Oolite Bulletins

Disembodied wrote:

phkb wrote:

Pirates got an AI upgrade, allowing them to demand cargo instead of resolving everything through their lasers: maybe it's time we gave the Vipers another option too?

Perhaps the police, on discovering a combat involving Clean participants on both sides, could first issue a demand for all craft to stand down and to put their weapons offline: "You have ten seconds to comply", etc. Anyone failing to comply quickly enough is then tagged as an Offender, and could be subject to police attack. Ships who comply are then warned to leave the system or be subject to a fine on docking at the main station.

Maybe something like this:
- anyone landing a hit on a clean ship becomes an offender, or see their bounty increased
- anyone landing a hit on a non-clean ship gets a small decrease to their bounty (more for fugitives than for offenders). Destroying a non-clean ship decreases your own bounty by the amount proportional to the ship's bounty, instead of receiving it as credits.
- I think the Vipers assign higher priority to ships with higher bounty already, and I think that hitting a Viper puts a higher bounty on your head.
- Reverting an offender (fugitive: not sure) status by helping the cops would be nice. Perhaps by reaching a zero bounty + killing a fugitive.

Astrobe wrote:

Destroying a non-clean ship decreases your own bounty

Good idea, just award small amount, like -1 for offenders and -2 for fugitives. If the reward is large or too easy to get (like after a single hit) then reduce the worth of clean status. But an additional way to clean yourself would be good, even if no police nearby.

Norby wrote:

Astrobe wrote:

Destroying a non-clean ship decreases your own bounty

Good idea, just award small amount, like -1 for offenders and -2 for fugitives. If the reward is large or too easy to get (like after a single hit) then reduce the worth of clean status. But an additional way to clean yourself would be good, even if no police nearby.

Criminals can hunt down other criminals for a number of less than legal reasons...

Ross154 wrote:

Criminals can hunt down other criminals for a number of less than legal reasons...

True - but the result is fewer criminals. A pragmatic attitude would be to encourage crooks to fight each other, rather than prey on honest citizens.

Perhaps a reward system could be limited to Offenders only: if you're a Fugitive, no amount of "good works" is going to reduce your bounty.

Or there might be room for a third class of criminal: the Probationer. As a Probationer you're free from attack by Police or bounty-hunters, but you have to achieve a certain number of "good works" within a selected time-period. This could include very low points for destroying asteroids (breaking rocks/picking litter), higher points for clearing out criminals (but no bounty), and higher still for rescuing escape pods (but no reward). Probationers are monitored all the time, so effectively the police are watching everything you do: you can't get away with a little bit of piracy on the side when there are no Vipers around.

How about a free-will GalCop tracking device? If you land on a GalCop station with more bounty than last time then popup a mission screen and offer an equipment (also available in eq shop using "requires_not_clean"=yes;) which track your ship like police is nearby. So you get bounty if you do piracy anywhere but reduce it if you destroy bad boys and also at every certain flight times without doing anything illegal.
With this on board you can feel yourself as voluntary probationer when your goal is to reduce your bounty as fast as possible.

Disembodied wrote:

Ross154 wrote:

Criminals can hunt down other criminals for a number of less than legal reasons...

True - but the result is fewer criminals. A pragmatic attitude would be to encourage crooks to fight each other, rather than prey on honest citizens.

Consider also that an offender/fugitive doesn't want to give away his position to the police or even gather any attention from it, and that's what happens if killing a criminal he claims his 'reward'. If they do something 'good' from the point of view of the police, it doesn't mean that they should be rewarded, or that they do something 'good' from the point of view of legality, so that they should be rewarded for it.

Ross154 wrote:

Consider also that an offender/fugitive doesn't want to give away his position to the police or even gather any attention from it, and that's what happens if killing a criminal he claims his 'reward'. If they do something 'good' from the point of view of the police, it doesn't mean that they should be rewarded, or that they do something 'good' from the point of view of legality, so that they should be rewarded for it.

A good point - it would make more sense then for any legal credit to be given to probationers only. Maybe amnesties could be offered intermittently, giving a time window for players with criminal records to sign up as probationers and letting them "work off their debt to society".

I tried updating the oxp through the oxp manager and says download failed, even uninstalled and reinstalled, no success. Never happened before with bounty system oxp, always had the current version.

Thanks for the report. I must have messed something up. Twill be fixed anon.

[Edit]OK, should be fixed now. I hadn't updated the manifest.plist file to the new version number. I must have just done it in my head. Weird.

Version 0.1.13 has just been released, which fixes a couple of bugs, and one critical one. If you're using this OXP I'd recommend an update.

Version 0.2.0 has just been released. In this version:

• Added number of jumps to various mission screens.
• Code changes to handle future OXP integration.
• Scans performed by police or bounty hunters will be passed on to all ships in range that have the same class, to prevent spamming.
• Cleaned up overlay image.
• Converted offence dates to real dates (eg "25 Jan 3145");
• Security office now available on all GalCop-aligned stations, but is called the "Security Kiosk". No payments can be paid there.
• Updated license.

Version 0.3.0 has just been released. In this version:

• Added an appeals process, so the player can submit a request for minor (sev 1 or 2) crimes to be discarded.
• Further code changes to handle future OXP integration.
• Improvements to text layout of menu options containing distance and # jumps.
• Added the severity level to the fine details page.
• Removed debug message.

Version 0.3.1 is now available. In this version:

• Further code changes to handle integration with GalCop Most Wanted OXP.
• Fixed issue where using an escape was still clearing any bounty.
• Bug fixes.
• Code refactoring.

Version 0.3.3 is now available, which is mostly a bug fix version for a bug found by Rustem.

Version 0.4.0 is now available. In this version:

• The Warrant Scanner will now automatically continue scanning a ship that has only been partly scanned.
• The Warrant Scanner can now be set to automatically scan a ship as soon as it's targeted (controlled via Library).
• Eliminated need to keep array of scanned ships.
• Option to set course to a particular destination will be suppressed if that destination is on the player's currently plotted path.

Many thanks to rustem for the suggestions and bug reports.