I've been thinking of posting a forum suggestion for some changes that I'd personally like to see. Wanted to see if other commanders would also like it or if other people might find it annoying.
Basically, I want bounty hunting to actually feel like hunting a fugitive so that I can capture people and feel like a character out of star wars or something, instead of just being sanctioned contract killing and indistinguishable from combat zones and other combat missions.
So in service of that, my proposed changes are:
Make every NPC ship eject the pilot/crew in escape pods upon destruction, which is already implied to happen when players get their ships blown up. (Or maybe give it a chance of a clean ejection.)
To claim a bounty in full, you have to actually bring the target in alive. If you only return with combat logs to verify destruction of their ship then you get a small portion of the rewards, like maybe 30%, and if you also destroy the escape pod for a confirmed kill maybe you get like 50%. If you want the entire advertised bounty then you have to actually bring the fugitive in to face justice.
You need cargo space to carry escape pods. This will shake up optimal bounty hunting loadouts a bit, but I feel like it'd be a positive change and somewhat counterbalances builds designed to just indefinitely hunt at Res sites and rack up bounties. You can still do that if you want to, but for half the reward if you're not interested in bringing bounties in alive.
This way bounty hunting objectives have an actual capture and return element to them, to better distinguish them from assassination and wetwork missions.
Adding the ejected escape pods is hopefully not too difficult given that ships already drop materials and cargo upon destruction and escape pods already exist in game so it seems like all the code and assets already exist and just need to be recombined.
And it would open up the possibility of new mission types like prisoner transport attacks to rescue criminals or liberate prisoners, VIP/politician abduction, attacking slaver transports to free slaves, etc.
Finally, I feel like pairing this with a small buff to the value of combat bonds would also make combat zones more balanced when compared to Res sites for players who want to earn money with combat pve without missions. Instead of stalking a Res site for bounties you can just hit combat zones for mercenary work. Which honestly feels like a better job title for a pilot who just wants to fight for money.
Thoughts?
