Topic: On Collecting Player Bounties
I saw a discussion in general chat regarding a bounty system, and responded with an idea I've suggested before in other games. Dev Calvin said it sounded decent and asked that I post it here, so here it is.
To collect bounty from a target, you have to destroy something of value. For example, destroying an Arkhe would net you nothing, since they can be acquired for free.
The payout rate could be at approximately 75 to 80% of the value of what was destroyed, so blowing up a bot worth 1 million piloted by someone with a multi-million bounty on their head could net you 800,000 NIC, which would be subtracted from the total bounty amount. The rest of it would remain uncollected, for future battles.
The reason for the percentage of value is so that they can't destroy their own robots to clear away the bounty without suffering a financial loss in the process. This way a bounty is not a "gift to the offender" like it is in EVE Online, where they can simply kill their pod with an alt to collect the money. This way, there's a disincentive to claiming bounties on yourself, and it won't pay out a bounty that is higher than the value of the target.