Rework of the bounty system

SR shared this feedback 3 years ago
Submitted

Let me start out by saying that i really like the idea of bounty hunters. But as it currently stands, it is simply not big enough. There can be so much more! So let me supply you with some ideas. (This will be a long post, so get your coffee to stay awake)


1. NPCs set bounties on enemy NPC ships/stations.

Imagine the possibilities. Be a good guy, the protector of Traders, shutting down space pirate cruisers or "silencing" the competition. Or be a bad guy, working with the space pirates, pillaging and capturing trader transports. Reward the player with a bigger amount of cash and rep the harder the Job is.


2. Make the factions which are giving you the contract also give you some backup.

Once you arrive at the spot you are supposed to kill, Give the player like 2-6 small fighter drones (maybe 2 for a small station and around 4 for a full blown battlecruiser) of the faction you are doing this contract for. Maybe even give the player a bit more support the higher their rep with the faction is. Eliminate friendly fire in the heat of battle by coloring the Support drones' Antenna signals in green.


3. Make it not possible for players to set bounties on other players.

An NPC should give these contracts so that the GPS feature isn't abused. So, once someone accepts the contract he is given a device (or something) which broadcasts the location of the victim for a certain time (1 hour maybe) If the bounty hunter gets within 500 km of the victim, the victim will receive an alert, as well as the position of the bounty hunter. This will create a 1v1. If the victim gets the device, the bounty hunter will lose double the reputation. and will have to pay the collateral. otherwise he is free to try again until the time limit is over, although he will only receive an approx. location of the victim until he retrieves the device. This will make PvP bounty hunting a real challenge which is always a gamble as you can lose your high collateral and will have to hunt down that GPS device, and all that on a timer.


4. Make bounty hunting NPC factions (not sure, might be unbalanced)

Bounty hunters should, with my proposed systems, be rather common in Space Engineers. So why not be able to get in touch with bounty hunter NPCs, where you can pay and send some drones after a player. If the player kills the drones, he will be able to find a datapad in the drone's inventory, telling him who the sender was. This means that if the attacked player wants revenge, he can send some drones of his NPC bounty hunter friends, creating small attacks to encourage you to not get comfy on one place. I suggest a price of 500k -1M for sending one drone with 2 gatling turrets to his location. if his base is well defended, it's free scrap for him, if it's not... Well, his mistake.


5. Make bounty hunter stations

Basically like an NPC trading station, found in space, within a safe zone. This "trading station" only gives bounty contracts and might sell fighters or other small ships, along with rifles and ammunition. Everything to get a player started in this business for some cash (more like a lot, you will need gear) that you can get by trading or being in a faction with a high budget.


That's all. Make sure to let me know what you think of this and add your suggestions in this thread.

Replies (2)

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Not sure about disabling PVP bounties (although I don't play PVP so I can't really say much about it) but I would love to see NPC bounties being given out

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This is starting to sound like open warfare, nice. But you're playing space engineers lol.

Notification when they come in 500 km range? That way they can jump right next to you before you have even the slightest clue of what is going on. There should be a soft notification when they accept the contract with approximate distance from you and a gps tracker when they come within a certain range. I think the drone system can be heavily exploited (will they spawn in front of you as you fly? Simply jump away or even fly backwards at all times) and is heavily influenced by economy balance, which is not there now as it doesn't sustain itself by design. If they don't spawn near you, where will they come from? Sounds like a real hassle to set up properly.

I really like the idea of the Space Pirate faction opening up more possibilities for setting up pvp engagements (that can be appropriately responded to) as opposed to having absolutely no perks other than being hunted for all eternity at the moment.

So when you are friendly with the Space Pirates you should be able to put bounties on players. However bounty targets right now are left completely in the dark about what is going on which is completely unfair in a game like this. Also the fact that every station has these contracts available for everyone in the server for eternity is pretty ridiculous both on paper and in practice and has to change now before anything else is done to the bounty system. There is many players that have suffered from this system and helpless try to find ways to get rid of their Space Pirate reputation which is sad as hell and way to punishing.

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Good point with the drone spawning balance issues and other problems with it. I've thought about it for a bit and came up with a near complete rework. How about this:


Due to bounty hunter factions being NPC factions, they have random encounters like any other. Now let's say a player has set a bounty on you and you get into a random encounter with this bounty hunter faction. In my system, this would cause 5-10 bounty hunter drones to spawn and hunt you down after 1-2 minutes. These bounty hunter drones may receive further reinforcements depending on 2 factors. The size of the bounty and commitment. Commitment is measured after 1 minute of fighting, just before the next wave hits. It is simply the current number of allied drones divided by the drone count at the beginning of the battle. Multiply that by the current drone count and round the number to the nearest integer. Send that number of drones in as reinforcements.


Now, this system works, but I had an idea to make it more fun. Let's say you aren't a lonely player in your own little faction and have instead made some NPC friends? Well, that's where the fun begins. If you maxed out your reputation with a faction they will send in 5 combat drones to support you when wave 2 hits. These drones too will function with the same reinforcement system used by the bounty hunters. This may cause a furball to happen. Both sides getting reinforcements, and reinforcements to reinforce said reinforcements, until one sustains losses too many losses and commitment gets rounded down to 0.


The good things about this system:

- Possibilities of massive dogfights

- If you do not want the dogfight, you always have the possibility to run

- Countdown gets started after the drones fire the first shot, forcing them to close in far enough for bases to have the ability to shoot them out of the sky


The problems:

- Server lag if a furball escalates exponentially

- Drones may not be disabled completely, thus still counting as "alive" and contributing to commitment and the reinforcement drone count


Let me know what you think

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Sounds very fun, but what I really think is that this can be done already by using the mod called modular encounter spawner and rival AI. Might be good to set it up with that and give it a few tests to refine the concept.

Also if this can happen for every player in a game session it might become very unstable so maybe it should be prioritizing the biggest factions by pcu count or something, but all in all of sounds like this would make the game come alive a lot more.

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