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[Gwyvern]

This is a bit of a gripe I've had for a while, and it was...slightly addressed with the update to 0.91, but the way bounties scale is way out of wack.

Essentially, what we have right now, is a bounty system that scales vaguely linearly with what I assume to be the player's level, which is fine as long as any given campaign goes smoothly and the player never makes mistakes, or savescums heavily when they do.

The problem happens when you do make a mistake, in my current playthrough I have fleetwiped twice now, and I kind of like the game when it is forcing you to adapt to unforseen circumstances, so I tend not to revert my save when such things happen, and with the tease of story points and the lingering ironman mode, I get the impression that at some point, this is how you are supposed to play the game, bask in the successes, and roll with the punches.

This is where the issues with a level-scaling bounty system come into play, as right now, after my second fleet wipe, followed by a cycle-long grind to get my ducks back in a row, the bounty board currently looks like this.



and it has prettymuch always looked like some form of that since my first fleetwipe. The moment you are set back in a campaign, bounties (outside of the system bounties of course) become totally blocked off as a means of earning income, because the system seems quite clearly geared to always provide bounties based on your level, with a single, bottom tier bounty that doesn't really pay you enough to get back on your feet in a reasonable length of time, moreover, all the destroyer/cruiser fights have all but disappeared from the board, fleets either consist of a few frigates, or contain multiple capital ships with VERY few exceptions, which poses a problem from to fronts for my 2 cruiser/ smattering of destroyers fleet.

My issue is only half that this makes it difficult to do bounties, the other half is that this seems so consistent as to be kind of gamey, where it doesn't have to be. I doubt crime lords are watching my career with bated breath, and fielding their fleets accordingly, it would be far more interesting if some cycles things were just like this, while other cycles there's nothing but rockstar rookies skulking about drawing the ire of the law, and of course, there should also be times when approachable bounties are plentiful, in perfect balance with the strength of your fleet...or well...vaguely balanced, like I said, variety here is key.

Also to clarify, this is mostly to do with targeted bounties, system bounties I really don't have anything to complain about except that they can be kind of short. Usually by the time I'm on the scene, either the AI has mostly cleared them up, or the pirates are still about but there's only a week or so left to cash in on it before its gone.

[Alex]

The bounty strength is based on the number of bounties you've completed, btw.

Let me make a note to make the "low" (pittance, in your image) bounty something a bit more relevant. Hmm. Maybe the bounty "tier" could also drop down by 1 each time you wipe...

[xenoargh]

Both ideas have some merit. 

Maybe just knock down the number of "completions" quite a bit when you wipe?  Granted, that means we can just go get that free shuttle at [REDACTED] and go get wiped twice in a row to get Bounties back to EZ, though.

[Gwyvern]

I feel like if the system just took the FP of your currently active fleet into account, as well as your level, with a stipulation for randomly varying the strength of the bounty up or down when the bounty is automatically generated, it would work fine.

I'd say the pittance isn't the big issue so much as the half, usually more, of the bounty board which is covered in bounties that I cant do, and since the player is the only one who does bounties at all, it begs the question of why they are being offered in such great numbers if the only bounty hunter in the sector cant do them.

And there isn't a reason that one needs to worry about resetting bounties to EZ, there are already mechanics in the game which organically discourage using large fleets to bully small bounties. You have to pay the fuel and supply cost to haul all those ships out there, and unless you're insane you won't be deploying them unless you want your reduced profit margin to disappear entirely.

[xenoargh]

See, I was more thinking about how low-level Bounties get much, much easier when you meet them with leveled-up Officers.

[Gwyvern]

To be honest I'm still only running one officer, but I suppose that makes sense.

This still works for my point that whatever is determining bounty difficulty needs to take more factors into account. In an ideal world you shouldn't even be able to tell that its scaling off of anything in particular, and is not steadily escalating in any particular direction.  but I'd settle for scaling that doesn't punish things not going according to plan.

[MesoTroniK]

I feel like if the system just took the FP of your currently active fleet into account, as well as your level, with a stipulation for randomly varying the strength of the bounty up or down when the bounty is automatically generated, it would work fine.

Would also need to factor in ships in storage, and while not sure of a good formula for this off the top of my head? In an ideal world also credits, and production capability if you have colonies. All this to prevent cheesing it by spoofing the rig into thinking you are weaker than you actually are.

But yea in the end, it would be best if the strength of bounties varies more as talked about across this thread and that has little to do with a better weighting system

[intrinsic_parity]

I think it would have to balanced around the most powerful 5 ships you own or something like that, although that sort of incentivizes the player to not take early cruisers/capitals. Not sure if that's really a good idea.

[Gwyvern]

To be honest it might be viable if each bounty's strength was totally randomly assigned, so that the board is never consistent, sometimes you need to seek other means of earning money, other times there are loads of bounties you can do.

Just a thought.

[xenoargh]

That might actually be best; it wouldn't suck if there were enough Bounties available.  Over here, I have that set quite a bit higher than Vanilla, which feels better, in general (player isn't waiting around for Things To Do after a successful chain of Bounty fights, which matters early on).

[intrinsic_parity]

I would also prefer if there were a variety of different bounty strengths available regardless of your fleet strength, as long as there were enough total so that there's almost always one or two that are doable/appropriate. It feels a lot more realistic and also makes for better gameplay IMO. Tweaking the number of bounties available and distribution of difficulty seems a lot easier that trying to tweak some scaling algorithm to be perfect also.

[Megas]

The OP can happen simply by not playing perfectly and/or not focus totally on combat.  Since 0.9.1a slowed acquisition of ships and colony upgrades (by making them more expensive), I had bounties scale faster than I could keep up.  Soon after, I discovered edge-camping to cheese some fights and make them go from impossible to hard.

By impossible, I mean taking enough losses that expenses paid to recover from losses exceeds profit from bounty.  Destroying the enemy fleet (just for money) while losing most of your own is effectively defeat since money will be lost after player replaces everything else lost.

[stormbringer951]

I would prefer something approaching the current bounty experience to still be in the game; being able to race an increasing bounty power curve is fun, and fighting ever-more-powerful fleets of varied pirates and deserters even after you've reached the payout cap is probably the most fun/RL time in the game.

It just shouldn't be mandatory for everyone; it's not fun if you're a new player who suddenly meets the drastic escalation in the current power curve, if you suffered a fleetwipe without a large amount of spares to just refleet and keep going, and if you're not concentrating on fleetbuilding to keep doing bounty hunting.

More bounties and more variance, and a way to skew the difficulty of fleets the bounty manager generates to suit personal preferences would be good (especially if the distribution is more proportional to changing the maxBounty size).



Another issue with bounties: they often end up in the same systems too often because of the way weighting is done. Even on large maps, the same few systems are weighted too highly.

With a bounty setting even slightly higher than vanilla, you can easily end up with 2 bounties in the same system, sometimes orbiting the same planet. I think the most I've ended up with is 3 in the same system, 2 at 1 planet, 1 at another. You also constantly come back to hunt down bounties at the same few systems over and over (when there are multiple similar stars in a constellation, it's pretty easy to guess which one the bounty is probably at because it's probably the same one the bounty was at every single other time in that constellation) because the weighting for picking some systems are very low and for other systems are extremely high.

Would also need to factor in ships in storage, and while not sure of a good formula for this off the top of my head? In an ideal world also credits, and production capability if you have colonies. All this to prevent cheesing it by spoofing the rig into thinking you are weaker than you actually are.

Same problem from the opposite side, if I want high level bounties to do later (hard fights are fun), optimal play would be to waste fuel/supplies hauling an excessively large fleet around to prevent the game from generating easier bounties.

[SafariJohn]

I think it might flow better if pure bounty hunting dried up around mid-strength and players were expected to go do something else if they wanted challenge/profit. For example, mercenary missions like "stop the strike fleet" or "run the blockade" where the difficulty doesn't strictly come from the enemy fleet's strength. Then have a few very high end bounties for the late game (a la S&W Pack's IBB bounties).

[MesoTroniK]

Stormbringer you misunderstood me, or I did a bad job explaining.

But what I think would be best is making the scaling system more nuanced while also adding a few lower-than-the-player tier and higher-than-the-player bounties semi-randomly that have nothing to do with the scaling system.