I've now played a number of games on small and medium sized maps, and I have to admit that I didn't realize that it was the size of the bounty that was spawning pirate attacks on my systems. I just assumed that because my fleet was growing large and I had a good economy I was getting pirate attacks. Now that I understand the bounty system better, I have to say that I really like it as an added challenge. It is very true to life in that seems to be the model that terrorists and states that sponser terrorists seem to work nowadays. I did have a few thoughts:

1. Bounties can and should be able to be collected by players. This would seem to provide a good incentive for other empires to attack you as well as the pirates, and I don't see why it shouldn't apply to both. The size of the bounty could still determine the size of the pirate fleet. The player can decide what sort of fleet to send. However the requirement to collect a bounty should be a bit higher than a tradeship or single cobalt, maybe the destruction of logistical structure. That would keep players from sitting at the star and sniping at the passing trade ships, especially since I don't want to add micro-management of following your tradeships around.

2. In terms of buying off the bounty, this is sort of a silly thought in context of say terrorists. They have more ideological reasons to want to destroy your empire and the money just helps them achieve their goals. However, you could add an event that if a pirate fleet of a good size enters a system with low defenses, they could make some sort of demand for money to go away, or they will attack. This would still drain down your resources, and would be sort of amusing if you choose to turn them down and lose the system trying to get a fleet back in time to save it.

3. I do think that an effort should be made to keep the pirates from becoming another AI teamlike opponent. There were some posts higher up that suggested that more resource than money should be used to buy bounty and that the money should be used by the pirates to make better ships. I'm not sure if you could still call them pirates, you might as well made another team to fight against. If you want to justify the reality of pirates getting ships, why not add an event where a ship is stolen from time to time by a pirate, or lost in transit and recovered by a pirate. You really would have no idea how many ships have been "stolen" from the enemy and then a pirate fleet could have a neat variety of ships from lots of different races. You could even have a research technology to improve security to reduce the numbers of ships stolen or improve the accuracy of the jump techology to avoid losing ships on a jump. Of course Capital ships would have to be made immune, but a cobalt missing here or there could be fun.

4. What about the idea of salvaging a defeated pirate fleet to reward you somewhat for defending your system. Maybe a few crystals and some metals. This would work to your advantage if you managed to repel a big attack and to your disadvantage if your attempt to get your enemies attacked fails, giving them more resources.

5. I'm wondering if part of the reason that the AI seems to be stacking huge bounties instead of building ships to kill you is that they are suffering from a shortage of crystals like I usually am. Money is always available in a way that crystals aren't. So it takes the only road available to it with the hyper amount of money it has and lack of crystals. I have no idea of the mechanics of game AI but I thought I would offer my thoughts. That is all. Thanks

---

---

If that is the case the designers need to fix the AI so that the AI will buy resources just like the rest of us do when we're strapped for crystal or on the rare occasson metal or sell metal or crystal on the RARE occassion that they have a glut of resources and a lack of cash.

You don't get it... The bounty isn't only for the pirates! I've been trying to get this through to you all along! You can pay the pirates (and that's why I proposed the "virtual bounty" that would apply to them alone) but it shouldn't affect the bounty being paid to other players that mean to profit on your misery!

No way. Somebody started a war based on this bounty... You can't just offer a nice bounty, wait for people to start a war on the bounty's subject than retract it.

  Ok, I'm outta here...

Has anyone thought about making bounties optional? Pirates are optional. Why not the bounties? In a no pirate, and no bounty game the AI may actually do some research, build some ships, and attack you. Since it has nothing else to spend its credits on.

A slider could also be added; a bounty/pirate effect. The bigger the value, the more pirates spawn.

Two things about this topic don't make sense to me:

1) Why are you trying to apply real world concepts to the Pirate/Bounty system? I'm not saying the concept is bad, but you have to make allowances for the fact that its a game.

As best as I can tell from this, and other, discussions is the purpose of the Pirate/Bounty system is to provide a mechanism to force people to meet the requirements of running an empire where you have to keep your eyes open on your whole border and not just where you know there is trouble. Garrison duty if you will.

The other purpose is provide a means for a player/AI to impact another player/AI through an indirect method.

Discussions on how to make the system better should be viewed from those perspectives (or if I'm wrong, the perspectives of what the mechanism is meant to achieve), rather than trying to change it to fit a real world view of the concepts.

2) The other major problem I'm having trouble with is the logic behind the pirates. More specifically, why the pirates aren't stronger as the bounty goes up, and why pirates can't show up anywhere? (I could be wrong on that second point but in my games so far the pirates always show up through a connection to a planet I do not control)

Pirates should be stronger as the bounty goes up because, from a realistic perspective, it attracts larger groups of pirates who now see the reward outweighing their costs in attempting to collect. From a game perspective, if a player/AI is willing to invest enough money into the system to make it a primary source of retaliation, they should get a force strong enough to make it worth that investment.

As for the location issue, assuming I'm not wrong on the subject, is fairly self-explanatory. Well, more so than any of the other items I listed.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A couple of responses to some of the more... dangerous recommendations I've seen listed.

Players collecting bounties
No... hell no... oh my freaking god hell no. Are you people on crack? I know that is an aggressive statement, but you really need to think this idea through. Aside from the hundred and one obvious problems, did any of you consider the devious side of things? Let me present you with a possible communique to describe a situation (and there are numerous others that work as well):

"Hey, lets make a deal. I need the pirates off my back. Pop over, wipe out this planet, collect the bounty, and I'll build it back up."

Anyone see a problem with that? Hell, you don't even need to glass the area, you could just work out a deal for continually sacrificing a cheap and quick to build unit/structure.

At best you could probably work with a system where you can invest in a neutral bounty or a bounty which players can collect as a choice.

Killing pirates lowers your bounty
This idea has merit but only with the condition that pirate strength is relative to the bounty. Without that condition you've effectively killed the bounty system because it wouldnt' be worth investing money that a few static defenses can wipe out on their own.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Finally, just to add my own alternative, which some others have had similar ideas in their thread.

Whenever a pirate group spawns, the bounty is instantly reduced by a portion of the cost it would take to build force your fighting against. This way the investment of a bounty on the target both represents money exchanged to cause trouble as well as an investment in providing the ships and logistics necessary to be a real threat to the other player.

To provide a bit more control over the bounty collection, you could also increase the bounty as you kill pirates by a lesser percentage of the cost in spawning them. That way you still provide a method in which the bounty would get smaller over time but you would still have a condition of showing that if the pirates aren't successful in destroying anything the bounty doesn't reduce quickly over time. If you need a realistic reason for this consider it the extra money coming from neutral parties which do not appreciate your successes or the pirates you defeated exercising a method or revenge other than attempting to face you in combat again.

Combine that with some of the other ideas (such as increasing the force size) and you've got a method which can actually hurt someone while at the same time ensuring that the the target player is consistently plagued over the entire course of the game if they are too strong for the pirate groups to damage (unless someone continues to invest money in the bounty).

@ceyan You also may not have noticed while playing your games, but players can already collect on bounties. I believe that the post you are referring to is in regards to players collecting on bounties that they offered, which is currently allowed and IMO needs to be changed.

Gah! I just noticed this post when it had hit 66 replies, so I had to read through them all. Pure torture. There are some truths that everyone needs to understand about bounties:

1) A bounty is not a payment to the pirates. A bounty is held in an account somewhere. Someone only receives this money after destroying some ships/structures

2) Bounties can be collected by anyone (except the one who posted the bounty, and the one who the bounty is on). The bounties are not exclusive payments to the pirates. Players and AIs can collect bounties, and have been able to since Beta 1 was first released.

3) Reducing bounties makes no sense. There have been two 'logical' explanations for why it would work.
i) Pay off the middleman who holds your bounty. Sure, he wants to make a profit, but his clients really don't want him to just take their money and run with it.
ii) Destroying the pirates' ships reduces their funds. Sure, this makes sense, but it would only affect your bounty if the bounty was the pirates' funds. Which it is not.

4) Now, go read all of SpaceVoyager's replies to this post.

[End of Rant]

Ceyan, what do you mean humans can exploit being able to collect bounty? It was mentioned above to have your ally cancel your alliance, blow up one of your planets, and then ally with you again. Sure, it would lower your bounty. It also blows up one of your worlds. Isn't that what you were trying to prevent by lowering the bounty?

Remember I offered a much less damaging solution. Imagine just not being allied and setting a shipyard to build several cheap scout frigates with a rally point right where your partner has a row of gauss cannons built? You lose a cheap frigate you can mass produce without any major economical impact and get your bounty reduced while your partner gets a free source of cash. Best of all, nearly full automated.

Additionally, if you can assign a bounty to yourself, you could work out a team partnership where one person focuses strictly on the economy and one focuses strictly on the military side of things. The person using the economy assigns a bounty to himself, letting the military player collect on it as a source of cash. Requires some extra micromanagement, but could be a devastating combo if the military player is quick on the draw. If you can't assign a bounty to yourself, that'd take three people and probably be more cumbersome than worthwhile.

Likewise there are other combinations like that. Assigning a huge bounty to a player just as an ally launches a massive attack. Not really an exploit per se, but definitely pushing the barrier of fair play.

Of course that stuff could be done through trading resources, but the method I listed provides some level of anonymity (unless someone is paying close attention to the bounty levels).

I've got several other ideas that might work, but I'd have to play with the system more to fully understand how bounties work and are collected.



I don't remember any specific numbers off hand, but I've been keeping to small/short games so I may not have seen bounties enough to call forth a bit fleet. Still goes to show that the early fleets need some tweaking so they are challenging and not just a reason to build a few static defense or leave a small force in garrison.

Why do you think you should be able to?! It's not paid by you so you shouldn't have any influence! And even when you are the payer of the bounty there are reasons NOT to let you retract it. WARS were started based on this bounty. In reality there are perhaps ways of simply saying "I'm not paying this any more" but in reality there are also serious effects. You yourself could become a subject of attack etc.. This can't be done sufficiently in the game so I think it's best to just live with the bounty.

If you don't want a bounty on your head perhaps you should be nice to everybody...

What fair play? We ARE talking about interstellar war, not a game of chess. You'll just have to learn who is to be trusted and who isn't. But don't count on anything.

Scouts give a pretty pitiful amount of bounty payout--you'd still be taking a big net loss doing that.