AITA for putting a bounty on someone?

Ok, newbro here, been playing for about 3 weeks. The other day, I was running a L2 hisec rat site in my new Atron fit, and just when I started getting pummeled pretty good, someone in a Vexor warps in and starts taking care of business. Things started getting a bit confusing at this point, I think there was a third ship that came and went, and suddenly a bunch of wrecks turned blue, which I learned means that they were abandoned so someone else can loot/salvage them.

Anyways, at this point I warp to the nearest station in order to fit a salvager on my ship, and then return and deploy my MTU. The Vexor is still there at this point, also busy salvaging, using a tractor beam and salvage drones. I’m just sitting there next to my MTU and salvaging anything that it pulls in, which is mostly white (i.e. my own) wrecks. Suddenly, I notice the Vexor coming closer and starting to salvage MY wrecks.

I’m a little peeved because I did ask for their help in the first place (I ran a similar site in my ship earlier and survived it just fine, just took me a little bit longer flying a few extra large circles to let my shield recharge and my armor repair), but now they are literally going after MY wrecks! So I right click on the vessel and show info on the pilot, notice they already have a sizeable bounty on their head, but I decide to add another million ISK.

At this point, things started going very fast, and I’m still trying to make sense of it. Within seconds, a warning from CONCORD appears on the screen, saying that criminals will not be tolerated in this system, and two or three police vessels show up and start to engage the Vexor. The warning showing up for ME, however, had me scared that I might have been flagged (despite my safety being set to green the entire time), so I try warping out to the nearest stargate. It works, I jump, and autopilot back to my home station to take a breather and figure out what just happened.

As soon as I arrive, I get a notification that the pilot of the Vexor has added me as a contact with terrible standing. He also left a message stating that when my account is 30 days old, he will be placing a bounty on me. So I open a chat with him (which I probably should have done PRIOR to placing that bounty), and try to figure things out. Turns out HE abandoned those wrecks in order to let me salvage them, but when he saw me warp out, he didn’t want to waste them and started salvaging himself. No word however on why he started salvaging MY wrecks after I had come back for them. Anyhow, next thing he sends me a good chunk of ISK and tells me to get a proper ship, but that he’ll still put a bounty on me as soon as my toon reaches 30 days.

So, at first I felt like a proper asshole here for misreading the other guy and punishing him for trying to do me a favor, but then I started thinking… CONCORD doesn’t respond to bounties, do they? I thought those are for other players only. And according to the other guy, they only really work in lowsec or nullsec. He already HAD a bounty on him when he entered this system, and he didn’t get attacked then, so he must have done something else to get CONCORD on his tail, right? Like… shooting one of my wrecks? Which means, he must have had safety off. In which case, it wasn’t my fault at all that he got destroyed by them.

Am I reading this situation correctly? Am I the asshole here or is he, or perhaps the both of us? What, apart from trying to hail him as soon as I saw him salvage my wrecks, could I have done better to avoid this misunderstanding?

Thanks for your input and fly safe! o7

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seeing as people could so easily warp to “your” site I’m fairly certain that you were in an combat anomaly which anyone can warp to just as you did and start killing the rats.

Yes, there is sort of a “gentlemen’s agreement” that if it’s already occupied you’ll move on to the next site/system, but this is by no means a certainty.

Wreck salvage is not owned by anyone, the loot in it is your’s if the wreck itself is white to you; for someone to blue his wrecks have 2 purposes, 1) avoid getting tricked into getting flagged suspect and 2) if you don’t intent to salvage them yourself and someone happens to have it bookmarked they can still salvage/loot it if they so desire.
note: wrecks despawn after 2 hours.

The pilot of the Vexor committed a criminal act, be that shooting you directly, your drones, your wrecks(?); for him to even be able to commit such an act he has to have his safety set to red, so the fault is nobody’s but his own. (see Criminal Timers)

This is quite common for EVE veterans to do, which he with all likelihood is. We wouldn’t want potential long term players to quit before you even get started

No, they do not. CONCORD only dish out punishment to those who commit criminal acts.

Bounties on players are meaningless. The payout of bounties only happens when the player’s ship is destroyed, and even then the ISK payout is only 20% of the value of the ship destroyed. So someone with billions in bounty isn’t worth killing if they’re only flying a shuttle worth less than 10k ISK. (see Bounty Hunter System)

None of you are a**holes, you both had good intentions; yes, it would probably have been better for you to PM (private message) him before placing a bounty on him. That being said, he got himself CONCORDed by accident and that he cannot blame on you.

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Gotcha. Thanks for the quick reply, @ISD_Sakimura.

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I killed a guy once back in 2017 and had a fantastic time watching him cry for hours in local. Since then, I’ve been putting a bounty on him. He’s tried to complain and whined every now and then, but I’ll never stop. Mostly because his salt is delicious.

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I do not worry about bounties nor should you, they are like vanity license plates paid for bys someone else. Of no true value or worry.

trust me, of this I know.

m

i would add, OP, that your post is very clear, well written, that you seem to try to understand game mechanisms and learn and improve instead of whining and complaining. I like your spirit, and will send you some isks when i come back home tonight. I hope you will stay in this awesome game, and that we will shoot each other one day somewhere in new eden :wink:

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Neither. You are his competitor and he is your competitor. In EVE you are allowed to deal with your competitors as you see fit. They may see fit too.

A bounty can get problematic if you fly a ship woth 5B+ (not hard) and you got a bounty of 1B+ (hard). It is cost efficient and fun to suicide attack such a target. There are pilots who make that their business. You can find them between Amarr and Jita.

Some further notes:
You can salvage yellow wrecks without any problem, but if you loot them (open and put the content into your cargo), you become suspect (yellow blinking, not a real criminal) and can be shot at, but not CONCORDokkened. Same when you shoot at wrecks, containers, or MTUs.
Of course you have to set your safety to yellow to ninja loot.
To become a “real” criminal, you must shoot or ecm players ships or drones, safety set to red. Perhaps you find a hint in your combat log.

Thanks a bunch, and yeah, I’m planning to stay around as long as I can, despite the apparent cancer that CCP leadership is metastasizing into. Even though I’ve only been playing for a short time, I’ve already sunk an ungodly amount of hours into this game, because it is, quite frankly fascinating.

Thank you for your donation as well, I will try to put it to good use, and I will pay it forward by helping out other newbros who show a good attitude and are willing to learn.

Yes, that part of the game mechanics was adequately explained to be by the fine veterans in my default corp. And since I’m still learning to get my footing in New Eden, I’ve always been flying with safety set to green. I’ve salvaged yellow wrecks myself, but generally only once I was reasonably sure that their owner wasn’t going to come back for them. Since I’m still mostly roaming in hisec, the loot so far was rarely worth risking a suspect status for.

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isks sent!

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Thanks again, kind sir. I’ve already been paying some of it forward.

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