Originally by: Sigras
I think the problem with this is that it's not that much different than the current system where people just pod their alts to collect their own bounty...
I think this is one of the biggest problems with the current bounty system. I think EVE would be better suited turning it into a more generic version of Bounties, used by Corporations and Alliances in PVP sitations. I think the way I envision it goes something like:
In the Corporations interface, a corp (or alliance) director with the proper skills/authority sets up a bounty against another target corp. They may then select individual pilots, corporations, or ship classes, and assign bounties to them. A CEO can determine who this is visible to: All in the Corp, Alliance, or even based on standings (All 'Excellent' standings; All 'good' standings, etc.). This information then becomes visible to players of the corporation under 'show info' on the ship (just like current bounties show up). Some examples:
1) A CEO decides that he wants to run a campaign to destroy all mining capabilities of a competing corp. He sets a ship-class bounty for 500k ISK per Mining Barge destroyed, and 1M ISK per Exhumer destroyed. For grins, he sets up bounties on all other ship classes in that corp at 250k ISK.
2) A corp has been plagued by a lone Pirate. The CEO can set a bounty on that pirate for 50M ISK, and sets the visibility of the bounty to "All Blue". As before, anybody who is "blue" to the corp may now see the bounty on the lone pirate.
Bounties would be taken directly out of the corporate wallet (or perhaps a special, separate 'bounty' wallet). Like CONCORD bounties are set up now, bounties would be split among gang members.
I feel that something like this would incentivize players towards PVP (not that any more incentive is really needed), and 'bounty hunt' towards corporate/alliance goals. While the money probably doesn't really help
that much when it comes to PVP, any cash helps, and it spices up the flavor of bounty hunting by taking the power out of the bounties hands and empowering the people who want to take out the bounties in the first place.
I can, however, see problems with this setup: namely what happens if/when your corp doesn't have enough money in its wallet (or bounty wallet?) to cover a bounty. I imagine if this happens, the simplest solution would be for the game to turn off bounties once the balance is below what it can pay out.