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Author Topic: Find fugitives (bounties) via dialog interaction  (Read 4102 times)

Gothars

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Find fugitives (bounties) via dialog interaction
« on: October 30, 2014, 10:27:24 AM »

I mentioned my unhappiness with the current bounty system in the release thread, and there were multiple suggestions for improvement. Well, here's mine:

Pirates with a bounty should have the ability to appear as traders or other civilian ships, i.e. they would appear grey instead of red and display a inconspicuous name and destination. You could only identify them by contacting them, demanding cooperation and performing an inspection (all via dialog options).

Of course  factions would not like it at all when you pester their fleets with unwarranted inspections, your standing would drop. So you had to be very careful whom you inspect... and how do you know whom to inspect? Well, you'd have look for suspicious behavior of fleets in the system with the bounty. A trader who's nowhere near its stated destination or origin? Suspicious. A bounty hunter who's just circling a remote planetoid? Suspicious. A miner with heavy combat ships? Suspicious. Higher bounty fleets would be better hidden, so there would be a difficulty curve.
If the fleet does feel superior in strength to you, it might not cooperate, though (depending on faction standing etc). Then you'd have to take your chances in an attack.

Of course the behavioral range for fugitives had to be expanded. Maybe the game could just generate a civilian fleet with some standard behavior, but label it with another behavior.

Nice thing is that the AI patrols already know how to perform inspections, so it would not be a "player only game". But hidden pirates would also not get wiped off the map within seconds (as happens now).

Beside offering range of interesting decisions in bounty hunting, player inspections could also be used for all kinds of other shenanigans. For example finding drugs on a smuggler and extort him, or perform not-deadly piracy by demanding cargo/credits from traders.

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Debido

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Re: Find fugitives (bounties) via dialog interaction
« Reply #1 on: October 30, 2014, 10:29:40 AM »

The initial problem I forsee right now is that you have to check the fleet name of each fleet or something like that - which is a bit grindy. There would need to be a fun or intuitive way...or some form of crumb trail that leads you to them.
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Megas

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Re: Find fugitives (bounties) via dialog interaction
« Reply #2 on: October 30, 2014, 10:55:56 AM »

As long as the current system remains, in addition to this, fine.  Even though bounties feel grind-y and menial after a while, at least it is easy - I can look up an event, search for a fleet, and blow off some steam.  Beats waiting for Hegemony defense fleets in previous versions.  Every time I take out one bounty fleet, two more take their place.
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Midnight Kitsune

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Re: Find fugitives (bounties) via dialog interaction
« Reply #3 on: October 30, 2014, 10:32:16 PM »

Along with being tedious, especially without a "trail" to follow, another problem I see with this is the rep hit that you take when you attack an ally is WAY too punishing for this. ONE mistake and you've gone from Cooperative ALLLL the way down to Hostile
Also I THINK I remember Alex saying that the scanning wouldn't be a player activity
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nomadic_leader

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Re: Find fugitives (bounties) via dialog interaction
« Reply #4 on: November 02, 2014, 12:46:50 PM »

Well, I think this could be interesting, even if I'm not sure about the exact implementaiton suggested here.

In any case, there really should be more ways to interact with other fleets besides just fighting them.

I'd really like to see specially generated fleets that you could hail and they would offer you specially scripted events/tasks/missions, etc.
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Ranakastrasz

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Re: Find fugitives (bounties) via dialog interaction
« Reply #5 on: November 02, 2014, 03:29:29 PM »

This would be good. At the very least, it would match up with the current pirate system, where plenty of them go under cover.
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StarSchulz

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Re: Find fugitives (bounties) via dialog interaction
« Reply #6 on: November 03, 2014, 10:56:53 PM »

Piracy without blowing things up!? what is this madness?!

Nah i actually think this would be a cool idea, being able to stop a cargo fleet and extort money in return for their [ possible ] safety is something that i would love to see in the game. you wouldn't loose as much standing as blowing them up, and if they think they can fight you they would just fight you instead. easier way of keeping standing with factions that you want to keep smuggling with. ( they probably would only give you like 10-40% of what the cargo is worth, or just give you the cargo ) everyone keeps their ships, everyone is happy. except for the traders. screw them.

Maybe you could ransom ships you board?

maybe... you could even... steal fuel from trade fleets with some sort of modified phase tanker leaving them stranded in hyperspace for your pirate fleets to chew up giving you a portion of the loot money?!!

ok, maybe I'm going to far...

I'm sure the traders would like this too right? what if NPC pirate fleets had a chance of issuing a ransom on you instead of murdering you? based on your Cargo/ship price/fleet supremacy over yours.

Ability to split off a smaller section of your fleet and have the main one sit and wait, so you yourself can sneak in a station on a hound or something and smuggle things in/out then go back with the loot without having to dock up somewhere and put your ships into storage.

Thats it, I'm done, suggestion forums too fun.  ;D

SafariJohn

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Re: Find fugitives (bounties) via dialog interaction
« Reply #7 on: November 04, 2014, 05:12:36 AM »

maybe... you could even... steal fuel from trade fleets with some sort of modified phase tanker leaving them stranded in hyperspace for your pirate fleets to chew up giving you a portion of the loot money?!!

Nay! That be what a filthy Tri-Tachyon would do. We Pirates would blast their tankers, then sell them fuel at ridiculous prices. Ye get more points if they don't make the connection 'tween the "filthy raiders" that blasted 'em and the "humble merchants" sellin' 'em fuel.
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