DevTracker: About Crimes and Factions

Seven day delay

Fines will now take seven days before they mature into bounties, so giving you more time to clear them off.

Active bounties issued only by minor faction

Active bounties are changing so that they are issued by minor factions only, even for systems owned by one of the three major factions. You won’t be able to pay these bounties for seven days. We’ll tweak the friendly fire to be a bit more forgiving and we can balance this number further if needed. We’ll also apply the friendly fire to hits on players in the same way they are for NPCs.

Whenever you commit a new bounty offence in a jurisdiction where you already have an active bounty then the bounty value is increased and the timer reset to seven days. If you gain a fine in the same jurisdiction then the bounty value is increased, but the timer is not reset.

An active bounty is resolved in one of the following ways: Firstly if a ship detects the bounty and destroys you then the bounty is claimed and removed. Secondly if your ship is destroyed, but the bounty is not detected then the following happens: The bounty becomes dormant and can only be detected by authority scans by agents of that jurisdiction and if detected will become an active bounty with a new seven day timer. If a dormant bounty is not detected within seven days then it is removed. If an active bounty is not claimed or made dormant within seven days then it will be cleared.

Legacy Fines

Note that when a bounty is removed, for whatever reason, it is added as a legacy fine for the same amount and for the same jurisdiction. Legacy fines never expire and are automatically added to the rebuy cost if you restart in a station or outpost owned by that minor faction.

We recently added caps to bounties per jurisdiction. These caps will remain although they do not apply to fines and legacy fines.

Once a legacy fine is paid it is removed. It is simply permanent *until* it is paid.

You can't really "get rid" of a legacy fine - you simply pay it or avoid re-spawning at starports where it is valid.

Once you get a bounty issued against you, you will *always* end up with a legacy fine for it - there's not getting away from that.

So:

Bounty is claimed (a ship detects your bounty and destroys your ship) - bounty is removed and replaced with an equal value legacy fine (or a bigger fine if you had capped your bounty value).

Bounty is not claimed (your ship is destroyed without anyone detecting your bounty) - bounty becomes dormant.

Bounty timer expires (you survive without losing your ship for seven days) - bounty is removed and replaced by an equal value legacy fine (or a bigger fine if you had capped your bounty value).

Dormant bounty timer expires (after losing a ship with an active bounty, you then survive seven days with a dormant bounty) - bounty is removed and replaced by an equal value legacy fine (or a bigger fine if you had capped your bounty value).

The legacy fine is expressly to mitigate against exploits as well as to proved consequence.

If you have a dormant bounty for a jurisdiction and you are scanned by the cops the dormant bounty will become active and the timer will reset to seven days.

If you are detected committing a fine offence the dormant bounty will become active, the timer will be reset to seven days and the fine will be added to its value.

If you are detected committing a bounty offence the dormant bounty will become active, the timer will be reset to seven days and the new bounty value will be added to it.

In short: if you have a dormant bounty, don't get scanned or detected committing crimes!

Ramming is a crime in no Fire Zone

During the Powerplay beta we’ll also trial a new crime of ramming at speed within no fire zones. If travelling at over 100 m/s and you collide with another ship within the no fire zone then it will be considered a crime. There has been some vigorous debate on this so it will be interesting to hear peoples’ thoughts on this once it’s in place.

If both ships are moving faster than 100 m p/s then both will have committed the crime, and both will feel the lash of a bounty and starport broadsides.

Interstellar bounties

Something we’re looking at a bit futher down the line, but might not make the Powerplay update is the concept of interstellar bounties. These occur when fines and/or bounties for minor factions within a major faction cross a threshold then they are combined into an interstellar bounty. They work in the same way as normal bounties except that the jurisdiction is counted as the whole of the major faction. There will be legacy interstellar fines in a similar way to the legacy fines already described.

Interstellar bounties will hopefully answer the issue of consequence across major factions: when you have annoyed enough Federal minor factions, your criminal status will be upgraded to cover the entire Federation. Only now there will be better pacing (no more insta-Federal bounties).

A few responses

Ramming is a bounty offence, not a fine. If it was a fine, it would not be a real consequence to boost-ramming, as you could destroy ships then pay off the fine straight away. It's tough, though no tougher than other starport offences.

The 100 m p/s liability limit is *may* change. Whatever limit we have, we want to ensure that it's not possible to destroy a stock sidewinder travelling under it.

When interstellar bounties arrive - they will trigger based on a credit value threshold for all bounties and fines added together for minor factions associated with a major faction.

We'll hopefully make the docking computer immune from the ramming crime, allowing it to retain its current speeds.

We will be looking to make sure that turrets don't trigger crimes by attacking innocent/un-scanned vessels.

Basic scans *should definitely* be shared among a wing, as long as both ships were present when the target was scanned. If this is not happening it is a bug and should be ticketed.

Powers

Powers don't issue bounties, it's done at a system level by the minor factions.

Crimes and Factions

Who's in control of a system is a big thing in Elite: Dangerous. There are usually several minor factions vying for control, but outside the immediate local space around their starports and outposts, only one can claim to be "in control" of a system. This is displayed in the system view when you've no stellar body selected.

Normally it's the faction with the highest influence in the system, excepting special situations like civil war.

This is important for criminal law, because each faction only cares about crimes committed in its own jurisdiction. It doesn't matter if you are an infamous pirate according to say, the "Bangwa Freedom Party", if you are in the jurisdiction of the "Bagwa Independents" and you've committed no crimes against them, you are an innocent pilot.

In addition, most ships are aligned with a minor faction (you can see which one by performing a basic scan).

So if a ship is wanted in the current jurisdiction, but is aligned with a different minor faction for which it has no criminal record, then destroying it will cause you to lose reputation with the faction it is aligned with; in their opinion, you've just destroyed an innocent citizen of theirs.

Of course, you should gain reputation with the faction that you hand the bounty in to - they wanted the ship destroyed which is why they issued a bounty against it!

With regards to wings: if a ship is attacking you, they will be doing so either legally (you are wanted, possibly for attacking them without cause!), or illegally (if they're attacking you for piratical reasons for example). If they are attacking you illegally they will show up as "wanted" when scanned.

Therefore, in the case where the attack is illegal, as long as *someone* has scanned them to detect their wanted status, all wingmen can legally defend you with no legal repercussions (because scan results are shared among a wing).

On the other hand, if they are attacking you legally, that makes you the bad guy in the jurisdiction, and anyone helping you will also become a bad guy. This is why we display ships that are hostile to a wingman as purple - it lets individual Commanders decide whether they want to break the law to help their buddy.

The only times when no reputation loss should occur during bounty hunting is when the target is wanted in both the current jurisdiction and the jurisdiction of the minor faction it is aligned with (which can be the same thing but is not always).

With regards to shooting "innocent parties": ships that are not wanted in the current jurisdiction - you should be able to get away with a shot or two without triggering an offence, but if you rake such a vessel with sustained fire, hit it with large, high power weapons, or do damage to its hull, then you will have committed a crime.

I hope this helps explain how the crime system works a little. Of course, if the game at any point does not look like it's following these rules then a ticket should be created.

More about Crimes

* When you are in a minor faction's jurisdiction, your ship has limited long range communication with the authorities: it can "squawk" to them the scan report of a ship that successfully attacks it (when a ship hits you, your sensors instantly scan it - we allow this conceit for gameplay reasons; it would be too harsh to force you to scan a ship that had tangibly started to kill you by dealing damage). This report sent to the authorities only details the scan result and the attack, not your ship (it's analogous to an anonymous phone call to the police about a crime in progress).

* The authorities process the results and decide if a crime has been committed by correlating scan data from the attacker. When you scan a ship, or receive scan info about it (from a wingman, for example), you also automatically squawk the results to the authorities using the same channel; this is used to protect you from false allegations (you have proof of the scan target's legal status), and also allows the authorities to inform you of any outstanding bounty on the scan target.

* Therefore, if you successfully scan a ship, find that it's wanted, then attack it, the authorities will be able to match data received from both your ship and the target vessel and deduce the legality of the attack.

* If you attack a ship without first completing a scan, the data received by the authorities will reveal that you *could not* have known that the target was wanted: regardless of any other factors, you have committed the crime of assault.

It's also worth understanding that the authorities only dispatch ships in response to a crime that has been committed. They don't send ships out based on these reports alone. Again, this is mainly for gameplay reasons: we don't want the police turning up every time you scan a criminal, but it can be justified by describing it as a resource issue - authorities cannot respond to every sighting so they prioritise crimes taking place *right now*.

This should hopefully clear up why the police *don't* show up when you detect a criminal, but *do* show up when you commit crimes (including attacking without knowing the legal status of your target).

Also, this hopefully explains how the "don't report crimes against me" function works: it turns of the anonymous tip off squawk, meaning that the authorities are not made aware of any attack taking place (the only folk who should really have an interest in turning this off are local system "bad guys" who don't want the police showing up and detecting *their* crimes as well as their enemy's).

The Kill-warrant scanner uses the same principle as a basic scan - it squawks scan results to the authorities. However, it uses dedicated comms channels to receive results from *all* authorities, not just the local one, which is why it can reveal all outstanding bounties for target vessel.

And remember, crimes are committed in *jurisdictions*. Just because you are wanted in one jursidiction *does not* mean that you are wanted everywhere. This is very important to remember with the bounty change coming up that will prevent players from paying bounties off and make them persist for several days; if you get a bounty, remember that it's only for the current jurisdiction. Fly to the next system (sometimes just even to a different starport) and you will be in a different jurisdiction where you're not wanted (unless you've been naughty there as well! ).

There is a corner case with this overall system: getting a crime when "helping" police out, just because you didn't scan the target ship. This is where rules limitations can cause occasional odd results and evince the response: "surely the police know that this ship is wanted - they're shooting at it for goodness sake.

With the usual caveat of "no ETA, no guarantee", I'm going to investigate allowing police vessels the ability to automatically broadcast and share their scan data for any criminal they are actively aware of and engaging: this will hopefully allow "good guys" to join in without having to worry about scans and it has the benefit of no undermining the crime and scan system, which is *very* important.

Elite's crime system is reasonably complex to the uninitiated, but it's like this for a reason - we specifically want combat and its consequences to be taken a little more seriously than in a pure arcade-style shooter.