I considered more and noticed another problem with my suggestion. Standings can’t really effectively mitigate abuse, as when they manage to abuse it, they would be gaining the standings back, and counteracting the losses.
It would only work if they have to fail more than they exploit.
Considering yours and @Nevyn_Auscent points, a simple solution would be to slightly reduce the payout, from 50% of destroyed value to 40% of destroyed value.
Insurance pays up to 80% and costs 30% of payout.
So taking a ship hull of value 100mil, it would cost 124mil after insurance
And pay out 80mil.
Leaving 44mil max bounty allowed to be paid.
40% bounty payout means the value destroyed is greater than the value gained.
Consider what happens with modules. Let’s add 100mil of modules to our fit. Around 50mil will be lootable.
So 224mil for fitted ship with insurance.
Insurance pays out 80mil and you scoop 50mil loot.
You retrieve 130mil and bounty gets paid for 40% for the hull and destroyed modules, so you get bounty payout of 60mil.
This gives a total of 190mil for the exploiters and a net loss of 34mil.
You could even allow 100% payout for module loss as they are uninsurable anyway.
Giving a payout of 90mil.
This gives a net loss of 4mil for the exploiters.
This system allows no profit for exploits but healthy profit for legitimate bounty hunters.
What determines the price of the ship and the destroyed value? Regional value? EVE average?
Either way it can be abused when certain items are priced higher ingame than their ‘actual worth’, or are priced higher regionally than their ‘actual worth’, (which would be whatever people are willing to pay for it). Victims would stash their ship full of those overpriced items, get destroyed and share in the value both players have created from items that were in fact worth much less.
And if such an overpriced item doesn’t exist yet, people now have a reason to manipulate this price in order to generate easy bounty payouts. And if it pays well, they will do this.
Also, you gave a lot of numbers in your example. I’m not going to check your entire calculation as this form of abuse is not about specific numbers, but about the underlying principle: can I manipulate these payouts.
If the answer is yes, people will do it and the bounty system will be used to generate value, instead of destroy it.
Suggestion 2 to mitigate insurance scams in bounty hunting:
Payout is based on destroyed value - 110% of the insurance value.
Scenario 1 - The insurance “scam”:
Ganker has a bounty kill right worth 100mil on him.
Bounty Alt has contacted Ganker and proposed an insurance scam to remove the bounty.
Ganker undocks a 100mil unfitted hull. He pays the 24mil (ish) for platinum insurance that will pay out 80mil (ish).
Bounty Alt, activates the bounty kill right and kills Ganker. Ganker’s ship loss was estimated to around 100mil. Bounty kill succeeded, and Bounty Alt gets a Bounty Agent standings boost.
Ganker gets 80mil in insurance payout.
The server calculates the value of the loss, at 100mil and the amount of insurance paid out at 80mil.
The bounty hunter is paid 100mil - (80mil *1.1) = 12mil.
The Ganker was at -44mil before the “scam” and the bounty hunter has only earned 12mil. 32mil loss between the duo.
The bounty kill right is returned to the bounty agent and has 88mil left in “the pot”.
Scenario 2 - The uninsured… insurance “scam”:
Ganker has a bounty kill right worth 100mil on him.
Ganker undocks a default insured hull worth 100mil, so payout will be around 30-35%, let’s say 32.5% .
The Bounty Alt activates the bounty kill right and kills the unfit ship.
The server calculates the value of the loss at 100mil, and the amount of insurance paid out at 32.5mil.
Bounty Alt is paid out 100mil - (32.5 * 1.1) = 64.25mil. Leaving a 3.25mil loss for the duo.
The bounty kill right is returned to the bounty agent and has 35.75mil left in “the pot”.
It looks like you responded as I was writing another suggestion.
This would work similarly to insurance payouts I imagine. Insurance is based on the base mineral cost to produce the item and is periodically recalculated by the servers.
So the destroyed value would work in a similar way. Isn’t this how the current bounty system calculates destroyed value, but then just pays out 20%?
Considering this would affect the calculations to a degree.
If we take the base cost of the item as the value of the hull, insurance and bounties. Then this is what we get:
Base hull cost of 100mil, platinum insurance is 100% of base cost and costs 30mil (30% of payout).
So Ganker has spent 130mil.
Bounty payout suggestion 1 was 40% of destroyed hull value + (maybe) 100% of destroyed contents value.
So, Bounty Alt kills Ganker. Ganker gets 100mil back. Bounty Alt gets 40mil. This leaves a 10 mil profit.
Using base item values therefore precludes the 40% payouts of suggestion 1.
We would have to reduce this to <30% in this case.
This is why EVE currently has the bounty pay outs set at 20%. I would say bumping this up to 25-30% would be reasonable for bounty agent rewards though considering the additional requirements to deal with the agents etc.
Suggestion 2 in this scenario (Destroyed value - 110% insurance): Base hull cost of 100mil, platinum insurance is 100% of base cost and costs 30mil (30% of payout).
So Ganker has spent 130mil.
Bounty Alt kill Ganker. Ganker gets 100mil back.
Bounty Alt is paid: 100 - (100 * 1.1) = -0.1, which is obviously limited to 0.
So you get no payout if you kill an unfit T1 platinum insured ship that pays out 100%. Which is fine. The bounty kill right is returned unchanged to be used another day.
Bounty Alt and Ganker duo are 30mil down due to the cost of insurance.
Uninsured ship, using suggestion 2: Base hull cost of 100mil, default insurance pays out 40% of base cost.
So Ganker has spent 100mil.
Bounty Alt kill Ganker. Ganker gets 40mil back.
Bounty Alt is paid: 100 - (40 * 1.1) = 56mil.
Bounty Alt and Ganker duo are 4mil down.
The bounty kill right is reduced to by 56mil to be used another day.
Scenario with ship contents and uninsured ship: Base hull cost of 100mil, default insurance pays out 40% of base cost.
Contents/fittings have a base value of 100mil.
Ganker has paid 200mil.
Bounty Alt kill Ganker. Ganker gets 40mil back.
Bounty Alt scoops an average of 50mil in base contents value.
Bounty Alt is paid: 100 - (40 * 1.1) = 56mil.
Therefore with suggestion 2 the closest they can get to an insurance scam is to loss 4mil a pop. Or 10% of the default insurance payout.
I think it would be useful in the case of T2/exotic modules to have the calculation for bounties be different to insurance payouts, to improve bounty returns for these modules/ships.
So CCP would calculate a bounty value, similar to insurance for T1 ships, but for T2/T3/trig modules etc. it should be based on the raw materials/gases/PI/loot ratios etc. over long periods of time, with moving averages.
The Mathematical point at which it becomes safe from abuse is 20% of ship value, which you know is what the current system is set at… for exactly that reason.
Because ship build cost is usually below ship market cost and you haven’t allowed for that difference in your maths there.
At this point why are we bothering to change the system to a far more cumbersome one that has it’s own issues and abuses and disincentives.
However, note that if you are giving say… a 5% loss to the gankers, they can burn that 5% loss because it results in 100% loss for you, which means that for every million the ganker spend you are spending 20 million, therefore gankers win. Bounties just don’t make sense when the person comes back from the dead.
This is covered in the second suggestion post I made after the one you quoted.
The figures in there are calculated with base cost alone.
In that system the minimum loss for the ganker would be 10% of insurance payout, as the bounty payout is reduced by 110% of any insurance payout. This could be reduced further to 120% if necessary.
The reason this is superior to the current system, is because when any bounties kills are not fully insured there will be greater payouts for the bounty hunter than the current system. Criminals tend to fly uninsured because concord blocks insurance payouts. So the majority of legitimate bounty kills would get much higher payouts.
Also a key benefit is the non-single use kill rights.
By having bounty kill rights you don’t just have one chance to avenge a criminal act. The bounty kill right only expires when the criminal has lost as much isk as they have against their bounty.
And this means having a bounty in high sec is not pointless. Whilst you are bountied, you are fair game (for hunters).
This system is not a replacement for the current system, they can exist side by side. It is a buff for non-criminal pvp in highsec. It seeks to improve high sec bounties by combining them with kill rights.
It also improves on the kill rights system, because in general gankers fly cheap ships - because of concord - and they attack expensive ships - for loot.
This tends to mean victims lose much more than any counter-kill would cost the criminal.
A kill right is pretty pointless to use when there is very limited scope for anything other than an easy, cheap kill. And the ganker never loses anything in retribution. If you sell them then you have to price them high or the ganker just gets an alt to buy it and activate it on a rookie ship to remove it.
Kill rights are almost never profitable to run when purchasing them, and don’t seem to give the victim any sense of justice being served when either they use them, or they just expire because noone wants to buy them.
By combining bounties with kill rights that expire only when fully paid out, it will make them both far more effective at their intended uses.
Although I agree that some gankers may feel this way, but I would hazard a guess that many would not. Many gankers don’t care about making the victim lose money. They just want to gain it by any means necessary.
And the fact bounties are still placed in high sec even in this currently largely pointless system shows that some victims don’t mind parting with extra cash, if it means it “teaches the ganker a lesson”.
Also the idea is trying to make bounty hunting an active profession, not something you do on the side as you’re wandering through systems.
This would be achieved via improved locator agents and data. And better payouts for not fully insured ships.
It would probably make sense for locator agents to be bounty agents (or vice versa)
Wait…
Exactly what ships do you anticipate catching these “criminals” in again?.
If they care about concord most likely they are in a catalyst. If they aren’t being criminal and let’s assume they are a rare ganker who isn’t minus five also… then they can insure the ship which means bounty hunter gets virtually no payout for any t1 ship.
Your new limitations make this even more pointless for a real bounty hunter.
And you are breaking the KISS rule of design as well as the rule of if you need 20 restrictions to prevent abuse it’s a poor system to start with.
The “criminal” is the person who engaged in a criminal act to give a kill right. So anyone who shot a neutral ship in HS or pod in LS.
You wouldn’t need to use this system against minus 5s you would use the normal bounty system. This is used against players who use tags to swan about high sec with impunity.
This system would pay out 100% of destroyed module value, so the payouts for insured T1 ships will likely be more than currently, and the payout for uninsured will be much better.
There are only a couple of things that prevent abuse:
Bounty payouts are reduced by 110% of insurance payout.
And bounty agents assign random targets.
Standings are probably unnecessary in the design in the end.
An added benefit is that bounty hunters can disrupt gank attempts before they take place.
Currently you can’t shoot a ganker until they begin an attack and go flashy. This is often too late for the hauler/miner/mission runner.
With a bounty kill right a bounty hunter could engage before the attack begins and potentially prevent additional losses.
In lowsec it would be less common to find a non-flashy with a bounty kill right. But if you have one you can engage them in range of sentry guns which may catch them off guard.
This one? Because when you ask a question and then immediately provide an answer yourself it looks like your question is rhetorical.
Bounty hunters will catch any ship the criminal wants to fly in highsec.
They can shoot a ganker’s catalyst as they are setting up for a gank.
They can shoot their tornados near trade hubs.
Their talos’ before ganking mission runners.
Their thrashers on stargates.
Their fleet ships by third partying a war dec fight. Their battleships when they are structure bashing.
There are obviously even more…
The point is the bounty kill right remains until it is paid out. It is far more difficult to remove than a simple kill right. So it can be in place in any of the above scenarios that the player is involved in after the criminal act.
So you are expecting a bounty hunter to spend time hunting for… a 50% payout of a catalyst, except actually it is a 35% pay out of a catalyst if they attack before the gank since insurance will happen, and they still probably won’t get it because most gankers don’t loiter on grid, and the ones that do tend to be on trade hubs ready to instadock anyway since kill rights are already a thing. EDIT: Actually using your revised ‘avoid insurance scams’ numbers, that’s a 20% pay out of a catalyst, which drops to 0 pay out ummmm, always.
And to somehow catch the talos from… ummm, that tethered structure which they then warp directly onto the mission runner from?
And ummmm, show me a ganker who actually regularly partakes in a structure bash please, also note that logi can rep them until they are ready to engage you back in this case. While logi can not rep your ship while you attack them. So they can refit that battleship to kill you as needed.
This was the point behind asking what are honest use cases that you see this happening on, because your use cases didn’t seem to actually be consistent with reality earlier in the thread.
EDIT: And as per the above note, a pay out low enough to avoid insurance scams (20%) then means you never get a pay out for your kill unless you wait for them to start a gank, and make the final kill before concord kills them.
@Nevyn_Auscent your tone is crappy and juvenile, and your objections are expected but also debatable.
Your objections are difficulties that exist in the current system. This system adds additional opportunities to engage the targets. They are not single use. Kill rights will be more common, and affect more pilots.
My numbers would pay out 60% of an uninsured catalyst + 100% destroyed module value, because why would the ganker buy insurance when setting up a gank, knowing that they will be concorded and not paid out?
An insured catalyst would pay out 100% of the base destroyed value only. You also get the loot.
The bounty hunter can have multiple targets at a time, and they will probably operate in similar locations where ganking is common.
So there should be multiple easy to kill targets.
If they are targeting mission runners only in a single system then you have two options:
When they warp to the mission runner, warp there yourself too and engage with a hard counter before they attack the mission runner.
Or if they are targeting in multiple systems they can be caught between systems.
Criminals are not only 100% gankers. They may get involved in other areas of eve.
They could be a Wardec Corp who commit criminal acts sometimes. They will structure bash sometimes.
That was just an example.
And regarding logi, in a limited engagement, which this would be, then if the ganker’s friend reps him then they become suspect and then anyone in system can engage the logi.
Also in a structure bash how can they refit? They would be scrammed so they can’t warp off and can’t refit in combat.
As I said before, the payout is not at 20% for all kills. Insured payouts simply remove the payout (+10%) and pay the rest. So you can get profit from insured ships (assuming they have modules) and alot more for uninsured.
This is only true when the limited engagement is two ways.
Learn your mechanics first, before you come with ‘suggestions’ and then call the fact that you are getting called out for repeatedly leaving holes in your ideas juvenile. At this point the way you keep launching into personal attacks and your numbers keep jumping wildly around, I’m done, your idea has had holes poked in it repeatedly now and all your fixes just make it worse and worse, the current system is better than your proposal.
I just looked up kill rights again. Activating a kill right sets the target to suspect for 15 minutes. If you remote rep a suspect you inherit the suspect timer. Which bit is wrong with what I said?
I didn’t call out your objections as juvenile, I called your tone juvenile and your objections debatable, you should read more carefully.
My numbers haven’t jumped around wildly. I was responding to valid concerns about insurance fraud and adjusting the figures to compensate.
EDIT
I misspoke in my last post. In the case of an uninsured catalyst the payout would be 56% not 60% for the hull (I forgot to remove the additional 10% on top of the insurance payout)
For clarity:
The bounty kill right acts like a kill right that is removed when fully paid out, not after a single ship kill.
The payout is 100% of the combined base value of the hull and destroyed contents, minus 110% of any insurance paid out.
This pays out more than the current system against the majority of insured ships and alot more against uninsured ships.
The current bounty system can exist side by side with this.
OK if you’re not going to continue with the discussion, your earlier objections were useful in refining the system.
I stand by my current incarnation of the bounty kill right system, detailed in the post above.
It pays more, is more interactive, improves bounty satisfaction and adds additional content to eve.
I think that’s a better system than the current one, and they can live side by side. If you don’t agree, we’ll agree to disagree.
If anyone else has comments I am still up for the discussion.
I made a post in the CSM assembly section to see if there is any traction up there with the refined version without the long winded journey to get there.
It is apparent to even me, you have little experience in the mechanics and game play involved.
I suggest you go become a career ganker for a bit…cause as @Nevyn_Auscent has already mentioned there is many many holes in your proposal and you can not fix them by adding a restriction for each one since doing so proves the proposal is crap anyway.
and no I am not going to get into lenghty discussion with you either, you have no clue what you are talking about simply because you do not have the experience to understand.
What mechanics are you talking about specifically?
I have been playing Eve with some breaks in between since 2008. Mechanics change.
The only mechanic @Nevyn_Auscent took issue with was about Logi repairs and so I double checked for changes:
“Activating the kill right will enact a Suspect flag on the target, making them a legal target to all pilots in their vicinity for 15 minutes.”
“In most cases, using assistance modules on another player will cause you to inherit all of his flags…”
“…Using assistance modules will pass on all flags to the assistor, possibly preventing them from docking/jumping for the same interval as their assistee…”
These results support my understanding, that activating a kill right (or in this case, a bounty kill right) will make the target suspect. If their logi reps them, the logi is now also suspect.
The early objections were about insurance scams. The only “restriction” that was added is simply reducing the bounty payout by 110% of the insurance payout. Making it still pay out more on average than the current system.
The later objections that he had, were about being not very profitable/not having enough targets.
This isn’t a hole in the system, and I added no restrictions. I said that it is no worse than the current system, it just adds additional opportunities to do so.
If he doesn’t think bounty hunting is worth the trouble then that’s ok. Some people don’t think ganking is worth the trouble, yet lots of people still do it.
My refined proposal is relatively simple. There are very few specific restrictions. It consists of 2 parts:
A combined Kill Right/bounty.
And an agent to receive them from.
The payout has been adjusted to severely discourage abuse.
The current bounty payout is 20% of destroyed value. Not 0 ISK.
I said multiple times, the payout is 100% destroyed base value - 110% insurance.
So an empty hull with no upgraded insurance would pay out 56% of the hull base value.
An empty hull with platinum insurance would pay out nothing for the ship.
A fitted ship would pay out 100% of the module base value on top.