This is probably a bad idea. But here goes:

As mentioned in the /bounty thread bounties are meaningless because death means nothing. For there to be a real meaningful bounty system, there needs to be a real penalty. Since time is the only true thing of value in VO, then there needs to be a jail/detention center. And bounty hunters need a way to capture a target, and drop him or her off at the center before getting payment.

To this end we need a few things: A bounty capture ship with an extra large dock on it. Basicly a XC with a dock on the back. Bounty hunters will then need to pcb a target, and then back the capture ship up to the target to capture him or her. Then they will dock the capture ship with the nation who imposed the bounty.

At which point, the bounty hunter will be paid. The nation who placed the bounty then can impose their penalty. (bearing grease therapy and coolant maintenance is favorite. basically some stupid menial task for a few minutes ).

If a player places a /bounty as Mi5 suggested, the bounty hunter only needs to dock the capture ship with whatever station the placer is at. Probably a corvus station.

Lol, people do not even like that fact that getting shot slows down the grind! Also what are you smoking? PCB's do not disable a ship for a time, as soon as you stop hitting them, their cells recharge. Good luck getting to a station to change ship before they have gone.

This, but with large slot tractor beams that only work when your opponent is at 20% or lower.

There is already a negative effect of dying to a bounty hunter, losing XP in all licenses iirc? How about increasing that so the XP you lose is proportional to the license levels, something like 15-20% of current XP in a license or a fixed amount lost per license.

For what ever reason, no xp is ever lost. Most pirates just share the bounty with another pirate. Easy money.

-1

If this is implemented, anyone wealthy can place bounties on an entire guild for no reason other to ruin their fun, and repeat and rinse as soon as they get out of detention center.

VO will be transformed into a very different sort of game overnight, and a lot less of the twitchy combat kind of game.

joyless, you mean like the "Gank TGFT" Competition already running (see the RP Forum) that is basically a guild-wide bounty for TGFT? How does that detract from VO being a "twitchy combat kind of game"?

-1 to the concept of "jail time" for bounty heads. Adding a time-out of any sort would simply not be fun.
+1 to added consequences of earning a bounty or getting it claimed, but they need to be consequences that do not make VO less fun. The should definitely be some kind of in-game penalty though. I like the concept of losing some XP earned towards the next license, but assuming you could only lose XP down to the current license level, for many of us vets this will still be rather meaningless, as once a license hits 10+, there are simply no further benefits to higher licenses. A loss of credits is similarly meaningless for (subjectively) rich vets. Perhaps some significant standing loss? I know many folks can regain standing rather quickly, but it's still a chore, and I feel an appropriate penalty for bounty-earning shenanigans.

Alternatively, how about if a bounty gets high enough, or lasts a certain time (say, a week?) then an NPC strike team with the same skill levels as the newer NPC pirates get launched to hunt down the offending bounty-head?

joyless, you mean like the "Gank TGFT" Competition already running (see the RP Forum) that is basically a guild-wide bounty for TGFT? How does that detract from VO being a "twitchy combat kind of game"?

He is trying to make the concept of "death" more meaningful than simply sending people back to their home stations to be respawned instantly, so they can fly back to do whatever they were doing before.

This is different from the TGFT bounty game they have going in the other thread.

[Edited to remove personal attacks. -W]

A random strike team from a faction for bounties that go over a certain level would be fun, but none of these would actually have any real impact on vets. Bounty hunting is non-existent and people usually get them from consensual PvP so there isn't a real need of punishing the player, atleast until the system becomes more rewarding.

I understood, joyless. My point was in response to your post, indicating that allowing player-given bounties would reduce VO's twitch combat style game-play, and allow rich individuals or organisations to place guild-wide bounties for their own amusement, when that ability is currently totally available to us already, even if not in an official sense, as demonstrated by the recent "Gank TGFT" comp.

I followed up by adding my thoughts regarding jail-time like game-play, and while a time-out seems to be reducing the fun of VO, I +1'ed the concept of further penalties for bad behavior and included some suggestions on what forms those additional penalties might take.

Making personal insults does little to support your case, joyless.

My point was in response to your post, indicating that allowing player-given bounties would reduce VO's twitch combat style game-play

No. I was saying that if players were allowed to put other players into detention centers via bounties, that would lead to more players being stuck in those centers rather than being out and playing VO's twitch combat style game. The richer you are, the more you can afford to place a chain bounty on someone keeping him locked up indefinitely until you run of money.

I agree there. I briefly played a text-based "Space Pirate" game many years ago where time-out in the "shipyard" was the penalty for death, and game-play resolved around attempting to mitigate this down-time. It was not fun.

I am all for player set bounties, official or not, and also in favour of greater penalties for death, at least while bountied. I just don't think time-out in the sin-bin is the way to go.