty hunter locator agents. Perhaps special scanner probes, modules, etc. As you become a better trained bounty hunter, you get access to a Wanted List that lets you pick your bounties from a randomly generated list of bounties in your area.

The bounty hunter gets paid a baseline fee, eg the collective bounty placed on that persons head, for destroying the ship of said target, and additional bonus ISK if you pod them. This will encourage both small scale solo bounty hunting, but group bounty hunting as well.

There's an easy fix to bounty hunting.


Keep the current bounty system. Simple. But instead of people being about to see the bounties on their head deny everyone access to that knowledge. Nobody gets to see the bounty placed on their head.


Add a skillbook to become a bounty hunter. Allows you access to bounty hunting mission agents. Agent gives you a mission to hunt down a random person in your region with a bounty. The bounty hunter is not told the sum total of bounties placed on the wanted person's head, just that they have a bounty and that they need to die. Say a time limit of a month or so to complete the bounty. You also get specific bounty hunter locator agents. Perhaps special scanner probes, modules, etc. As you become a better trained bounty hunter, you get access to a Wanted List that lets you pick your bounties from a randomly generated list of bounties in your area.

The bounty hunter gets paid a baseline fee, eg the collective bounty placed on that persons head, for destroying the ship of said target, and additional bonus ISK if you pod them. This will encourage both small scale solo bounty hunting, but group bounty hunting as well.

Yeah, I have no time to read 9 pages of people ranting one way or another. Enlighten me, how? (or point out the page its on so as to spare me reading through pages of fluff) If you are referring to the 'simple' system, it said it only prevents BLUE or same alliance people from collecting bounty. Exactly how did it propose to prevents neut alts from collecting bounty on yourself? If it doesn't the system is useless. If I have a bounty on my head, I collect it myself with my alts until it is zero.

My only loss is the insurance premium on the ship.

+100500. This needs to have been done years ago. Corp thieves and other miscreants that do not produce kill rights will just need a completely different system, is all, but this one will already fix numerous problems.

Mind if I offer a tiny tweak though?

At the moment a bounty contract is created, and the kill rights are revoked from the aggrieved party, the kill right timer goes on hold until the contract is accepted by an eligible party. Should the contract be cancelled before acceptance, the kill rights revert to the original owner and the timer starts ticking again. This way, considerably more contracts will actually produce bounty hunting and there's no need to extend the kill rights timer too much to ensure the kill rights are used.

And a few questions:

1. So assume I went ratting and got lowsec ganked by a concerted action of corp X. Unfortunately the killing blow was laid by their new recruit, so I only got kill rights on him. Will I be able to address my grievance against the entire corp X, instead of the new recruit? Or, I'm wrong, and I get kill rights on the entire list of people who shot me? (and if I don't, why not?) Can I bulk multiple killrights into one contract under a total bounty, then? Are there any good reasons not to allow this that you can think of?

2. Assume I'm a new player, mining in a cruiser while my support skills train and I'm doing my homework, (let's avoid discussion of how reckless this is, people just do it) until I abruptly get highsec ganked. Enraged, I go buy a PLEX and place a bounty on my killer. Only, I don't know which bounty hunter corps are reputable, and there's nobody nearby to tell me, and the killer has a conveniently advertised bounty hunter corp right in this station, which happily takes my contract and proceeds with laundering the money... So, how can this sort of thing be prevented?