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.