RFC: Bounties and Galcop law

[Commander McLane]

The relation between the price of a hardhead and a typical bounty is of course a valid one. Using hardhead(s) for collecting only bounty money is obviously not economically viable. I admit that I tend to underestimate this as a factor, because I never use any missiles.

However, as has also correctly be said, the pure bounty is not the only incentive, and not even the only financial gain to be had from bounty hunting. Just like Disembodied, I find it a lucrative business. Combined with a little piracy, it certainly more than matches the milkrun-trader career path.

The usual computer-fur milkruns in a Cobby III with large cargo bay get you an income of roughly 1000 Cr. per jump (that's pure income from 35t multiplied with an average price difference of 30 Cr.). For me that's the benchmark, other career paths with other types of income have to be seen in a relation to these 1000 Cr. per jump. Killing ten pirates with an average bounty of 30 Cr. gives you 300 Cr. And then you have your 35t cargo hold, which you can fill with their loot (and some additional loot from unsuspecting traders, if you're not above some piracy; or above some cargo collecting after other people's fights). Let's say that you manage to scoop 20 pods per jump. Then the average value of each pod only needs to be 35Cr. in order to make 700 Cr. from selling them all. You have already broken equal with your theoretical average milkrun income. And it's very easy to make much more from selling your loot.

Therefore I'd argue that bounties above the reasonable threshold are not needed in order to give you a decent income. You already get a decent income with bounties of 30Cr. each.

[Switeck]

Well, Thargoid warships are a default 100 credit bounty...so they're a good bounty benchmark to set pirates against. Few pirate ships are as tough/fast as a Thargoid warship! If anything, it's odd that Thargons are worth 50 credits bounty. But once there's a swarm of them eating on you, it certainly makes for a tough fight if your ship's too slow to run away from them!

About the only core game pirate ship that might merit a 100 credit bounty is the "Blackdog" Python, because it typically has 2 escorts to increase the risk of facing it. None of the other big freighter-type ships are pirates in the core game. Only OXPs make them pirates. My Switeck's Shipping OXP and Tough Guys OXP in particular make Boa 2 pirates that are particularly tough nuts to crack. The game auto-assigns a bounty to them, but it's not as high as they merit. Something that could survive the (now-gone) Energy Bomb, has at least front+rear beam lasers, typically has 4 escorts, and carries 5 missiles can be about as much trouble as a Thargoid interstellar ambush in core Oolite.

[m4r35n357]

the (now-gone) Energy Bomb

heh, forgotten maybe, but not gone

[Commander McLane]

Well, Thargoid warships are a default 100 credit bounty...so they're a good bounty benchmark to set pirates against. Few pirate ships are as tough/fast as a Thargoid warship! If anything, it's odd that Thargons are worth 50 credits bounty. But once there's a swarm of them eating on you, it certainly makes for a tough fight if your ship's too slow to run away from them!

I agree that the Thargon bounty is too high in relation to the normal range.

[cim]

The strength of the bitwise OR (setting an upper limit) is also its limitation: you get to the upper limit immediately, especially if it's OR (2^n)-1. So I think that some thoughts about a new algorithm that would (a) set an upper limit and (b) approach that limit in more than one step would be well spent. My main interest, though, would be to do away with the infinite bounty increases, and cap the bounties.

A usable approach with bitwise OR then is to slightly randomise the amount of the bounty, with the upper end of the range at or slightly over cap/2.
Looking back at the original letters, and assuming that I remove H, N and P since no-one objects to that so far:
- killing cops (M) could stay at OR:64. Is and should be instant Fugitive status, and then stacks neatly with the other crimes.
- attacking cops (A, B) could become OR:5-20. Keep doing it and you'll get up to 31 fairly quickly, but a single stray laser shot is probably something they'll just fine you for.
- "piracy" (G) could also become OR: 5-20 (or OR: 10-40 if the station spots you). Would require a slight tweak to the police/station AIs, but that's okay.
- distress call (C) and attacking the main station (E) are probably okay as they are.

I agree that the Thargon bounty is too high in relation to the normal range.

I think it makes sense, both "politically" and in gameplay terms, for live Thargons to have that sort of bounty. Inactive Thargons are exempt from the usual cargo rules of "not a kill" and "10% normal bounty" - I'm not sure why.

[Shipbuilder]

Well, Thargoid warships are a default 100 credit bounty...so they're a good bounty benchmark to set pirates against. Few pirate ships are as tough/fast as a Thargoid warship! If anything, it's odd that Thargons are worth 50 credits bounty. But once there's a swarm of them eating on you, it certainly makes for a tough fight if your ship's too slow to run away from them!

I agree that the Thargon bounty is too high in relation to the normal range.

How is the Thargoid warships given a default 100 credit bounty ? I have tried to set a default bounty for the cylon raider I released but have not been able to manage this. Perhaps I could use the method used to set a default bounty for the Thargoid warship.

I also feel that the bounty for an inactive Thargon is too high. The tactic of going in hard and destroying the warship quickly let's you simply mop up the Thargons and collect a substantial bounty for effectively destroying a single ship !

[Switeck]

How is the Thargoid warships given a default 100 credit bounty ? I have tried to set a default bounty for the cylon raider I released but have not been able to manage this. Perhaps I could use the method used to set a default bounty for the Thargoid warship.

I also feel that the bounty for an inactive Thargon is too high. The tactic of going in hard and destroying the warship quickly let's you simply mop up the Thargons and collect a substantial bounty for effectively destroying a single ship !

Inside the shipdata.plist for Oolite:

"thargoid" =
{
aft_eject_position = "0.0 0.0 -20.5";
aft_weapon_type = "WEAPON_THARGOID_LASER";
ai_type = "thargoidAI.plist";
bounty = 100;

There's the 100 credit default bounty.

While destroying a Thargoid warship will cause its Thargons to go briefly passive, if other Thargoid warships are in range they will soon re-attack. Thargons in my Switeck's Shipping OXP can even follow the Thargoids around if there's nothing nearby for them to attack. In regular Oolite, Thargons just go idle if nothing left to attack while Thargoids wander off.

[Commander McLane]

How is the Thargoid warships given a default 100 credit bounty?

By merit of being Thargoid warships. It comes with the scan class, I believe.

It's one of the reasons why there is this Developer Note in the scan_class documentation:

Oolite uses scan_class internally to determine the behaviour of some ships (particularly with regard to who may shoot whom without incurring legal penalties). Bear this in mind and don't allocate CLASS_POLICE or CLASS_THARGOID to ships lightly!

[cim]

How is the Thargoid warships given a default 100 credit bounty?

By merit of being Thargoid warships. It comes with the scan class, I believe.

Close. Thargoid warships (i.e. role="thargoid") added by the system (or interstellar space) populator will be given a bounty of 100, ignoring the (as it happens, identical) shipdata bounty, and have their scan class forced to CLASS_THARGOID.

Thargoid warships and other CLASS_THARGOIDs added by other means use the bounty from shipdata, unless they're being added in a role which overrides the bounty.

[Shipbuilder]

How is the Thargoid warships given a default 100 credit bounty?

By merit of being Thargoid warships. It comes with the scan class, I believe.

Close. Thargoid warships (i.e. role="thargoid") added by the system (or interstellar space) populator will be given a bounty of 100, ignoring the (as it happens, identical) shipdata bounty, and have their scan class forced to CLASS_THARGOID.

Thargoid warships and other CLASS_THARGOIDs added by other means use the bounty from shipdata, unless they're being added in a role which overrides the bounty.

Thanks for the clarification.

[JensAyton]

Inactive Thargons are exempt from the usual cargo rules of "not a kill" and "10% normal bounty" - I'm not sure why.

As I recall, Giles made them immune because people complained.

[Fatleaf]

As I recall, Giles made them immune because people complained.

We can be a fickle lot, can't we

But Personally thinking I would like them not to count as a kill

[Switeck]

How is the Thargoid warships given a default 100 credit bounty?

By merit of being Thargoid warships. It comes with the scan class, I believe.

Close. Thargoid warships (i.e. role="thargoid") added by the system (or interstellar space) populator will be given a bounty of 100, ignoring the (as it happens, identical) shipdata bounty, and have their scan class forced to CLASS_THARGOID.

Thargoid warships and other CLASS_THARGOIDs added by other means use the bounty from shipdata, unless they're being added in a role which overrides the bounty.

That would be an annoyance for all Thargoids to be 100 credits if auto-spawned in interstellar space. 100 credit Thargoid Battleship for instance. Just OUCH! May/can that be changed to use the shipdata.plist bounty value, whatever it may be? ...Or to use whatever formula pirates get for bounty if no bounty is defined.

[Shipbuilder]

Would it not be sensible to have the bounty set in the shipdata.plist override automatically created bounties?

That way, when putting oxp’s together, you could make no mention of a bounty in the shipdata.plist if you were happy for the bounty to be generated using the systems within Oolite. However if you specifically wanted a particular bounty you could define that easily in the plist.

[cim]

Would it not be sensible to have the bounty set in the shipdata.plist override automatically created bounties?

The core game - and therefore many OXPs - uses the same ship definition for more than one of these four built-in roles: hunter, trader, pirate, escort. (also other roles, but let's keep this simple)
e.g. roles = "hunter pirate trader hermit-ship sunskim-trader cobra3-alternate"; for the cobra3-alternate
or roles = "escort hunter"; for the sidewinder-escort

Hunters and traders are always Clean, in the core game.
Pirates are always Offenders or Fugitives, but with a random bounty (so it's not always 10 credits for a Sidewinder, but 45 for a Python)
Escorts may be either Clean or Offender, depending on what they're escorting.

The system populator for those roles therefore has to override the specified bounty, and changing this now would break a lot of existing ship OXPs.

If you need a ship to have a specific bounty in all circumstances, you can set this in the shipSpawned handler of its ship script. If you need a ship to have a specific bounty in a specific circumstance, give it a role which is not used by core Oolite, spawn it as that role, and the shipdata bounty will be used.