E.P.O.C.H's Contract System

Yet another of my bright schemes (or not so bright judging how well my last one fared ). I feel that something not touched on very much is how the E.P.O.C.H will act as a Bounty Hunter Guild.

Although the idea of a Bounty Hunting terminal/contract system is very much in debate and possibly a thought in the developers as well, we can be pretty sure that many of the contracts that the E.P.O.C.H recieves will be given directly to it in any case. Be this just by a casual chat in a cantina that turns business, or by a client who wants a more RP meeting than interfacing with a cold game mechanic (and of course, there may not be a system in the first place).

Therefore, here's how I picture the process of all contracts:

- Any Agent, and even Initiate, may recieve a contract from the vast community that will be running around inside the game. When this comes, they catalogue the contract, the target/aim, when and where it will take place, the person who contracted the E.P.O.C.H and by then we will also have a pricing list, along with other notes given by the client. This contract will probably go on a special thread in the Officer's Forum.
- An Officer will then review the contract and then judge who to send out. This should be done on a criteria of sorts, so for instance, Jylan would be better off if there was sabotage with mechanics involved although if a force user had to be taken down than there would be a good chance that Nex is your man. Everyone should get a slice of the action though and contracts should be distributed evenly.
- Activeness should not be factored in though, but if someone is online at the time of reviewing, then to make things easy, it would probably be best to send him/her on the case. Two or more Agents may also be sent if deemed nessecary. For instance, taking out a Crime Boss may need two pairs of hands. After all, Luke just scraped the barrel with the Sarlacc - and he was the Chosen One.
- At the end, the client gets proof that the job is done (a screenshot may work will with assassinations). Payment ensues, or else the client themselves are subject to being tracked down by Republic alts - or a deposit will be taken anyway. Money is distributed between Agents involved and the Guild Bank. Methinks the Bank gets a 30% cut?

So that's by idea. Of course - it's all open to a long and hopefully fruitful debate

I like that idea and had something rolling around my head that was very similar indeed. We have the website here so we can show things like Screenshots, or "report in" as to how a job is going. I also have (once its a bit more complete) a "contracts" seciton of the Wiki which can show some of our previous/current jobs. At current it is RP only jobs, seeing as the game hasn't started but I don't see why we can't put missions we've accomplished for others there, a kind of trophy-case database if you will.

Heck we could even take this a step further and once TOR goes live we could add a "contracts" section to this very forum, but I think we'll need to chat about how that could work.

Nice idea, Harl - I for one fully support it

Thanks for the support Lunar, but I do have a small gripe. The reason I think that contracts should be put in the officer forum is for confidentiality. I mean, say the HoD want to attack The Jedi Order and hire us to do the job. The Jedi will naturally want to know who hired us so they can attack back. By looking on our site, they'll find out and even as a RP guild, they'll dubb it on slicer skills. This way also removes the chance of moles in the guild to find out who hired us. If we get to a high position in the server, then these moles could get quite a bit of money by supplying people with knowledge.

Harlequin2 wrote:

Thanks for the support Lunar, but I do have a small gripe. The reason I think that contracts should be put in the officer forum is for confidentiality. I mean, say the HoD want to attack The Jedi Order and hire us to do the job. The Jedi will naturally want to know who hired us so they can attack back. By looking on our site, they'll find out and even as a RP guild, they'll dubb it on slicer skills. This way also removes the chance of moles in the guild to find out who hired us. If we get to a high position in the server, then these moles could get quite a bit of money by supplying people with knowledge.

Great idea Harl, I think I liked it when you mentioned in the the Roles Thread, just on the point of confidentiality Allies can't see certain areas of the Guild anyway ie the Guild Disscussion section, we can set which type of members cans view certain forums, so creating a contracts section that we could view but allies could not would be done easily (5 minute job in fact), we'd still have to worry about informants though!

This idea has ofc great potential Harl especially for RP, although I can see some problems that we might have if there is no system in place.

Contracts would be to an extent pointless for both parties, ie if the Path decide to kill a Prax member for some slight then they would give us the contract and then that would be it for them, apart from a picture of the dead member they would be no longer involved and would get nothing out of it, and for the Prax member well they would die and lose nothing (ignoring possible PvP consequences).

Contracts against opposite factions/Guilds would be hard to pull off, if we try do a contract with a Empire faction Guild they would have to agree to a duel to be killed lol (assuming standard faction rules apply) and finding an Republic Faction player would be tough to do (although not impossible with a CODEX informant)...

I love the idea and those ar'nt critisisms just factors we'll need to work around to make the system work, I was goning to post solutions but I'm being dragged off to make onion bahjis!

Thanks for the extra barrel of support PJK However, I'd still like this to be for Officer's Eyes only to prevent moles and the only people who know about the contract will be the officers, the client and the acting agent(s).

This isn't just for RP though, this is how we'll function as a Bounty Hunter Guild. We are contractors after all and my idea is that this is the way that we'll recieve contracts, perform them and deal with the end result. There's a good chance that there won't be a contract system in the game and so this system will ensure that we remain a Bounty Hunter guild. If there is a system, there is still a place for my idea for those who want a more Roleplay deal.

Saying that contracts would be pointless for both parties sort of defeats the role as a bounty hunter guild in my eyes. From the top, we'll never fight off our own allies, I believe that this is a common recurrance in our alliance contracts and is something that differs us from backstabbing crime cults out there. As for the numberous benefits:

For the Client, depending on what the job is, they would recieve satisfaction with our services. For example, assassination would please them in knowing one of their top enemies is dead. Enforcement would help the raise up levels or protect them from enemy assaults. Spying would give them access to knowledge and happiness in knowing those secrets. They would potentially recieve a good roleplaying storyline arc with us. More fun would by made by that catalyst with returning fire and so on.

A single screenshot may give quite a few chuckles and satisfaction in knowing that the deed is done. Even though the target of an assassination will ressurect by some means, there will probably be some stress and anger in getting ganked and some disadvantages with death as well such as losing money or gear quality will probably be implemented as well. In honesty, from my persepective, the advantages of hiring us are many.

As for the person that we're working against, they're not supposed to get any benefits, their at the end of a blaster point with assassination and their secrets will be discovered with spying. Of course some may see this as fun (as they should - it's a game!), and this can spur all sorts of roleplay events.

And for us, it doesn't really need mentioning. We get credits, a lot of fun out of acting out bounty hunters and roleplaying. We also get more well known which is debatably a good thing.

But I agree with the one-faction thing, although this is something we had to give up when we set ourselves up for the Sith Faction, giving up our 2-faction policy for simpleness sake. Most of our clients will be Sith anyway as a quick peek around the allies forums will show and CODEX is supposedly anti-terrorist anyway. We can still spy on the Sith side though (with increased efficiency as they can't kill us!).

Any more questions?

Harlequin2 wrote:

Thanks for the extra barrel of support PJK However, I'd still like this to be for Officer's Eyes only to prevent moles and the only people who know about the contract will be the officers, the client and the acting agent(s).

Well Thats open to debate if we're attacking non-allies I can't see why we would have moles from within our own ranks lol but its a point to consider.

Quote :

This isn't just for RP though, this is how we'll function as a Bounty Hunter Guild. We are contractors after all and my idea is that this is the way that we'll recieve contracts, perform them and deal with the end result. There's a good chance that there won't be a contract system in the game and so this system will ensure that we remain a Bounty Hunter guild. If there is a system, there is still a place for my idea for those who want a more Roleplay deal.

Saying that contracts would be pointless for both parties sort of defeats the role as a bounty hunter guild in my eyes. From the top, we'll never fight off our own allies, I believe that this is a common recurrance in our alliance contracts and is something that differs us from backstabbing crime cults out there. As for the numberous benefits:

For the Client, depending on what the job is, they would recieve satisfaction with our services. For example, assassination would please them in knowing one of their top enemies is dead. Enforcement would help the raise up levels or protect them from enemy assaults. Spying would give them access to knowledge and happiness in knowing those secrets. They would potentially recieve a good roleplaying storyline arc with us. More fun would by made by that catalyst with returning fire and so on.

A single screenshot may give quite a few chuckles and satisfaction in knowing that the deed is done. Even though the target of an assassination will ressurect by some means, there will probably be some stress and anger in getting ganked and some disadvantages with death as well such as losing money or gear quality will probably be implemented as well. In honesty, from my persepective, the advantages of hiring us are many.

I probably worded that badly not to mention I was thinking exclusivly about assasinations and not other contract work, but from the persepective of the hiring guild some services might seem pointless to them and would only have appeal from an RP standpoint.
My main concern was my charging people for services they dont need we might not get much business, so we might be better offering them for free and just getting kicks from it ourselves but I'm overthinking this far to much consdiereing the release date

Quote :

As for the person that we're working against, they're not supposed to get any benefits, their at the end of a blaster point with assassination and their secrets will be discovered with spying. Of course some may see this as fun (as they should - it's a game!), and this can spur all sorts of roleplay events.

Fair enough I was only thinking in terms of pain we would cuase to them becuase PvP (at least in WoW) does no armour damage, but you're right ofc its great for sparking RP between Guilds and being ganked does hurt

Quote :

But I agree with the one-faction thing, although this is something we had to give up when we set ourselves up for the Sith Faction, giving up our 2-faction policy for simpleness sake. Most of our clients will be Sith anyway as a quick peek around the allies forums will show and CODEX is supposedly anti-terrorist anyway. We can still spy on the Sith side though (with increased efficiency as they can't kill us!).

Any more questions?

Actually thinking about it Republic hits would be the most fun to do and employ a system were we would actually have to act like bounty hunters, for instance lets say the Path want us to find a ganker that attacked one of their members, we couldn't find them really from our side (assuiming they have a find player system like the do in WoW where you can seacrh for players in an area) so we would need an informant to help us find them, a character like Ree'tek for example.
They would log on and search for said player and find the area they are in, then we send him a message to try and find his location "a couple has died and have no heirs in their will, I will send you the monies and keep a small profit for myself" etc then the informant passes on his location to the BHs and we find him, confront him and kill him it might be tricky but definatly a fun prospect, hunting down some rupublic noob and punishing for his past acts.

Also something I'd suggest is making our own hits, like putting a bounty on the head of an NPC in Republic Territoy and random Republic players, just for the hell of it so members can have a challenge, we could also give prizes out to the people who do it first and do difficult ones .

Really Harl I think this is a great idea, my thoughts only stem from not really knowing how it will all pan out with the uncertainties in the game is all, a good thing to do might be to draw up a list of what contracting services we could offer that way we could discuss how they will work more constructivly.
I'll post some of my ideas up tonight becuase this post is huge already

Well, many services might be useless to the client and so they won't hire us for them Each to their own. Player A might like knowing that his ganker got some payback while Player B might think that it's a waste of time and it's only just one kill. Of course, we will make people pay (we're a business! ), but perhaps pay should be done according to level and difficulty of what's asked for. For instance, a Level 60 will have more dosh than a Level 10 and so should be priced accordingly.

I like the idea of Republic alts hunting out hits for us, although that's going dangerously close to the 2 guilds on 2 Factions thing that turned out a bad idea. If there is a language barrier of some kind or not enough stealth options, then an alt would also be best for spying jobs. I also like the idea of "Challenge Hits" to keep us on our toes, but I think that we'll have plenty of Republic people that annoy us to make hits on.

One thing I'd like to bring up again is the idea of PvP and PvE servers. PvP is pretty much the only way to allow "surprise attacks" as in PvE my experiance is that you'll have to make someone open themselves to PvP first which loses the authenticity of an ambush or sudden strike, which drains the experiance.

Epoch Contractual Services

External

Description: Services contracted to Guilds, Individuals etc. for means of profit, Alliance upkeep and Role-play

Wetwork (Assassinations)

Killing either specific persons or small groups for a one time fee.

Applicable Factions:

|- Empire
|-Republic (Higher possible fee)
|-No allies

Standing Orders

Standard shoot on Sight orders for Guilds persons named by contractor.

Applicable Factions:

|- Empire (or not I don't think this type of contract would help our reputation if we constantly attacked possible allies, also anyone we did this with would have to be informed before hand like a declaration of war )
|-Republic
|-No allies

Enforcement

Providing firepower and supposrt to contractors for a specific amount of time/or objectives complete, (used for RP battles and ofc could be used for Raid backstory)

Applicable Factions:

|- Empire
|-No allies


Internal

Wetwork (Assassinations)

Killing either specific persons or small groups that have been deemed enemies of the Guild

Applicable Factions

To be left to discretion of Relevant officers.

Standing Orders

Standard shoot on Sight orders for Guilds persons named by Relevant officer.

Applicable Factions

To be left to discretion of Relevant officers.

Enforcement

Providing firepower and supposrt to Guild members for a specific amount of time/or objectives complete, (used to help lowerlevel Guild members Raids ect)

Applicable Factions

To be left to discretion of Relevant officers.

There's a rough idea of what services we could offer, feel free to add and discuss

I just finished my list actually, here's what I have on the table :

Assassination: Pricing greatly varies depending on who is targeted, defences, ranking and so on. This is basically, the removal of a single figure from the Galaxy. The E.P.O.C.H strives to achieve this creating the least amount of attention and un-necessary casualties.
Bodyguard Service: The protection of an individual or individuals. Pricing varies depending on threat level and overall ranking of character. This may involve following the person(s) into skirmishes.
Demolitions: The removal of a structure. Pricing varies according the dimensions of target along with how heavily guarded it is. Clients can expect Agents to use top-of-the-range equipment for the procedure with no trace back to them.
Diplomacy: Aid in diplomatic negotiations may be given between two factions by providing both parties with comfortable settings for discussion along with seasoned negotiators which will personally take part in helping with understanding both sides.
Enforcement: The aid in defence and offence, even medical, of an organisation. E.P.O.C.H Agents will be acting Officers, leading and organising people along with providing specialist support utilising weaponry and structures to benefit the client.
Fear Induction: For various wealthy clients, the E.P.O.C.H is capable is exacting fear on small to large group to enforce will and loyalty, utilising mock attacks and explosions while sustaining minimum casualties.
Group Removal: Against a number of hostile individuals, the E.P.O.C.H, once hired for a varying price will be able to remove this group, either permanently or temporarily for the client to see fit. Temporary incapacitation costs more however.
Information Acquirement: The E.P.O.C.H will provide talented individuals to find and retrieve specific information with the least trace possible through infiltration, slicing and various other professional means.
Individual(s) Capture/Retrieval: Utilising stealth and precision, the E.P.O.C.H’s talented Agents are geared to the finding and capture or retrieval of almost any individual or individuals. Pricing is in accordance more to threat level.
Item Acquirement*: With many sources, skills and subtlety, Agents are able to find and acquire almost any item for the client, from holo-pads to space stations. Pricing is typically less so than that of individual capture and retrieval.
Sabotage: The crippling of an object, this can range from a ship’s engines to an organisation’s databases to a factory’s vital mechanics, ensuring confusion and disorganisation for further action. Pricing varies accordingly.
Smuggling*: For a differentiating price according to what needs to be Smuggled, E.P.O.C.H Agents are capable of running a great variety of illegal goods under the noses of authorities with greater speed and range than most other Smugglers.
Trading Services: Utilising the E.P.O.C.H’s many trade partners and routes, along with specialist businesspeople, we are able to sell objects previously difficult to gain credits from, the E.P.O.C.H requests only a small percentage in return.

EDIT: I added a colour scheme because many of these will not be applicable in the actual game, and we can only do some without the other side's agreement. So, here's the code:

Green: These contracts we may do without the body we're acting on agreeing or fully utilising game mechanics.
Orange: These contracts may be done in the game but will require acknowledgement and participation from the side we will act on and filling in the gaps that the game mechanics cannot do.
Red: These contracts are very unlikely to be applicable in the game (although we can't say for certain yet) so can only be done in play-by-post.

* = Depends what item(s)

Although these are great services to be offering RP wise I dont think we could pull these off in game, or at least a good majority of them, this is similar to what LWs done on the EPOCH wiki (Great work again LW ) nice ideas but can we implement them?.

This comes down to knowing so little about the game again!
hmm I dont know where we can take this now, I propose making a list of RP services like this and an In-game sevices list, then expand/explain on them and put them in the Wiki? I can't see the point in fleshing out and saying we can offer certain services that Bioware might not implement in the game but we can nail down some services which we know we can do

Already ahead of you and have updated my post above! I did draw inspiration from Lunar's list (thanks L-Dubz) although some were from my own noggin. Either way, I think it's well known that the ones in green we can do so we should perhaps expand a bit more on them?

Looking on them actually, there seems quite a lot we can actually do which seems like quite a good prospect. There's only 2 we really probably won't be able to do, but other than that, it's fine. Besides, the other side can know with the ones in Orange, it could add to the roleplay value.

Aye, agreed. I think so long as we can clearly identify those that can be done as RP contracts before the game comes out then it won't be too much of a problem.

I think it would be nice (from an Allies point of view) to know some of the stuff we can do for them, because being quite a secret organisation, information is at a premium with us

Well, I think it's safe to say that we can definately do:
Assassination
Bodyguard Service
Diplomacy
Enforcement
Group Removal
Trading Services

So these are probably the ones that we should try and expand on first. We can also probably do the ones in Orange in-game with participation from the other side. Also, depending what the item is, Smuggling and Item Aquirement shouldn't be a problem either.

Sorry for double posting, but is it to my knowledge that the Lost People section of the Azure Towers provides missions for Initiates - finding and retrieving lost individuals? Hmmm. Well this would be excellent in-game:

An Agent with spare time will make a fresh Lv1 Character of any class and hide them away on their starting world. We'll just say the rough area that they'll be located (not mentioning starting area and send them on their way). Sometimes, we'll have it easy, so they'll just be in the nearest watering hole (or similar), though this may still require looking hard. Alternatively, you can be an an enemy hotspot, forcing the intiate to battle his way through. In some circumstances, we may even bring in a character to duel with the initate over the person, adding variety to the mission.

I think this is perfect for testing out new Initiates, they can perhaps choose this over participating in the Hyperion. What do you guys think?

This is kinda similar to the informants that we would have to find people Harl, although it might be tough as some areas might only be accesible to higer level characters (a problem for my idea more than yours /end-thread-derail)
I like the idea Harl it would be great actually to have an in game RP initiation, it would have to be set up ofc before hand to make it work but it has great potential, it also is a test of any newbies RP skill.
And its your thread harl you can double post :p