So imagine that you put a 500M bounty on Malcanis, whom I'm sure we all agree richly deserves it. Under the current system, I will simply jump to an empty clone and pod himself with an alt, collecting your 500 mill, less the cost of a new clone. Malcanis: 480,000,000 You: 0. The current system is worthless to you.
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Well for this just pay out the bounty a little bit at a time based on the value of the pod

Lets say I have an 80 mil bounty on me. Someone pods me while I was in a 2 mil clone with 10 mil worth of implants. They get 12 mil and my bounty goes down to 68 mil.

That way people would still get a reward for podding people with bounties, but I couldn't throw myself a "Pod party" to collect my own bounty because I'd only gain as much isk as I'd lose.

Well done for reading the rest of the proposal.

I don't like the idea of limiting bounties to kills, because there are more reasons for bounties than violence. Corp thieves, scammers, et cetera could all draw substantial bounties without firing a shot.

Also, I'd love to see it used in times of war where an alliance could designate priority targets via internal bounty contracts, enabling them to put prices on the heads of certain enemies.

Yeah his idea for how the bounty collection works is essentially the same as mine. In fact it's the same mechanism I've been promoting for the last 3 years or so. My proposal adds a mechanic for allowing those bounties to be collected in hi-sec - transferrable killrights - that I think is worth having, as well as refinements like being able to limit who collects that bounty which I think are essential to prevent exploitation.

If you can't game the pay-out why limit who can collect? I do like that your mechanic allows Hunters to work in hi-sec.

You put a 500M bounty contract on me. I use an alt to accept the contract and do nothing with it.

30 days later the contract expires along with the killright, and you wasted your time, (plus whatever ISK I managed to shave off the bounty by having that alt kill an empty pod a few times)

If you make the payout available to anyone, then I can just burn off the bounty without even bothering to use an alt.

OK .. I see that complication. What I meant was, isn't the easiest way around that to let anyone and everyone take the Bounties? Especially since the bounties themselves are going to be a percentage of the total bounty? Kill-rights for all until the Bounty has been paid out? That way even if you used an alt or friend to murder yourself (which still doesn't make sense because your loosing money on every kill) that would only be one of who knows how many people.

I think the Kill-Right angle might be a little much. Not because its not a good idea but because I think in practice, a working bounty system will used to grief. Justifiably maybe or in some cases not but if the amendments only affect payouts then at least a bountied criminal could hide in Sec-space. Kinda like going to prison, :P. If bounties worked, a huge number of players would go hunting. Huge. Its a thing. I'm new though so maybe I am missing something?

I don't like the idea of limiting bounties to kills, because there are more reasons for bounties than violence. Corp thieves, scammers, et cetera could all draw substantial bounties without firing a shot.

Also, I'd love to see it used in times of war where an alliance could designate priority targets via internal bounty contracts, enabling them to put prices on the heads of certain enemies.

Prpbably solution is crerate a online report system for tiefs. So to say CEO or corp Director reports thieves and puts bounty on his head.
Any way Corp CEOs reporting them. So way not keep online data base of thos chars, and work with thos contracts wat was proposaled befor.

This not include scamers.

i like the idea of the contract system, however not necessarily as replacement for the current bounty mechanics.

as you pointed out current mechanics work like in the old wild west where death was obviously meaningfull, in eve it is not (why should you get the full bounty payout for killing someone in an empty clone? The bad guy does not care at all - he lost nothing). I would rather like to fix this first, make the bounty system eve-like. Contracts could be added on top of that - would be a really nice addition.

see my signature for a fixed, eve-like bounty system

Being able to specify who can collect a bounty is absolutely essential to stop friends/alts of the criminal essentially negating the bounty in this way. Additionally, contracting a killright means that I can't "hide" in hi-sec and benefit from CONCORD protection.

Alternatively, you cap the payout for a kill at 60% of the ship's nominal price less the platinum insurance value and leave it at that.

Since when did 'wanted dead or alive' posters specify that only certain people were allowed to collect?

Alternatively, you cap the payout for a kill at 60% of the ship's nominal price less the platinum insurance value and leave it at that.

Your idea for the bounty payout is essentially the same as mine, but it's open to the following simple exploit:

(insurance exploit)

This is the problem: if you make the bounty high enough to be worth collected, then it's worth collecting with an alt. For bounties to have any meaning, you have to close the alt/friend loophole and restrict who can receive them.

no restrictions are needed.

the single mandatory requirement is:
damage done - insurance > payout

I've got a whole list of people i'd have put a bounty on, if the system wasn't broken like it is currently.

I suppose, but doesn't that kind of depend what kind of contract you offer?

I mean, if it's the "sell" kind, the target has to pay to make himself safe, and the alternative is that a third party picks it up just to get a legal target to attack. (By "sell kind", I mean a standard sell contract: I put up kill rights to individual X for sale; someone with an interest in going after him buys it from me). That seems like a fair deal -- if my intended target is willing to buy his peace (and I'm more interested in getting money than seeing him dead, since I made a sell contract) then that's fine and dandy, after all.

It's more the "buy" kind that is an issue, since I am (presumably) offering cash rewards for the death of the target. This leads to the same issue as with the current bounty system. Hell, it's even a worse issue, since whomever picks up the contract gets the money and don't even have to exercise the kill right to do so, so the target doesn't even have to suffer the loss of a clone to get the money the way they do now. So these contracts would need some additional accept/reject mechanics that the current contract system doesn't support.

The two contracts would also have rather different audiences: the buy contracts would attract the classic bounty hunter -- someone who gets paid to kill -- whereas the sell contracts are for the big-game hunter who's willing to shell out a buck or two to get the chance to earn some trophies (kill mails). The question is to which extent these two markets really exist and what kind of volume they'd see.

The bounty contract requires a killright.

people dont get killrights when killed by wartargets.