Oolite Bulletins

Following this little slightly embarrassing exchange, I'd like to suggest that perhaps consideration should be given to incorporating the functionality of the  BountyStatus OXP into the core game (always assuming Thargoid is agreeable, of course!).. opinions?

Diziet Sma wrote:

Following this little slightly embarrassing exchange, I'd like to suggest that perhaps consideration should be given to incorporating the functionality of the BountyStatus OXP into the core game (always assuming Thargoid is agreeable, of course!).. opinions?

It's an interesting thought, although it's maybe worth considering if we want to attach a precise number on to everything. Then again, unlike (say) your UPS rating, a bounty is very much a numerical function ...

Might it also be worth thinking about just how the player-bounty works? At the moment, it's the number of jumps, I think. Would it be possible to add an element of distance, too? So that a player might find their bounty going back up again, if they jump back towards the scene of their crime?

Of course, this would mean - for less well-behaved players - the game having to hold records of numerous separate crimes, which would all decay at various different rates. But there could be a lid put on this, quite easily: an upper level of crime committed in any one galaxy, after which the player triggers some wider response, and they jump from being a local nogoodnik to notorious interplanetary criminal.

Disembodied wrote:

Might it also be worth thinking about just how the player-bounty works? At the moment, it's the number of jumps, I think. Would it be possible to add an element of distance, too? So that a player might find their bounty going back up again, if they jump back towards the scene of their crime?

Of course, this would mean - for less well-behaved players - the game having to hold records of numerous separate crimes, which would all decay at various different rates. But there could be a lid put on this, quite easily: an upper level of crime committed in any one galaxy, after which the player triggers some wider response, and they jump from being a local nogoodnik to notorious interplanetary criminal.

Sounds great! And the highest ranking would then be intergalactic criminal if you managed to achieve this feat in all 8

Disembodied wrote:

At the moment, it's the number of jumps, I think.

Yep - one's bounty halves with each jump (and is wiped completely by a gal-jump).

Disembodied wrote:

Would it be possible to add an element of distance, too?

Interesting idea... hmm.

Disembodied wrote:

notorious interplanetary criminal.

Been there, done that - used the t-shirt as an oily rag!

<chuckles>
We could have 'Offenders' Guild' rankings like the Elite ranks only different.
Harmless
A bit naughty
Naughty
Not very nice
Not at all nice
Bad
Very bad
Wicked
Evil

Cody wrote:

Disembodied wrote:

At the moment, it's the number of jumps, I think.

Yep - one's bounty halves with each jump

That's what I thought ... it seems a bit basic, though. It means that one can wipe out all record of a crime within a few short hours, just by jumping back and forth between two close systems - even if the crime was committed in one of those systems.

For practical reasons, time would have to be an element in the Co-op's criminal amnesia, but a distance modifier might make things more interesting. The baseline could be something like, the bounty drops by 50% for every 24 (48?) hours elapsed since the crime was committed, but the bounty itself could have a modifier applied based on where the offence took place – something like 4x in the actual system; 3x one jump away; and 2x two jumps away.

It's potentially quite a big change: rather than just having one criminal rating, the game would have to record where each offence was committed. Perhaps there could be a finite number of "active crimes" available: if the player fills them all up - if they have active bounties from 5(?) different crimes at any one time - they become a higher grade of criminal, with an across-the-map bounty which will take a lot of time and effort (or a gal-jump) to get rid of.

Disembodied wrote:

It means that one can wipe out all record of a crime within a few short hours, just by jumping back and forth between two close systems...

That is an exploit, in my opinion - one which I've tried hard to avoid using during my long career as a contrabandista.

I quite like the idea of the game maintaining a list of crimes. That would also permit to have crimes of different severity (e.g. shooting at a police viper vs. destroying one vs. smuggling contraband) with different time to clear. Homicide would potentially never clear in the system where it was committed while smuggling offenses could be forgotten soon.

Cody wrote:

Disembodied wrote:

It means that one can wipe out all record of a crime within a few short hours, just by jumping back and forth between two close systems...

That is an exploit, in my opinion - one which I've tried hard to avoid using during my long career as a contrabandista.

It definitely is an exploit, especially if players do it on one tank of fuel! It's maybe a good argument for making bounty erosion dependent on time (and distance?), rather than the number of jumps.

maik wrote:

I quite like the idea of the game maintaining a list of crimes. That would also permit to have crimes of different severity (e.g. shooting at a police viper vs. destroying one vs. smuggling contraband) with different time to clear. Homicide would potentially never clear in the system where it was committed while smuggling offenses could be forgotten soon.

That's an idea, too - a higher-resolution criminal system!

maik wrote:

Homicide would potentially never clear in the system where it was committed

I do think it should eventually clear.. GalCop do treat it more as an economic crime than a moral one..

Diziet Sma wrote:

maik wrote:

Homicide would potentially never clear in the system where it was committed

I do think it should eventually clear.. GalCop do treat it more as an economic crime than a moral one..

Maybe it could depend on system type: in anarchies no one cares, democracies have high but eventually finite times, and feudal systems never clear killings because it is taken as a family matter...

That's an interesting idea..

maik wrote:

Maybe it could depend on system type: in anarchies no one cares, democracies have high but eventually finite times, and feudal systems never clear killings because it is taken as a family matter...

Yes, interesting ... but it might get tricky: economic crimes might be regarded more harshly in Communist worlds. Or in Corporate States it might depend on how rich you are, or how rich your victims are. Or it could be cultural: one planet might see piracy as a form of high spirits, worthy of a fine, but regard whistling on a Tuesday as a grotesque crime deserving instant death.

Too many variables might make things very muddy, though, so it would be hard to tell what element was affecting your criminal standing at any one time. There are only really two categories of crime in the game: ones involving violence, and ones which don't involve violence. it might make sense to make violent crimes decay more slowly than the non-violent ones.

In general I agree, but muddiness is what you see in real life, too: compare legal systems across some countries on good old Earth and you will find plenty of examples where doing one thing here is perfectly acceptable while it might land you in jail elsewhere, give you a death penalty or just cost you a few bucks to clear...