Imagine with me for a minute an Eve Online that has bounty hunting, smuggling, and a contract-based war system. A place similar to Star War’s “Mos Eisley”, and while Jita is a top contender for this title, I don’t see it being well suited as the hub where all the following exists. We’ve all seen thread after thread with suggestions for various iterations of the above, but the following is what I envision (yes this is long, and that’s because it’d be a whole freakin patch or series of changes to actually create playstyles for once instead of CCP’s typical behavior of nerfing them from the game):
Creating OUR Mos Eisley - “Home to smugglers, bounty hunters, mercenaries and other undesireables"
NEW NPC GROUP / FACTION:
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There’s a new NPC group / faction that has stations in Lowsec scattered all around New Eden. These stations house a black market where illicit goods are able to be bought and sold by players.
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Boosters beyond synth tier are once again illegal to transport in Highsec. The same previous mechanics that existed are used except you can only buy and sell them directly to market at these Lowsec stations.
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Pirate Implants are considered illicit goods and fall under the same category as boosters (I mean they are PIRATE implants… should be illegal to transport).
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An LP store where you can purchase exclusive skins, enhanced mutiplasmids, and such.
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Completing “work” rewards pilots with an item as proof of completion. Can be turned in for standings increase and LP. Can be exchanged between players. Standings can be lost if you die to the bounty target.
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Standing with this faction grants access to reworked Locator Agents! Having the standings for L4 locator agents allows them to tell you if the target is currently online. (Locator agents are currently broken where if a target is docked in an Upwell structure, it tells you they are in space. This should be fixed for all locator agents)
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This NPC group has Locator Agents scattered throughout New Eden for the sake of hunting.
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New Security and Distribution missions to go alongside this new groups lore and purpose in New Eden
Locator Agents desperately need to be fixed and need a rework. The removal of the Watchlist (thanks to you abusing the Log Server) is something that actively promotes hunting, since it’s really annoying and is a huge deterrent to make 100 jumps with your scout, hunting players that are offline.
BOUNTY HUNTING! (Reworking kill rights to serve as a bounty hunting system):
Killrights currently serve as a way to directly benefit the person that was unlawfully attacked in the form of being able to set an ISK value that must be paid to the holder in order to attack the offender. This has turned into a system that is mostly used for “Killright scamming” and a system where constant offenders can easily shed their killrights to reduce risk of untimely aggression, but I see a better way!
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Gain killrights (opportunity to place a bounty) as a result of being unlawfully attacked in Highsec and being podded in Lowsec.
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Instead of putting a killright on the guy that ganked or podded you, the opportunity to add to their bounty is presented. Example of how this system works:
- Ganker or Lowsec boi currently has a Bounty pool of 2b isk.
- Each bounty has it’s own 30-day timer that sheds the ISK from the total upon expiry.
- You were attacked by a ganker or podded in Lowsec, so you have the opportunity to place a bounty on him. You place a 1b bounty on him and have the option to make it available to a single pilot, an entity, or available to all and lasts for 30 days or until the ENTIRE bounty is depleted.
- Bounty Hunter sees ganker or Lowsec bad boi flying a Vindicator with a 3b bounty and kills him.
- Bounty is paid out at 100% of the HULL COST, split between all involved and is subtracted from the total bounty pool.
- Insurance is NOT paid out to the target.
- The amount paid out is subtracted from total bounty placed on pilot. When bounty reaches 0, the killright is cleared.
- Killing the target rewards each pilot involved an item to loot that serves as a trophy for the kill and can be turned into the NPC faction for a standings increase and LP. Can also be exchanged on the “black market” to other players.
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This removes killright scams as we know it, and has the potential to have better payouts compared to the current joke of a bounty system.
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Bounty Hunting lowers your Security Status as it’s an unsavory activity and the upstanding citizens of the empire disapprove!
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Since the bounty is paid out at 100% of only the in-game value of the HULL cost and there’s no insurance reward, I can’t think of any way to effectively use this for RMT (which is the primary concern with a proper bounty system).
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The Bounty Office UI will display the bounties available to you, and can be searched for by time till expiration and amount of bounty. The Bounty Office UI will also serve to publicly display New Edens top bounty hunters in terms of targets killed and bounty claimed. Can also use the search option to find specific hunters and see their stats!
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The Bounty system should serve to promote bounty hunting and not a vanity badge for self important pilots to flaunt with little to no risk of having anyone claim it (RIP WHENIMINSPACE, our sweet Nigerian Prince).
RE-REVAMPING WARDECS (Fixing bad mechanics and adding a contract-based marketplace!):
We all know that some seriously stupid mechanics still exist around Wardecs. They are things that I have been vocal about changing because while CCP was rushing to push the previous iteration of Wardec changes I was thinking of all these dumb loopholes and broken mechanics that weren’t being addressed.
A mercenary marketplace is long overdue. A place where two parties can enter in a contract, and in this case it will be a contract for the removal or defense of an Upwell structure. Players need a way to see who is taking this kind of work, what history they have with the work, and how well / efficient they’ve been in the past.
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Contract for war is created by “Party A” and has a base cost that scales with the size of the target and duration. “Party B” would be the mercenaries that accept the terms at determined cost and the war is started 24-hours upon clicking accept.
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“Party A” can leave a review or a thumbs up / down to serve as point of efficiency and success (think Yelp for Wardecs).
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Must have a War HQ to accept contracts (this is also a requirement for assisting).
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Assisting works the same way where “Party C” offers to either defend the structure for “Party A” or destroy the War HQ of “Party B”.
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Wars can still be put in as they currently are by the mercenary group assuming the target is War Eligible.
In order to combat the ability to game ridiculous mechanics I offer these suggestions:
- If you leave an alliance while at war you can’t simply rejoin by joining a different corp in that alliance. You must wait till the wars are dropped OR 7 days (whichever is shorter).
- Corporations with a War HQ cannot be booted from alliance with active wars.
- Weapons timer on a wartarget also gives you limited engagement timer.
Essentially wars function as they currently do but the difference is in mercenaries having a calling card with their accomplishments and vetted prior work to better assess their capability. This extends into attacking and defending structures in all areas of space.
The contract system can also be used for Mercenaries that do work outside of Highsec. Your mercenaries that work in areas of space outside of Highsec can have a resume to directly point at to express their ability to do the work and justify the cost.
ADDITIONAL CHANGES THAT ARE GOOD AND STUFF:
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Athanors in Highsec require starbase charters. You are essentially renting the mineral rights from whichever empire space you are in.
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If you aren’t on the Athanors ACL and you harvest it’s moon chunk, you inherit a Limited Aggression timer with everyone on the ACL (specific users / entities… not everyone in New Eden). What this does is allows the Athanor owner to sufficiently protect their investment and fend off freeloaders. No, I don’t think ganking or bumping to be a reasonable strategy for your average player or group.
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If “Player A” is from a War Ineligible player corp and is mining under an Athanor that belongs to a group that is currently at war, “Player A” becomes legal to attack for the group that the Athanor owner is at war with with a rolling 5-minute timer that is active during the harvesting and begins to countdown to 0 upon stopping.
What the above serves as is a partial closing of using neutral corps and the ACL to shed any and all risk off of the players that are ineligible for war. The normally War Ineligible player is unable to be a victim of war while they are mining in asteroid belts, missioning, hauling, and/or doing anything else. This is just isolated to the clear ability to use this loophole in order to directly benefit from the structure while having 0 risk.
- Logi on killmails.
TL;DR:
There is no TL;DR
this is the only good idea I’ve read. And it’s not exactly original or recent.