In response to the thread at Paritybit blog
You have my vote dude! great explanation of your views on all the points, and you are representing the two issues I think need the most addressing: the use of local to detect presence and bounty hunter love.
I like your take on the other points. Good luck for the vote, but you got mine!
Now, I want to offer some ideas to your own reflexions
Removing local as a detection mechanism:
imho, local should be like it is in WH everywhere.
Now, I think the directional scanner should be available to be put on by the pilot, at the expense of some capacitor cost, and alarm horns should blare when a ship comes within 14 Au of the scanning ship. the default passive directional scanning would just do a passive 360 degrees sweep every two seconds automatically. it could also be turned off, or manual. manual would allow more precise pinpointing like it does now.
Only the ship type should be identified, possibly the corp to which this ship is registered, but not the pilot name and all that crap giving access to all info all the time..
Bounty Hunter love:
Bounty hunting need to be a viable profession, and not one that is perverted by being killed by friends, alt and such.
A player that has a bounty on him should have to pay 1% of his bounty value every time he docks up somewhere. This would be the cost of greasing palms and such to remain incognito in the station.
Bounty hunter would register to hunt specific quarries, paying themselves 1% of the current bounty on their chosen quarry to the authorities, in exchange for getting the following: having their quarry flashing red like an outlaw to the bounty hunter (and vice versa, the hunted would see the hunter red too), and receiving info on their quarry location whenever he or she does not pay the 1% cost of remaining incognito when docking somewhere.
You couldn’t put a bounty or take a hunting license for a pilot in your corporation or alliance, and a character with a bounty could only change corp by paying the total amount of the bounty currently on him or her to the authorities (i.e. money lost, not transferred).
These plus the 1% cost to dock would prevent people from putting bounty on characters just for the fun of it as it would have consequences to the character himself.
Killing a quarry would net to the bounty hunter the value of the bounty, and would reduce the total bounty on that character by 10%. Anybody with a license on a pilto with a bounty would receive information about their current bounty value (even when it goes up), and can request a refund of their 1% license cost against that pilot if they estimate the cost of hunting this specific target is not worth it anymore.
Last but not least, pilots would not be able to take a license on someone they have themselves put a bounty on. Bounty hunters can not have a stack in the bunty that was set.
here you go, hope these ides help advance the sisues.
Last but not least, I’d like to point out an idea done by the guy from hydrostatic capsule that I realy believe would go a long way to favors manuevers in smaller groups rather than in blobs.. please take a look at this entry at http://cailais.wordpress.com/2010/04/18/theyre-coming-outta-the-goddamn-walls/
One thing I forgot is that a player with a bounty on him, after being killed at least once by a licensed hunter, would have the option to pay off his bounty value by paying twice as much to the authorities. Each licensed hunter would then receive half of the sum paid by the pilot with the bounty divided by their number.
It’s important to allow a character with a bounty to pay off his “debt” after being killed once.