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Author Topic: What controls bounty progression?  (Read 12079 times)

Alex_P

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What controls bounty progression?
« on: June 11, 2017, 01:33:19 PM »

I see the payoff/difficulty of the named-baddie bounties ratcheting up over time. Over the course of about a year it's gone from like 60-100k to 150-300k.

What's the mechanism behind this? Is it timed, based on my fleet size, based on previous bounty completion, or something else?

(I'm interested because it looks like bounty-fleet growth is outpacing my own fleet at this point. I'm playing a kinda-leisurely exploration game at the moment, but I like doing bounties on the side and it seems like I'm falling behind. So I'm wondering: am I racing the clock or just putting too many not-so-combat-worthy ships in my own fleet?)

I'm running a few mods, including Ship+Weapons Pack with the special bounties disabled in the INI file. I apologize in advance if this turns out to actually be a mod question in disguise.
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CrashToDesktop

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Re: What controls bounty progression?
« Reply #1 on: June 11, 2017, 01:43:08 PM »

Every two bounties you complete advances the bounties to a higher level.  It also takes player level into consideration.
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Alex_P

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Re: What controls bounty progression?
« Reply #2 on: June 12, 2017, 02:10:43 AM »

Cool, thanks!
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Sutopia

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Re: What controls bounty progression?
« Reply #3 on: June 12, 2017, 04:58:21 PM »

by the time I've added a couple of Lashers and another Wolf from slowly grinding system bounties
System bounty just *** for this version for it tanking your level real fast without that much of money compared to salvaging(industrial) playstyle.
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Dri

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Re: What controls bounty progression?
« Reply #4 on: June 12, 2017, 05:44:35 PM »

So let me get this straight here: Alex changed the way bounties work because players @ high level and with powerful fleets (that didn't touch bounties earlier for whatever reason) were complaining about having to fight weak bounties till they completed enough of them?

Really feels like robbing the poor (newbies) to feed the rich (veteran players), eh? I think it best to make things easier for new players, don't you? Bounties shouldn't be tied to level, or at least have only ONE bounty out of the five that scales with player level, so folks who aren't currently interested in bounties won't feel like they're falling behind if they gain levels outside of heavy combat.
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Alex_P

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Re: What controls bounty progression?
« Reply #5 on: June 12, 2017, 06:53:19 PM »

Now that you mention it, I think I would like a slight more "sandboxy"/"simulationist" approach, I suppose. Spawn a variety of bad guys and have the player choose who's worth going after. Right now it feels kind of odd that the bounties are so tailored (and yet not quite tailored truly, in the sense that I've got a rather middling fleet but the game will be like, "want to take on an Onslaught and two Eagles?") while most of the rest of the universe is an assorted grab-bag of challenges.

I'm willing to wait for that until the next major update introduces some more "endgame" stuff to do for players with big fancy fleets before I go really pushing for that, though.
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CrashToDesktop

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Re: What controls bounty progression?
« Reply #6 on: June 12, 2017, 07:07:54 PM »

So let me get this straight here: Alex changed the way bounties work because players @ high level and with powerful fleets (that didn't touch bounties earlier for whatever reason) were complaining about having to fight weak bounties till they completed enough of them?

Really feels like robbing the poor (newbies) to feed the rich (veteran players), eh? I think it best to make things easier for new players, don't you? Bounties shouldn't be tied to level, or at least have only ONE bounty out of the five that scales with player level, so folks who aren't currently interested in bounties won't feel like they're falling behind if they gain levels outside of heavy combat.
Pretty sure people were complaining it took too long to get up to higher bounty levels.
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Megas

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Re: What controls bounty progression?
« Reply #7 on: June 12, 2017, 07:11:21 PM »

So let me get this straight here: Alex changed the way bounties work because players @ high level and with powerful fleets (that didn't touch bounties earlier for whatever reason) were complaining about having to fight weak bounties till they completed enough of them?
Yes - level scaling done badly.

Until the latest hotfix, minimum bounty level was (character level / 5).  If you did the tutorial and/or fought individual pirate fleets until about level 10 or 15, then hunt for named bounties, you could be facing cruisers and much bigger fleets than yours for all of your named bounties, even if it is only your first or second.  In other words, bounties leveled up faster than you could.

For the latest hotfix, Alex tweaked it so that levels under 10 do not scale bounties.  I do not know the new formula, though.
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Alex

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Re: What controls bounty progression?
« Reply #8 on: June 12, 2017, 07:31:54 PM »

you could be facing cruisers and much bigger fleets than yours for all of your named bounties

That's not true, there's always going to be a level 0 bounty posted, unless you just did it, in which case a new one will be posted within a few days.

For the latest hotfix, Alex tweaked it so that levels under 10 do not scale bounties.  I do not know the new formula, though.

For levels over 10, it's (level - 10) / 3, rounded down. Note that it doesn't actually increase the internal bounty level, just replaces it for that bounty if the level-based value is higher.

Also, it's 2 completions per level only at the lowest levels. It goes all the way up to 6 completions to go from 9 to 10.
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Sutopia

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Re: What controls bounty progression?
« Reply #9 on: June 12, 2017, 07:51:20 PM »

So let me get this straight here: Alex changed the way bounties work because players @ high level and with powerful fleets (that didn't touch bounties earlier for whatever reason) were complaining about having to fight weak bounties till they completed enough of them?
Yes - level scaling done badly.

Until the latest hotfix, minimum bounty level was (character level / 5).  If you did the tutorial and/or fought individual pirate fleets until about level 10 or 15, then hunt for named bounties, you could be facing cruisers and much bigger fleets than yours for all of your named bounties, even if it is only your first or second.  In other words, bounties leveled up faster than you could.

For the latest hotfix, Alex tweaked it so that levels under 10 do not scale bounties.  I do not know the new formula, though.
Since the main complaint was about bounty not growing fast enough, why not just make bounty grow faster?
For instance, tweak the current "level growth" to "suggested level".
If you beated a bounty below you're player's level suggested, your bounty level grow 1 per fight, or even 2 per fight given the gap big enough.
After the suggested level, the bounty grow go back to normal.
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Alex

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Re: What controls bounty progression?
« Reply #10 on: June 12, 2017, 09:17:34 PM »

That's not a level 0, level 0 would be well under 100k reward. Possibly the one that's over was that?

Edit: looking at it, there's also some cases where if you a bounty and the bounty level goes up as a result, it might not actually post a lower one, hmm. So I'm not correct here - in some cases, it might take a few months to get a level 0 bounty again.
« Last Edit: June 12, 2017, 09:19:07 PM by Alex »
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Elijah

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Re: What controls bounty progression?
« Reply #11 on: June 13, 2017, 06:42:28 AM »

It feels quite gamey that bounty increases in difficulty based on player actions.

The game engine should just spawn a wide variety of bounties of all difficulties, and then the players should decide which ones they should go for, IMHO.
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Tacheyon

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Re: What controls bounty progression?
« Reply #12 on: June 13, 2017, 12:36:56 PM »

Elijah you just stated what I couldn't put into words for awhile now. The fact that the Bounties weren't more random with larger and smaller fleets and it feels like game play is pushing the players to ever increasing fleet sizes just to survive. It's less an open world and more arcade game.
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Midnight Kitsune

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Re: What controls bounty progression?
« Reply #13 on: June 13, 2017, 06:05:51 PM »

What I would do is keep 2 or 3 of both the smaller and larger bounties around (IE posted) while having 6 to 10 that grow with the player choices.
IE if the player stopped taking current or higher level fleets and started taking low level ones, the adjusting bounties would quickly scale down.
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heskey30

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Re: What controls bounty progression?
« Reply #14 on: June 13, 2017, 06:50:40 PM »

I agree that its odd that your average bounties scale with your level. The only way it would make sense is if someone was explicitly contacting you with a bounty meant for your skill level. Maybe if you develop contacts they can offer you the scaling bounties?
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