Bounty
GalCop places a bounty on the head of criminals. This can be you - the player, or on that of pirates, for example, which you can then collect by shooting them down!
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Contents
Overview
The bounty system in the core game of Oolite is somewhat primitive, a product of its 8-bit roots. If you commit a crime, regardless of the seriousness of that crime, your bounty is halved with each witchspace jump. So you can shoot down an entire flotilla of police ships in one system, but 8 to 10 jumps later you're clean again. Also, if you want to quickly erase your bounty you can purchase and use an escape pod, or do a galactic jump.
More Detail
- In the Vanilla game it seems impossible to ascertain the amount of the bounty on one's own head (although legal status is shown on the F5 screen), and the amounts of bounty on the heads of eg pirates are not openly correlated with their legal status.
But, for example, leaving the station with 1TC of Narcotics on board will incur offender status and say a 100 - 1000₢ fine on immediate re-docking. Leaving with 20TC of Narcotics on board incurs fugitive status and means that the Vipers will be waiting outside the station and will open fire immediately! The fine will be much larger!
- See Law for more fineprint
OXP's
More complexity/realism
- Safe Docking - laws for docking and fines for transgressions by Phantorgorth
- New Cargoes - inter alia, introduces permits for illegal goods
- Smugglers - The Galactic Underworld by Phkb: different systems ban different commodities. Black markets, secret compartments etc.
- Bounty System - criminal records are now visible at GalCop Security Offices or through on-board warrant scanners. Bounties no longer degrade over time.
- Anarchies OXP - makes fugitive status more enduring, but also offers more escapes from it (Amnesties, tampering with records etc).
- Diplomancy OXP - taxes! wars! citizenship! the need for Visas etc. by Commander Day
- Weapon Laws OXP - restricts sales of weapons in the safer systems (eg - you can only buy Military Lasers in the more dangerous Multi-Governments, Feudal States or Anarchies).
- Illegal Goods Tweak OXP - you are now interrogated on arrival at a GalCop station with slaves etc in your cargo
Bounty status of others
- Bounty Informer OXP - reveals the bounty details of targeted ships
- Bounty Scanner - the original 2008-11 versions of Bounty Informer OXP
Your bounty status
- BountyStatus OXP - shows your bounty status on your F5F5 screen: an early oxp (2011)
- Bounty System - as above (view and pay off your bounty)
- Useful MFDs - shows your bounty status (with other information) on an MFD
- Life in the Frontier - visit the GaCop precinct in the station and see your bounty status - and pay it off if you so wish
Cleaning your illegal rating
Vanilla game tactics
In the Vanilla game there are four main options:
- Leave! Your bounty halves with each jump between systems
- Leave the Galaxy! This clears your record.
- Jump ship! Using your Escape Pod also clears your record!
- Drastic - and only for dyed-in-the wool offenders: shoot-up the station, and then dock without clearance, and you will get sent for "attitude adjustment" (this will take days on your ship's clock, wrecking any contracts you may have entered)
OXP's
Adding OXPs can radically change the way the Bounty System works, whilst other OXPs can make sorting out your personal mess rather easier.
If you have Life in the Frontier oxp loaded (not the "Revival" version) you can disembark, make your way up to the GalCop precinct, and pay at one of the terminals there.
This oxp makes bounties more realistic - the Vanilla game get-outs have been disabled or weakened. But you can now pay a fine to clear your legal record. The repayment option only appears at one of two places: the main stations of the system where the fine was committed, or at the GalCop HQ (ie Lave for Galaxy 1). This oxp also allows for an appeal against the bounty at certain stations. You must make your way to a GalCop Security Office/Kiosk inside a station you are docked at (F4 screen).
Just like Bounty System, Anarchies disables/weakens the Vanilla game get-outs.
a) take advantage of an amnesty offer fighting against the Thargoids at a distant system (if you have Galactic Navy OXP installed, this can prove to be rather rewarding financially! Behemoth also helps). The battle can be fun, if you are into them!
- or
b) track down a hacker outpost in an anarchy (see the link for tips on how to find one!) and buy a multipass which wipes your criminal record from the GalCop computers! This could also be rather fun...
- or
c) there is supposed to be some way of bribing a corrupt GalCop official to alter your record (presumably in an anarchy and presumably while docked...)
LittleBear's advice: Your best bet may be just to trade your way over to Lave and clear your record there. The GalCop station is full of Cops who will enforce GalCop's laws, but this is not true of many of the other stations in each system. Staying out of the way of GalCop and trading with the independents will also keep you clear of legal troubles. As there are no cops at many of the OXZ stations you can pick up and trade illegal goods at some of them, without picking up an offender tag (but you will get an offender tag if you take illegal goods to a station aligned to GalCop or the Main GalCop Station). If you at not doing any fighting at the moment you could also sell your laser to give you the cash to fill your cargo bay with the higher-priced items like computers, luxuries and furs. An Advanced Space Compass is vital for this. When in flight you can cycle through all the stations with beacons which will let you find some cop-free stations. You can also get information on stations with the Galactic Almanac MFD. Until you clear your Offender status, police, military ships and bounty hunters will take pot shots at you as you travel around, so you probably need to lie low a bit, avoiding GalCop until you can clear your record at Lave. In the unexpanded game illegal actions don't have many consequences as you can clear your wanted status just making jumps and not committing any more offences. The OXZs give a bit more depth as you can play the game as a criminal, only trading with and saving at independent stations. Hacker Outposts transmit beacons so you can find them in some of the more dangerous systems. Shooting down pirates will also quickly clear your legal status and the cargo pods you scoop from their destroyed ships is 100% profit. GalCop pays you a bounty and a fraction of the bounty paid is deducted from your own bounty until you get back to 0 (Clean). But you'd probably need a Beam Laser and an ECM for that! Getting a Scanner Targeting Enhancement will also allow you to target ships, stations and planets with a target box.
Problems
With the simplicity of the Vanilla game system and the sizeable number of OXP's improving it in different ways, issues sometimes crop up with conflicts between the OXP's.
