I posted this in the general thread a short while ago and realzied it probably should be here:
So, I've been thinking about this for a while.
Currently bounties work like this, you either get a barfly to give you one of three bounties of varying difficulties or you get one thru the intel window.
In either case you do get a general outline of the target, or at least the main assets, and a general location of where it is currently hiding, more likely something about the star and the planet/orbit whatever.
It isn't bad but, it has problems.
For one you can get bounties far, far away, specially in the case of the barfly/contact, where you can get a bounty on the other side of the core and can rack up some 30+ LY of distance.
hoenstly? barfly bounties should be closer to home and distinctly different from the more general bounties (convoy protection? know here the target is going to be? or what it is going to hit?) on any case I feel those bounties should be closer to "home"
Contact bounties could be futher afield, after all we are looking for a traitor or somebody that caused a particular faction some serious hardship and, thus, would be willing to go the extra distance.
In either case, I do feel range should be a factor, specially for the low end bounties, I mean I am not going to go 35 ly of fuel and supplies to hit a handful of crappy frigates and a so-so destroyer it is not worth my while, nor the salvage and probably not the credits.
But I feel more could be done with bounties, from an in game perspective, somebody hiding 30+ ly from the core, what are they doing there? how are they there? in those cases I do feel they need to have some sort of installation. No, not a station, but something that is functioning like a base of sorts. an old domain waystation? an old freighter turned into a station? maybe a planetside structure, an old dome or base of sorts. I mean they are living there, laying low, or some such.
More, they are in hiding, so they obviously did something, maybe they have loot, maybe they kidnapped somebody, or they have some info that somebody upstream wants.
So you could have to hit the fleet, and raid the base or something and then, of course, there is the return the package (be it an actual package, kidanpees, capturees, or whatnot) for a bonus or even sell it to an alternate buyer
As an aside, it would be interesting to have to breadcrumb the target, instead of knowing that the target is at X constellation in this sort of planet that orbits that sort of star, you would have to trail the target from, say, their last hit, finding more detail on where they are and what not.
Yeah, it is a bit more complex than the usual bounty mission, but could prove to be more interesting and varied.
So you'd have the size of the bounty fleet, the aprox location (or, the start point of the bounty trail) the type of place they are lying low and the bonus objectives as different factors for a bounty.
Having straightforward bounties should still be a thing, but there should be some complications other than the distance or size of the target (and, really, make sure the targets are worth the distance, because many times they seem not to be, specially for the barfly and contact types)
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A bit longwinded but my idea is that there should be more nuance to bounties, and more mission types (direct combat bounties, defense, escort, hunt down target, etc) with different levels of complexity for each mission, not just a target might be in this or that system, go there kill it.
And also having more or less options for the distance of those missions from the questgiver.
This is a bit problematic right now, specially for those folks hiding so far from civilization it makes you wonder why they are there or how they are surviving.
I mean, there is lying low and then there is lying low in a few tincans for four months or so...
I like the idea of multi tiered missions, where you have to go and, say find something in a planet, or hit a fleet to see where they stashed the things they stole from the tritach executive that hired you and then bring back the item to a deaddrop or back to the excec himself and a lot of it would add some extra depth to the current mission pool.
Go there, kill that only works so much and only if they are part of the sort of mission
There is how some of these are implemented (I'd say escort you get the escortee providing fuel/supplies and, yeah, might not have his vessels deployed if/when you get jumped)
Some could be handled by quests, specially if one wants to add complications (like the deaddrop? a trap because the tritach exec wants to clean up and doesn't want to risk you having taking a peep at compromising data the pirates took)
But on the flip side quests means they will be special and we will know something like the above might happen, having some of these things emerge of the mission chain could be far more immersive
