LogFAQs > #910387721

2. Bounties seem very close to a good solution to the paydown issue. I'm not entirely sure I understand how they work, however, and they might cause a lot of bookkeeping overhead for you (if two leaders PM the same bounty hunter, for instance). Let me see if I get this, in any case:

- You put a bounty on a dude, for half the paydown cost. It comes with a free AP that must be used on the bounty hunter. If you use that AP, you pay the remaining half of the paydown cost.
- You get mercs equal to their roster slots. So a bounty on a 6 paid down to mid = two bounty hunters.
- You DON'T get extra roster slots to field these bounty hunters
- You CAN'T get mercs that themselves would need to be paid down, for example, hire a 6 to fight a 6. You could hire two 5s.

Quick notes on this:

-If you roster the bounty hunter you also pay the other half of the paydown cost (and generally speaking, if you use their abilities they cost money, not just if you use the AP. This is to encourage actually USING the AP instead of trying not to do so in edge cases, it should be a selling point!). The idea is that if the bounty hunter is doing something for you, it's assumed they're making themselves worth the extra cash instead of serving as a deterrent. Sorta like how you pay the full paydown cost on rostering a paydown even if you lose, because the game assumes you made good use of the paydown instead of being a dumbass.

-You get mercs equal to the EXTRA slots a paydown takes. So, one merc for a 6 in mid, two mercs for a 7, etc. This is because otherwise, paydowns turn into a complete trap early on. One 6 vs two top shelf 5s (assuming you bought one of them) is interesting. One 6 vs THREE 5s tends to go the way of the 5s pretty hard. Like you don't take Master Chief to beat Sora and Wesker and Ratchet, that's just too much power to overcome.

-Correct, you don't get extra slots. This is because it turns the bounty hunters into a 'double advantage' option. Not only do you get another merc and more AP, you even get them for free! 6v4 (in the example of paying a 4/6 down to the tier below them) is super hard to overcome unless the leader that put up a bounty is fielding a squad of jabronis.

-Correct, you have to get on-tier mercenaries. You can grab Sora to fight in mid for you if you put a bounty up, but you can't grab Id. It's a way to allow people who want to stick to low and mid tier characters to do so, not a way to fight paydowns with paydowns.

Something I'm noticing is that the mechanic of hidden info and conditional costs is proving a bit hard to track. There's a way to simplify it, which is you instead put out a 'generic' bounty on a given upkeep for X mercenary. For example...

Putting a bounty on 6/weeks. Sora, wanna come and kick some paid down ass?

This has the advantage of removing the burden of hidden info and need-to-be-there the current bounty system puts on the admin team, and we can simplify the rules on costs (pay X cash, get half back if you didn't use abilities from the bounty hunter or roster them). The disadvantage is it requires a cost adjustment upwards, because it's much more flexible than the current system, so for fairness' sake a bounty would have to cost a bit more than a paydown (something like...6-8 for bountying a 4/week, 12-14 for bountying a 5/week, 8-10 for bountying a 6/week, etc. etc. etc.). This is because low/mid heavy teams have the advantage of facing lower upkeep costs compared to high-heavy teams, so their econ can (in theory, anyway) take more of a licking when it comes to fighting money with money. Thoughts everyone?
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Shine on, you crazy diamond.