Well, as every single game ends up like that something needs to be done about it. As it stand it's just boring to have the marauders on.

Marauders could be fun if it's more interactive. Building ships to sacrifice to lower bounty is rather tyrannical if you ask me. There's people piloting these ships.

You can't "buy off" a bounty. The giver of the bounty won't lower it... What could be done is a way to pay off pirates; like giving the money (paying tribute) to the mobsters and lower the occurance of pirates. The bounty can't be lowered by your actions since you're not the one offering it or in the position to pay it out. So such payments should only influence the pirates and not the bounty as such.

By Designer

"So, it struck me. Why not have the bounty reduced as you kill off the incoming attackers. This way you can manage bounties and pirates "think twice" about attacking you as they're just sent to the grinder".

That is a very good Idea

By psugar

"It might be interesting if you could buy off the bounty for double (or 1.5x) the price or something"

That is also a good idea.

I would be happy to see one or the other.
Matthew

It is most definitely NOT a good idea, neither of them IMO. If the bounty only affected the pirates I'd agree, but the bounty also affects all players! You can't persuade the giver of the bounty to lower it - he wants you dead after all, you can only pay one or the other faction (like the pirates) not to attack you inspite of the bounty.

Perhaps an underlaying "virtual bounty" system could be set up just for the pirates. It would start as high as the real one but the destruction of the pirates and/or paying them off would lower it.

When somebody adds to the bounty it would add to the virtual one as well.

I think this would be easy to do as it is a very simple math and one variable per faction added. Than again, I'm not a programmer.

EDIT; I need to think things through better before I post and not edit the post multiple times...

i think its a great idea

I think that sounds like the best idea proposed in this thread. And would go along way to wards preventing 250k+ bounties in extended games.

I've been loitering around these forums for a while, and although I haven't got the beta(money, hard drive, and a crappy system prohibit this, a problem i hope to have fixed by 08) I have played it(thanks to a friend) I was very impressed and I played it several times through on a full galaxy(100 planets, 4 stars) but as for the bounty, when you top 10 mil it gets a little nuts(being the elitist I am I don't sacrifice ships I simply have a massive invincible death fleet) the ability to pay off your own bounty I believe would be a viable option. along with more options for a "one click" bounty addition to an opponent instead of just 250, when I'm making 200k a minute it would be nice to be able to put more of that in a bounty quicker. But back to the thread's topic.

I think the pirates need a "risk to profit" system in place where say a given empire has a very strong fleet and a bounty of 10k while another empire has a weak fleet and the same 10k bounty, the pirates would of course go for the more profitable empire. Maybe giving all tactical structures and ships a hidden point system that would determine the risk factor then divide that by the bounty to asses the risk to profit ratio. This same system could be used to determine which planet is attacked by the pirates, a planet with no defenses would be a bigger target than a fortress world. Also Bounty per population point killed would be nice, so if the pirates go and raid 10 undefended worlds that might work off all or most of a bounty the numbers of population to credit would have to be played with for a while, but having a fully population upgraded Terran planet should be worth around 10k.

As for paying off a bounty it should be a viable option after all bounties aren't something that goes on in the UN, no one stands beside a nice little graph and announces when a country has a bounty on it. No, the bounty is all part of the black market system(same as buying and selling resources) so why not for every 1000 credits put on somebody's head make its cost 5% more to pay off a given amount. Heres an example,

Empire A - Bounty = 50,000 - multiplier = 250% - Cost to pay off = 250,000
Empire B - Bounty = 250 - multiplier = 0% - Cost to pay off = 250
Empire C - Bounty = 100,000 - multiplier = 500% - Cost to pay off = 500,000
Empire D - Bounty = 1,000 - multiplier = 5% - Cost to pay off = 1,005

The reasoning behind this madness? If your running a black market bounty ring won't you jack up the price if someone wants a bounty to "go away" it's not good business unless you are. After all it's not the empire handing out the bounty to the pirates, once the money is put on a bounty it's gone from your reserves, not put into a special part of your treasury devoted to bounties, you gave it to someone.

I'm surprised so many people like these ideas. There is no logic behind them whatsoever. If I put out a prize on someone's head and he kills one of the murderers the promised prize is no smaller... It stays the same.

Whats this "Space Mafia"?

The bounty system is ridiculous as it is now for what the OP says. 9 of 10 time it is YOU with the highest bounty, because the AI still way overspends on bounty's. Instead of building its own fleet to try, and kick your ass, but noooo the pirates have become the "button men" of space. The idea of using pirates to do all the fighting for you if your the weakest link is kind of cowardly IMO.

I like the "buy out" suggestion so far (make em an offer they cant refuse ). I also would like to see ways to further curb, or cap off AI over spending on bounties. They need their money to research, and build ships. Not send the "mob" after you.

I do have to admit that i was impressed with the an AI fleet that actually did engage me, but thats another topic

Space Voyager, I will agree that destroying pirate ships shouldn't lower(if anything it should raise it as the pirate lords get pissed at you) your bounty. but the way a bounty works is this.

Client

Service Provider

Bounty hunter

the Client gives money to the Service provider, who takes his cut, and then pays out to whichever hunter gets the kill. If someone gives the provider money for a bounty to go away why wouldn't he? especially if he makes a profit. a very large profit. after all it is a business. And until a kill is made, that money is just sitting there. not like the pirates are like "We got all this cash guys! BUT! Before we can use it we've got to kill some people, after all its what we said we'd do!"

Bounty and pirates are a way to get to the strongest player whom you cannot reach by weapons power alone. That is exactly why pirates need to be very annoying to the strongest player, because nothing else can annoy that player.

Actually no.

It shouldn't annoy the player. You shouldn't incorporate something in a game which annoys the player. The game should challenge us, not annoy us.

Challenges are fun, annoyances are... well... annoying.

The only thing the bounty system currently accomplish is, that I have to park some Kols in my backyard, to squash those pesky marauders that attack frequently. They're unable to kill even one of my assets, which is the reason for this thread. Because of this, the bounty on my head will never go lower, it'll always go up. (Plus I get some free lvls from the exp of the pirates.)

It also significantly weakens the AI since it'll waste money on bounties which will accomplish nothing, which the AI should better have invested in ships, research, orbital structures, etc. which would make it able to appear at least being able to defend against my attacks.

So imho the current bounty system for SP is a bit useless. It only hurts my enemies, not me, so I would like it revisited.

Sure, that's why similar systems are used in reality so often... Mercenaries for instance are used intensively even in Iraq. In a slightly different manner but nevertheless. When you don't want to get your hands dirty or can't afford others to know it's your doing, you do exaclty what this pirates system is doing.

What bothers me is that one faction (let's say the player) will start a war because he plans to fund his war effort with "collecting the loot", meaning collecting the bounty. Only to find out that the faction that has the prize on its head killed some pirates and your loot is much smaller than planned. So you started the war for nothing - while the whole purpose of the bounty system is to make it worthwhile!

So if this pay-off system or whatever would only affect the pirates I'm ok with it but it shouldn't have any effect on the "bounty revenue" other game factions get.

I wish something would be done about bounty... As it stands, my last game the bounty on me by the end of the game was over 157,000 credits....

I was trying to wipe up the last 4 enemy plants while holding off attacks of 30-40 pirate ships at a time... in waves every 5 minutes

lol iv got another 6 out of 10 systems to kill and iv got 700k on my head and the pirates are only a minor problem which a few bomber squads can sort out. I also think in the diplomacy that u should have players neutral, alliance, federation and of corse war so that u dont make enamies right away by killing all thier frig that are just passing by like i do lol