They aren’t necessarily realistic, but there’s a high chance of your random target being unrealistic. It might be someone that is not going to be online at the same time as you for the foreseeable future, it might be an alt that rarely undocks, it might be someone who is primarily active on the far side of EVE, etc. These targets might be theoretically possible to kill but it’s not really realistic to expect someone to do it consistently.
Why would they be bored?
Because they’re stuck trying to hunt down a target that is offline/too far away/etc and failing to accomplish anything. And it doesn’t take much of that before frustration levels reach a critical point and they say “**** this”, go do something else, and never come back to bounty hunting.
Yes this is an issue but an algorithm could help mitigate that and assign targets that are online on average at the same time you are.
Mitigate, but not eliminate. You can look at averages but you can’t predict the future very accurately. For example, what if I’m on vacation next week and not going to log in at all? My average activity might give an “active timezone” but the reality is that whoever gets me as a target has zero chance of accomplishing anything. And there’s the frustrating experience that drives people away.
These would be higher level (level 4 or 5 agent)
But how do you predict that? A player might be in the same region when a bounty is assigned, but on the other side of EVE in the middle of a 1000 ship fleet battle by the time the bounty hunter can start the pursuit.
Any bounty that allows you to claim more ISK than the destroyed ship is worth is a non-starter. “Wanted: Dead or Alive” isn’t really effective when there’s no way to capture people or make them stay dead (neither of which are good ideas).
To be fair, the assignment of a bounty would b based on many factors that you mention. For example, if the target hasn’t logged on for a month then they would not be in the rotation. If they only log in once a week then maybe the licence would be for a longer duration (or cheaper). If they rarely undock well, that’s part of the job.
I can’t stress this enough. Bounty Hunting in Eve should be seen as a pretty elite and niche job just like IRL. It take a special type of person to hunt somebody for a long time…not just a new character in a T1 Frigate.
Also remember that as the Bounty Hunter skill level goes up, they can have multiple licences. So if a target goes MIA for a week or two there are other targets they can hunt also.
…but again, Bounty Hunting is not for everyone and 100% not an easy job…with no guarantees at all. It’s a role that is sadly needed in Eve BUT also not for everyone (like many things in EVE)
Same as IRL. There are no guarantees and the bigger the potential payoff the more difficult it probably will be.
BH’ing is hard…hard hard hard…can’t stress that enough…
As there is no way to farm this with alts, it shouldn’t e a problem. I’d suggest that Concord would pay a base rate based on the crime and the victim would be ask if they want to add to the bounty (within a limit).