Since there is no way to prove that one pilot killed another in an unmonitored sector, bounty collection should only be counted in monitored sectors.

Hmm I don't really see the point of this. A kill is a kill and for RP you could explain it with picking up the ship scraps or the corpse. It would be quite a shame if you track someone down and finally kill the person and then just get nothing for it. Also some people may abuse this and flee to greyspace and stay there. A player gets a bounty on his head and when he dies the contract is done because you have killed the person. It doesn't matter where you killed him, it only matters that he's dead.

I do agree that getting bounties from someone who stays away from monitered areas would be ridiculously hard like this; you are limiting yourself to hunting in corvus space or getting factional hits for hunting someone in any other station sector in greyspace, OR hoping to a rather ridiculous degree that you can find that pilot in one of the nation's territories...

You can explain the current system roleplay-wise that the ships onboard flight cameras or the telemetry from the sensors in the year 4444 picked up their destruction/death or something.

-1

I do not see how this would enhance game play.

A kill is not a kill in VO. If I am in unmonitored UIT space and I kill an admired UIT pilot, I will not lose faction for killing that pilot. If I have a bounty on my head, and I kill a bounty hunter in unmonitored space, I will not get another notch on my list of bounty hunter kills.

If someone, say a UIT, or an Itani pilot decides to take out the Itani war voy in Ukari A-10 (or a Serco/UIT decides to take out the warvoy in Edras I-2), they do not lose faction standing for killing those pilots. Again, because it is unmonitored space.

Those are the rules of the universe that we play in. So to make the rules uniform, we need to apply them to bounties as well. Bounties should only be claimable if the kill happened in monitored space. If people want to claim bounties on kills that happen in unmonitored space, they need to bring to the issuing faction, some kind of proof.

--

So I make a secondary suggestion: That all players drop data pads when they die. That data pad can be delivered to the nation/faction that issued the bounty and be used as proof of kill. Though if someone else brings back a data pad first, then the first pilot to bring back the bounty, gets the bounty.

And yes, this will make it harder for someone who is KOS with the issuing faction to claim said bounty. Bounty hunters will now need to make an effort to be dislike or better with the bounty issuing faction. Another interesting thing will happen with this system: Pilot A kills Pilot Z for a bounty. Pilot A scoops the data pad and flies back to the issuing faction. Enroute, Pilot C kills Pilot A and scoops the data pad. Pilot C then drops off the data pad at the issuing faction and claims the bounty. Yarr.

+1 This sounds fun

+1 to the data-pad approach! Though the pads will need to include a timestamp so that they'll only apply to bounties that were incurred prior to the pad's creation (i.e., to be paid, the kill must have happened after the bounty was placed).

1) The premise for this suggestion is flawed in two major ways:

First: Of course there is a way to prove someone is killed: it is recorded and detected by GS servers.
Second: Realism is not requisite in this game, only gameplay is.

2) The problem with bounties has NEVER been that they are too easily claimed, or claimed in spaces where they shouldn't claimed. Rather, people have primarily desired a way to place MORE bounties on people.

For those reasons above this suggestion goes against all common sense and would serve as a degradation to gameplay as currently proposed.

HOWEVER -- it is the start of good idea as an augmentation to the current bounty system. I.e. keep everything the same and then add something like this on top. Though the idea of generating thousands and thousands of unique datapads for every death seems a bit of a big ask, it is a unique idea to generate renewed interest in PVP.

@We all float

The thing about unmonitored space could be explained like this: If you kill someone in unmonitored space you obviously don't want to let anyone know but in the case of a Bounty Hunter you want that kill to be recorded so you could for example record the fight and send the data to a nation.

Yeah, i like the datapad idea, but restrict it so that no one other than the killer can pick it up for a short while before access is unlocked. Or allow killsteals, but give the bounty hunters a way to track that specific person.

-1 This has been severely abused in other games and would turn into a trophy hunting pk fest.

Abused how?

Also, a pk fest in vo is a good thing. We need more things to fight over.

+1
Especially the datapad idea.

I'd like to see more stuff with datapads.

Float I suspect your the very soul of why....

I seriously want to know how you think it would be abused? Currently you only get a bounty on your head if another faction/nation thinks you are being naughty. And many players just let their buddies take the bounty as free credits as it is. The bounties needing a delivered proof to be claimed adds something interesting to the game. It would almost be a replacement for CTC.

Noobs are not going to get "griefed" or anything because of this. You don't get a bounty on your head unless you are hate/kos with a faction.

Well looks like a way to tank standings of the BH. Makes me wonder if WAF is #DIE.

Anyway, let us collect some ears or any body parts as an evidence.
How many Capt'N blood's pegged legs can you collect in a year?

never enough

+1