Pay off your fines

[Amaranth]

How often have you scooped a few cargopods from a pirate you have taken out, that contain contraband and you forget to sell it at the next station, or even collided with another ship or nav buoy in proximity to the station and you get 'offender' next to your name? This of course makes your existence a bit less safe and limits you opportunities for some missions. These are offenses that are the Ooniverse equivalent of getting a speeding ticket or driving without due care and attention - like you have been careless but not behaving like an outlaw. Would it be possible to bring up a screen when docking as an offender (but not fugutive) that gives the option to pay off a fine for this and clear your name instantly. The level of the fine should be set that it would not be worthwhile to profit from crime, so blasting innocent traders, jump a couple of times to lose fugitive status and paying off once you have dropped to 'offender' would not be worthwhile.

[Thargoid]

For low level offenses this already happens.

And for more serious offenses, there are various OXPs which give options, for a fee. Anarchies for example, iirc.

[snork]

I only ever tried the docking clearance = ON for a very short time.

The problem I have with fines is that in the beginning of the game they are (were) too high, and later in the game almost any fine is neglectable.

[SandJ]

How often have you scooped a few cargopods from a pirate you have taken out, that contain contraband and you forget to sell it at the next station and you get 'offender' next to your name?

Every minute of every hour of every day magistrates courts hear people say "I was looking after it for a mate and I forgot I had it" or "It was only a bit of weed and it's not mine anyway" or "I bought it off a bloke in the pub, I didn't know it was stolen".

The law is the law. Space is full of pirates, smugglers and aliens so GalCop has enough to do without dealing with errant traders. Why should you be exempt from justice?

Would it be possible to bring up a screen when docking as an offender (but not fugutive) that gives the option to pay off a fine for this and clear your name instantly?

So freedom and innocence can be bought? Who do you think you are that you are above the law? A British MP?

The level of the fine should be set that it would not be worthwhile to profit from crime

Fines being not a fixed number of credits, but a %age of your net worth? Ouch! As in your bank balance + value of ship's hold x a %age based on badness rating? Sounds like a .OXP in the making...

[Micha]

The level of the fine should be set that it would not be worthwhile to profit from crime

Fines being not a fixed number of credits, but a %age of your net worth? Ouch!

Why a %age of net worth? That's silly - it doesn't matter whether I'm a dole-bludger or a banker, if I park my car illegally I get the same fine.

Just make the fine sufficient to make whatever you did not worthwhile (eg, smuggling narcotics, make the fine double the value of the narcotics). So while the fine might be negligable if you have enough money, it still doesn't make that particular transaction profitable - hence no point in you doing it unless you think you have a reasonable chance of getting away with it.

[DaddyHoggy]

The level of the fine should be set that it would not be worthwhile to profit from crime

Fines being not a fixed number of credits, but a %age of your net worth? Ouch!

Why a %age of net worth? That's silly - it doesn't matter whether I'm a dole-bludger or a banker, if I park my car illegally I get the same fine.

Just make the fine sufficient to make whatever you did not worthwhile (eg, smuggling narcotics, make the fine double the value of the narcotics). So while the fine might be negligable if you have enough money, it still doesn't make that particular transaction profitable - hence no point in you doing it unless you think you have a reasonable chance of getting away with it.

I mostly agree, but in Japan, for serious crimes - you can pay off the family of your victims (if you're wealthy) and have a (much) reduced jail sentence...

[Disembodied]

Why a %age of net worth? That's silly - it doesn't matter whether I'm a dole-bludger or a banker, if I park my car illegally I get the same fine.

One might argue that's because it's the rich who make the laws ... perhaps it would be better if a legal sanction had the same proportional impact on a lawbreaker, regardless of their personal wealth? If the point of a fine – of any legal sanction – is deterrence, then it's surely not sensible to allow the level of deterrence to drop just because the lawbreakers happen to be better off.

Leaving aside these dangerous social and political implications, though, in game terms I think it's a better idea if fines are proportional. It helps keep these aspects of the game real, and meaningful. I think these sorts of proportionalities would be good to have throughout the game, e.g. fuel costs should be proportional to cargo hold sizes, and equipment and maintenance costs should be proportional, at least in part, to factors such as top speed, number of energy banks, base recharge rate, manoeuvrability, base ship cost and so on.

Becoming rapidly overburdened with money is a problem in the game overall: swingeing fines for megarich commanders might be one way to help balance that out, and keep people interested in earning more.

[Switeck]

Fines should have upper limits.
Even the megarich cannot immediately replace the loss of 10,000 credits. There is no bank account that gives you interest, so the rate at which you can make credits peaks long before you're "rich". Unless you're flat-out cheating, the time it takes to make another 10,000 credits profit is non-trivial.

Similarly, the docking fines for skipping the docking queue for instance are stupidly high.

[Disembodied]

Fines should have upper limits.
Even the megarich cannot immediately replace the loss of 10,000 credits. There is no bank account that gives you interest, so the rate at which you can make credits peaks long before you're "rich". Unless you're flat-out cheating, the time it takes to make another 10,000 credits profit is non-trivial.

Similarly, the docking fines for skipping the docking queue for instance are stupidly high.

But if the loss of 10,000 credits fundamentally doesn't matter, because there's nothing for the megarich commander to save up for or spend it on, then the fact that it'll take time to make back again doesn't matter either. Of course, partly this problem is because the player's effective running costs drop: to begin with, there's fuel and cargo to buy, and money to be put aside for the next upgrade. Once those upgrades are all bought, though, there's not much use for money. It comes in faster than it can be spent.

I take the point, though, that fines are supposed to be minor punishments: I'd suggest a top level of, say, 5% of the player's cash. Not enough to impoverish the player (unless they keep on doing what they're not supposed to be doing), but enough to make them sit up and take notice. 5Cr for a starting Jameson, 50,000Cr for a millionaire. If you can't face the fine, don't do the crime!

[snork]

... perhaps it would be better if a legal sanction had the same proportional impact on a lawbreaker, regardless of their personal wealth?

We have that in reality - fines for small offences (say speeding) are set to a fix amount, but fines sentenced by a court for real crimes are depending on your income.
You get sentenced to a fine of say 30 day rates, how high a day's rate is is then calculated from your income.


In-game however I have no idea how it could be handled.
I mean practically every beginner player will overlook a scooped slave sooner or later, and I think a fine should not force a player to reload an earlier savegame.

Would it be possible to bring up a screen when docking as an offender (but not fugutive) that gives the option to pay off a fine for this and clear your name instantly. The level of the fine should be set that it would not be worthwhile to profit from crime, so blasting innocent traders, jump a couple of times to lose fugitive status and paying off once you have dropped to 'offender' would not be worthwhile.

How about if fines are issued not in $$ but in time - either it is real detention, or it is just that they lock your ship away until they have decided your case.
Amount of time maybe depending on the players bounty ?

Missing time should not affect the beginner too much, but for the advanced player with contracts or missions to fulfill in time, such time-fine could really annoy.

I'd suggest a top level of, say, 5% of the player's cash

Please not cash, imagine you are saving up for an expensive ship and have a million credits in your vault - @ 5% a fine would be 50.000,- .
Then next stop you buy that ship of your dreams and the fine for the same offence would then be 50,- .

Though this seems to be the way that e.g. French police treats tourist offenders, where fines = all your cash (but minimum so-and-so).

[Cody]

It comes in faster than it can be spent.

That ain't always the case! Certain styles of play lead to large and frequent repair bills, and ones net worth may decrease steadily over time (as mine slowly is).

[Disembodied]

Perhaps what we need is a slightly more sophisticated criminal record – one which remembers past transgressions and counts accordingly. That way a first offence ("I'm sorry, Officer, I had no idea there was still a cargo canister of slaves in the hold: I thought the banging was the dodgy plumbing in the ship's head") would result in a small fixed penalty, or just being made to clean up after the Craboids, but by the third or fourth time it happens ("No! Really? Crazy Purple WooHoo Weed is a narcotic? I'm shocked. Shocked. I thought it was ... um ... textiles?") you might be facing something rather more stringent.

[another_commander]

Similarly, the docking fines for skipping the docking queue for instance are stupidly high.

The docking fines for landing without permit are currently 5% of the commander's balance, with a ceiling of 5,000Cr. Meaning, a commander with 100Cr who skipped the queue will be fined only 5Cr. Why is that stupidly high and, more importantly, what would you recommend as a less stupid fines scheme?

[Switeck]

If you have 100,000 credits...not even enough to buy a decent replacement ship for the Cobra 3...5,000 credits for missing the docking queue is painful. Net worth isn't just liquid credits, but if the fine is based on the liquid credits then being caught right before you can buy another ship will be doubly painful. Even 1,000 credits would wipe out about the amount I earn from 1 jump on a Cobra 3. It's a parking ticket not a bank robbery. Cap it at 1,000 credits.

Maybe offer a "clean the docking bay/station for a day" (like being a minor offender sometimes does) as well as a smaller fine.

If you want more realism, there could always be docking fees -- and more for larger ships. (About 10 credits or so for a Cobra 3?) Bad dockings could increase that.
Take a survey on it.

Stations could also "tax" transactions. Even just 0.1 credits per buy/sell would generate considerable additional income for the station. More than 1 credit/transaction would be nasty. Pirates could just be trying to avoid the taxes.

As for bounties, there is a huge difference between how NPC's bounties are handled and how the player's are. I'd prefer a system remembers when I shot the place up, destroying lots of traders. Infamy is there for a reason!
The top 10 systems where you got a high bounty could give you back almost that bounty (which decays much slower than regular bounty) if you ever go back to them. It'd be somewhat similar to how Flight Log works already, remembering bounty amount instead of credits.