Guide: Crime & Punishment in Elite Dangerous

Crime and Punishment

Note: a small number of crime related features are listed as “Coming Soon”. We hope to deploy these updates within a few weeks of Chapter One’s launch.

Bounties and Fines

• Bounties and fine are applied to the ship you're in.
• Fines never mature into bounties.
• Bounties never become dormant.
• Bounties never expire.
• Fines can be paid off at security contacts.
• Bounties can be cleared by Interstellar Factors (when your Notoriety is 0).

These changes aim to simplify crimes. You will now have more control over your criminal status risk and reward. You can store a ship with bounties on (a hot ship), hiding your criminality, but at the cost of not using the ship. Bounties are now more significant as only Interstellar Factors can clear them.

Notoriety and Murder

• Commanders gain a ’notoriety’ rating, a value between zero and ten.
• Notoriety increases by one whenever a Commander commits a murder crime.
• Notoriety decays one unit every 2 hours of time when you’re logged in the game back down to zero.
• For each level of notoriety, murder bounty values are increased by a fraction of the perpetrator's rebuy cost - the higher the notoriety, the bigger the fraction.
• If the victim is a Commander (a player rather than an NPC) then you pay 10% percent per point of notoriety of the difference between your base rebuy cost, factoring in engineering, and the victim’s rebuy cost. If your cost is less than your victim’s, this will be zero. This is to de-incentivise destroying smaller ships than your own. This number, as well as others in the Beyond update, will be revisited and tweaked after launch to make sure the game is as balanced and enjoyable as possible.
• In addition, Commanders that are destroyed have their rebuy cost reduced based on the notoriety level of their murderer - the more notorious the assassin, the bigger the discount on rebuy cost for the victim.
• Notoriety is linked directly to the Commander, regardless of which ship they fly in.
• Any Notoriety means the interstellar factors cannot clear your fines or bounties.

These changes ensure that Commanders can't completely shed their criminal status by swapping to clean ships. It also addresses the seriousness of the murder crime, especially against other Commanders, as well stopping people from attacking smaller ships unnecessarily. Currently, any death that results from collisions will not apply to the notoriety penalties nor will it increase notoriety. This is to prevent griefing by cheap ships against expensive vessels. Ramming and combat logging are two examples of other things that we’re giving specific care and attention to – keep an eye on the forums and on social media for any news relating to these topics.

Hot Ships and Modules

• A ship with bounties on it is hot.
• A hot ship cannot be transferred to a port in a jurisdiction where the hot ship is wanted.
• Elsewhere - ship transfer costs are increased for the hot ship.
• Modules taken from a hot ship are hot modules.
• Hot ships can be cleaned of bounties and fines using Interstellar Factors.
• Hot modules can be cleaned in storage for a price based on the module's value.
• Hot modules cannot be placed in a clean ship.
• Hot ships and modules can be sold at a mark down.

These changes mean there are more consequences for criminals, to close off potential "laundering" exploits.

Friendly Fire and Reckless Weapons Discharge

• The tolerance for friendly fire has been increased - you can deal more damage before you gain the assault crime.
• A new crime has been added "Reckless weapons discharge", which triggers at the old friendly fire threshold, and is only a fine.

These changes reflect the potential increased consequence for a bounty, allowing more leeway before one is issued.

Anonymous Access Protocols

• When in a hot ship, port services are restricted in jurisdictions where the ship is wanted (your ship logs in anonymously).
• Fines prevent access to all services except missions in progress, security contacts, Interstellar Factors and black markets.
• Bounties prevent access to all services except missions in progress, Interstellar Factors and black markets.

This helps to make sure there are consequences for your crimes without your vessel being destroyed.

Power Bounties

• Crimes committed between Powerplay pledged Commanders generate power bounties instead of normal bounties.
• Power bounties can only be detected and claimed by Commanders pledged to the power that issued them.
• Commanders destroyed for their Power bounty are not processed as criminals and do not pay any additional costs during respawning.
• Authority ships will no longer get involved with Powerplay. For example, A Hudson Commander can still attack a Patreus Commander with impunity in a system controlled or exploited by Hudson. However when the Patreus player fights back they will get a Power bounty and no authority ships will be summoned.
• Powerplay NPC ships have an increased chance to travel in packs for increased defence.

Power bounties remove Powerplay from the standard crime response, allowing consensual PvP without interference.

Advanced Tactical Response

• Authorities now have access to new security vessels: ATR (Advanced Tactical Responders)
• ATR ships are kitted out with top tier hardware, in exclusive, customised configurations. They are extremely competent pilots.
• ATR ships can be summoned once a Commander has committed enough crimes in a jurisdiction.
• The security of the system determines the level of crime before they are summoned
• ATR ships arrive with full knowledge of their target and are cleared to arrive "weapons hot".
• Once ATR ships respond to crimes, they will continue to respond until the Commander leaves the system.

Another piece of the crime consequences puzzle, ATR should also help mitigate Commanders attempting to exert excessive influence in the background simulation as well as challenge heavily engineered ships.

Crime and Ship Destruction (Coming Soon)

At 3.0 launch, you will respawn at a starport of the faction that controls the system when you are clean rather than the faction who controlled the jurisdiction you were destroyed in, and will pay bounties and fines for this jurisdiction, along with bounties detected. Whilst 3.0 rules work, the changes proposed below will make the system clearer and work better with the revised Kill Warrant Scanner, which will be updated at the same time.

• When a hot ship is destroyed where it is wanted the Commander will respawn at the nearest Detention Centre.
• There are lots of Detention Centres in human space.
• When respawning at a Detention Centre, a Commander *must* pay off their bounty or fine for the jurisdiction where they were destroyed and any bounties detected by a Kill Warrant scan, in addition to their rebuy cost - all other bounties and fines remain attached to the ship.
• When a ship is destroyed where it is not wanted it will respawn at a starport owned by the jurisdiction’s controlling faction.
• If there are no appropriate starports, it will respawn at the last port it was last docked at.
• When a ship is destroyed where it is not wanted but hostile to the jurisdiction’s controlling faction, it will be deported and respawn at the nearest Detention Centre.

This change makes the crime flow more consistent and plausible and ensure you will not be trapped by re-spawning in a station you are hostile.

Kill Warrant Scanner (Coming Soon)

The Kill Warrant Scanner in its current form will detect the single largest bounty on the scanned ship. However, based on in-depth feedback and dialogue on the forums we are looking to release an updated version. We’ve listened to and incorporated all of the feedback regarding the Kill Warrant Scanner and we’re pleased to reveal the following solution. It addresses all of the concerns, from collecting bounties in different systems, to safeguarding reputation, to tactically supporting factions, to actually allowing the scanner to grant a kill warrant!

• The Kill Warrant Scanner detects all bounties issued by system factions in every system.
• The Kill Warrant Scanner grants a license to kill if at least one detected bounty is issued by a faction that is aligned to the same superpower as the current jurisdiction.
• When used, the Kill Warrant Scanner prevents reputation loss for destroying ships, except criminally aligned vessels.
• NPC ships can have bounties for factions not present in the current system, favouring nearby systems where possible.

Making this change involves a significant amount of under the hood changes to the way bounties are generated, which increases the robustness of the whole bounty system. This has meant that this Kill Warrant Scanner update will deploy a little after Chapter One’s launch.

Superpower Bounties (Coming Soon)

These are not currently in the game but are an important compliment to our core fixes that will be rolled out with the Kill Warrant Scanner update.

• When you gain five or more bounties for factions aligned to the same superpower, a superpower bounty is issued against you.
• Superpower bounties are valid for every jurisdiction aligned to the superpower.
• Superpower bounties are detected by a basic scan.
• When a superpower bounty is detected, all bounties issued by factions aligned with the superpower are also detected.
• Superpower bounties grant credit rewards and reputation for the superpower.

We’ve looked at all of the feedback concerning bounties, background simulation and the Kill Warrant Scanner, and these rules are the result. Because they are changing from our original interpretation, they will be deployed along with the update to the Kill Warrant Scanner and ship destruction rules tweaks. Superpower bounties add consequence to those who commit crime sprees across multiple systems. They also help define clear boundaries between Empire, Federation and Allied space.