Oolite Bulletins

...and it is too easy


there are 3 kind of careers i could pursue: trader, bounty hunter, pirate.

as a trader i should be relatively safe and should make a decent living
as long as i stay away from dangerous worlds and forbidden stuff.

this is about right.

should i trade dope and guns to anarchys, it should make me more but
it should me more risky.

it doesnt really make me more, but it does affect my legal status.



as a bounty hunter, i should make a living shooting bad guys and
getting rewarded for it. what i scoop from them i a nice bonus.
this should make me more than trading but also bring more risk.

this is also about right (other than the abandoned ship bounty bug) but
not quite. of course it is more dangerous. when i fire at a pirate or
fellow bounty hunter, they tend to shoot back.
but.. trading makes me 1000 to 1500 cr. per run. i would have to
kill 30 pirates for that.
bounties should be higher. especially on fugitives. and esp. when
responding to a distress call.



as a pirate, i look for large cargo vessels. i shoot them and scoop their
cargo, which i then sell at a station. if the ship is escorted i kill them first.
(actually, i kill everything that mass locks me (no, not stations or
planets))
this should be really profitable but also really dangerous and potentially
expensive.

now this is not right at all.
it does make a fortune. _way_ more than trading. (i sell a lot but never
buy anything.) but it is not so dangerous (not more than bounty hunting)
and not expensive.

here is why:

i can kill anyone when there is no police around and it wont even affect
my legal status. this means i can be a pirate and still be clean.
it should affect my status whether police is around or not. evidence does
get registered anyhow, as it does add to my combat rating.

but even if it would.. being a fugitive doesn't make my life that much
harder. sure i have to dock manually.. ..big deal. sure police flash red
when i come close. and they shoot at me for a bit, but not nearly enough
to bother me... ...and what is to stop me from just killing them?

i am a pirate.
i am a cop killer.
police should hunt me down. convoy escorts should attack on sight.
yet they don't.

i am a fugitive... ...and its too easy.



i think the balance between trading, bounty hunting and piracy would
be better if bounties were higher so as to make bounty hunting more
rewarding and police and escorts be more aggressive towards fugitives.
also, bounties could be lower (or zero) when i'm a fugitive. sure its
unfair but as a fugitive i'm not likely to come over and complain.

Bountyhunting will become more rewarding with new hunting missions.



-I am not fast though (and very errorprone), so don't hold your breath.

As a fugitive, I would imagine there would be a bounty on your head and hence the 'badder' you are the more likely that you'll come across some highly tooled-up bounty hunters.

I propose that as well as passenger and freight missions there should be Bounty notices on particular hard-nuts that are known to hang round certain systems. Maybe you could receive updates on certain fugitive's positions as you get closer - say 'Wanted, Dead or Alive - Cr.5000 : Kathy Rindhoops has been spotted in the Lave-Diso-Leesti system'. When at Leesti say, a new message could arrive, 'That varmint Kathy Rindhoops has been hounding honest traders around Diso'. When at Diso a visit to a Rock hermit or space station could result in hints like 'Saw Kathy Rindhoops sun-skimming earlier' and passing Galcop ships/Space station authorities could give you a tracking device that plugs into your advanced space-compass - for a small administration fee at least.

Of course, other hard-bitten Bounty-hunters may be on YOUR trail - and even if you no longer have a fugitive rating, some local governments may have placed a bounty on your head for some misdemeanors that GalCop has forgiven you for. This would make piracy more of a challenge I believe or at least may prove an incentive to not hang around a particular system for too long (alternatively you could collect pictures of bounty notices on your own head for kudos).

Arexack_Heretic wrote:

Bountyhunting will become more rewarding with new hunting missions.

I didnt mean that bounty hunting is not rewaring enough, tho i like the idea
of high prizes on the über naughty, but rather that piracy is not dangerous enough.

It would seem logical that the more lucrative life should also be more
dangerous. Escorts could be more aggressive as soon as I start shooting their
siblings, not just the parent. The police fire some warning shots at best (worst?)
when they see me attack a convoy and tend to fly away when I fly towards them.

Having a bad legal status is not really a disadvantage. There should be
something to make me think twice before killing traders when police are around.

Take a look at the constrictor hunt etc mission and create your own (shorter!) bountyhunter missions.

Already hunters will attack you when you are a fugitive, less often when you are an offender. But admittedly those are random encounters and too easilly avoided.

I suggest spawning additional BH's when in fugitive state and having super-hunters triggered (difficulty scale according to rating!) that hound you, communicate and run to harrass you another time.
(The experimental pilot-AI's could be usefull in this respect)

-A few dedicated Bountyhunter Hermits, armed with a turret and full of hunters. High tech level shipyard. no minerals, but average prices for all goods.
(the BH-guild offers to transport and sell your goods for a cut of the profits)
Install an advanced space compass to locate the tracking signal.
Bountyhunter missions would be more generally available at these rocks.

(normal station: chance of mission offer 5%)
(BH-hermit: 25% chance of mission offer.)

HB missions/BH attacks level should be according to rating and perhaps we could use a reputation-system like the other contracts keep.

I think Arexack has the answer there. Create some abnormally powerful bounty hunter craft and spawn them according to legal status, kills and government type - I would have through hunters would steer clear of stable systems when plying their trade as there's too many police around.

In the longer term though, a contract system would definitely be the way to go -- this may be stepping on Frontier territory but we're already halfway there with the passenger and contract cargo market. The standard bounties offered by the police are OK but they'd need to be in the thousands to make a professional living out of them, and as a public service GalCop isn't made of money. Instead, it would be quite reasonable for a bunch of criminals to put up a hefty bounty for the murder of a rival gang member, or a consortium of traders to offer cash for the head of a notorious pirate.

I have been thinking about this....

A system to determine player rep:

My first system would be a universal_heat_rating regulated by legalStatus when hypering out.
(offender/fugitive +, clean -, lessthan 0 reset status to undefined.)

This could be abused by pirates predating in a single system
(as pirates are wont to do).
Thus we need a system to keep track of the local_heat.
(a pirate staying in a single system would build up quite a local reputation and hence generate heat)
I want to base this local_heat on the number of clean kills, it would be reset entering_witchspace and also upregulate the universal_heat.

Is there a way to recognise a clean-kill?
If not, I might have to resort to basing the heat-sytem on absolute number of kills in a solarsystem
(As the local mafia does not like freelance bountyhunters that much.
Similarly police prefer to do the bloodletting themselves.)

local_heat baselevel would be set to uni_heat upon entering a system.


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Universal_heat, combined with government level (and player-rating) determine the number (and class) of bountyhunters generated on system generation.
Local_heat determines the likelyhood of additional bountyhunters spawned while traversing the system or ambushes when launching from a station/hermit/behemoth.

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I also thought up a simple method of generating random hunter_missions.
edit: the method I thought up would be too random.
Unless I make missions available like: "we have a contract out on a guy who has been hanging around at %P, are you interested? Y/N"
this type would be a single trip and no A->B->C hunt.

In order to have a hunt, the planets need to be semi-fixed thus no longer random.

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I am thinking of having a grudge_meter installed on Gaundlet Security's ships, so that once a certain grudge level is reached, hunters ambush the player (randomly after exitingWS).
I cannot then use the same vessels as normally employed by GS, because that would lead to a hyperbolic increase in agression. How do I avoid this? hiring goons.
It would not be logical to reduce grudge_level when avenging ships are destroyed, maybe I should reduce grudge per revenge_ship generated. hmm...kill 1 GS-ship: add 2 to grudge

Grudge can build up untill conditions+random number are met, then:
Bountymission_activated: Addships: Gaundlet hired hunters/assasin, lower grudge by one per ship generated.

Maybe also lower grudge one per WS-jump made?

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QUESTIONS: (for Giles or anyone else who knows)

Is there a way to recognise a clean-kill?

How does the random name generation of contracts work and can OXP's tap into that resource?

Anyone who's bothered with any of my recent OXPs will notice that they've often been nasty NCPs of one hostile sort or another (there's no point making a dream ship, for youself, after all, since you'll never see it again, after you buy it )

But all my seriously nasty, slow, but manouvreable, ships like the snark, are designed to up the arms race against players who choose a piratical course of life. The down side of this, is that they don't have to install them, of course - but my reasoning is that at least they might provide a challenge to them, as they rampage across the galaxies, sucking up gems and platinums. This is assuming there's any honesty to their dishonesty, of course: but how many pilots gain "Elite" status on the basis of the 'Energy Bomb', I wonder?

One of my next ships, is a mobile gun turret (for escorting ships that are too small to ship them, themselves), called the Arkond. But even as I design this ship, I realise that those players who most need to be reigned in by the presence of a few Arkonds in their lives, will be the last to install them

Flying_Circus wrote:

One of my next ships, is a mobile gun turret (for escorting ships that are too small to ship them, themselves), called the Arkond.

BRING
IT
ON!

And I think your rating should reflect difficulty of kill, not just number. Taking out an iron-ass fugitive Bandersnatch (rated say Deadly - can we have their ratings not just ours?) in an unstable system should be worth more than taking out a naive little cargo ship on a well-worn run.

Trust me, I thought about that.
Ask murgh: I tried to get him to design elite assasins.

Thanks. Only just discovered this brilliant version of that game I expended large parts of my childhood on, so apt to get excitable with ideas I'm sure have all been thought of already! Sign of my addiction - come back from the pub in the early hours of Sunday morning - do I go to bed? Do I heck!

Yep. Guess there's been a few of us who have been 'guilty' of that!!

I also admit to having extended illness from work by a day so I could play...

CobraCommander wrote:

- can we have their ratings not just ours?

Possibly we can soon, Giles has been working on a pilotAI.plist for interesting individual NPC pilots.

Request for slavelabour performed:

I need someone with too much time on his/her hands and acces to the ship-charts and planet numbers.

THE WORK:
To seperate the star-charts into small groups of stars.
I suggest to divide each galaxy into 8 squares: list the planet-numbers of the stars in them.
select 5-10 scattered planets per square.

For added flexibility groups centered around the 3 places where the corners of these squares meet.

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Using these numbers, we can randomly generate missions staring from a random cluster, redirect to other random stars in the same cluster and eventually find the Bountyhunt-victim at a given star in the same area.
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It is a whole lot more work, but I think it would be worth it.
Better than having to chase a random (d255) planet number series of hints around the galaxy for a single kill.

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edit: I'm busy grouping the Gal0 planets, but that still leaves 7 others for volunteers.
If anyone has a nice automatic way to cluster planets, I'd welcome it: doing it by hand is a *U*