EDIT: Based upon recent comments in Pillar Talk, I have necro'd this thread rather than creating a new one. Requesting that the devs not close the thread. So, I was extremely excited for the explanation that Todd Papy gave in the Bounty Hunting Mechanic preview today in the ATV special. I have heard a few people wonder (and worry) about how the mechanic would be made to be engaging. While people have made claims of being stuck in ships while players fly around the verse or log off for weeks at a time (NOTE: This WILL NOT HAPPEN) as soon as you are subdued, you'll wake up in prison. Todd didn't expressly say so, but based upon his comments, I feel its the easiest extrapolation to infer. However, I would like to bring up some potential gameplay potential and open discussion as to how this mechanic could be fleshed out to be as enjoyable to as many players as possible. I was in another thread where a contributor brought up: The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butchers Bay. I've never played the game, but I have watched gameplay videos. This to me is a great example of almost precisely what I would hope to see from CIG for the BH mechanic ( assuming you chose to take the escape route) The beauty of this system is that using the tile set and procedural building system that SC has designed, you could essentially have prisons scattered around various planets or large asteroids in various systems. The prisons themselves would be made from a seed, therefore the chances of you being sent to the same prison twice should be almost zero. This prevents players from easily determining how to find the exit or the ship or the weapon that makes escaping from the prison SUPER EASY and posting it on-line. You might commit a crime, in Stanton, be caught in Ellis and serve you time in a prison in the Pyro system or maybe the Magnus system or any myriad of systems. Where you wake up would be entirely random. Now I wonder, has anyone played Archage and used the Trial System? Does it work? What is bad about it and what (if anything is good about it?) It seems that you as a player can convince the other players of your innocence (if it actually works in game is another story). So the question is how would you escape and what would be the course of action if you simply chose to ride out your sentence. Let's start with the second option first. If you simply decided to play out your sentence, it would mean you stayed in the prison complex for the duration of your sentence. What that sentence was would be dependent upon your crimes. It's variable, but IRL it could range from 10 minuets to a few hours or more. People may complain that this isn't fair and that it discourages people playing the game as criminals and/or it will simply mean players will abandon characters rather than sit in jail and lastly that it encourages griefing of other players. I disagree on all counts. It encourages BETTER Criminals. Which is something this game (any game should encourage). Any jamoke can be a thug-for-hire. It takes time, precision and patience to become a Leonardo Notarabartolo. But even he got caught (because he was sloppy). Play smart and maybe you won't get caught. I think the notion of players abandoning their characters is one of the most over-used threats in the game. If you want to abandon a character that you spent 100 hours building and improving his reputation with the organizations and criminal NPCs that are important to you be my guest. It's no skin off my butt. You'd be better off simply serving your time, trying to escape or listening to the first item on the list; Griefing will not work. Sure I can maybe ram a player and force the computer to think of another player as a criminal. However, even if that will result in the criminalization of your character, it will almost definitely result in the loss of mine. (even a disposable character has stuff they built up over time, such as rep, wealth, ships, etc.). Secondly, even if I do send your character to prison, it will be for the shortest of prison sentences. The Archage trial system should (in most cases) result in very light sentences (if any sentence at all is handed down), especially if you have no previous criminal record. IIRC, after time a crime would be expunged from your record as long as you didn't commit another crime in the meanwhile. The great thing is that through the procedural system and the subsumption system, you could have dozens of different sub missions in the prison and/or outside of it that could in-fact INCREASE you reputation in the game. Hell even a "Clean" player might be presented with a mission to deliver a letter to a gangster's daughter, because the guards won't get a message out for him and none of his associates can approach his daughter. As a reward, he might provide you with guaranteed safe passage through a particularly dangerous region of space (controlled by his faction of course). In the course of a 10-15 minute prison stay, you could have befriended a person who might help you later. Or just the opposite. Now as for escape, that's also a great game play. Because of the size of planets, it's not hard to scatter dozens, if not hundreds of prisons around a planet and you might not ever know where they are. The game can essentially place underground prisons several stories deep with only a single or dual entrance areas. Using stealth, players need to steal, either the access codes to a nearby ship or find their way to a (relatively) nearby settlement (which could be REALLY far) which would require the player to grab supplies to make the journey across dangerous landscapes.