The frigate is easy to kill, but at least in the context of the current game it still needs a higher bounty. I suggest something similar to the flag - like $5000 bonus (not score) for the person who kills it plus $2000 (not score) for each member of the same faction in the sector (or even overall).

Just a quick thought: If the widgets produced were so valuable that they would easily out-profit other trade routes, it would encourage a nation to defend its kill; for example, a group of mostly golds kills the frigate. They pick up as much loot as thhey can while fending off the alien bots. But there is sooo much left floating around. There would be a nation incentive to gaurd the hoard so other players could come in and get some of the pie.... even though it would still be a dangerous place to be.

This would effectively provide the same type of nationwide bonus, while keeping it more in tuue with RPG gameplay. To make it more nation specific, maybe have the leading nation (in terms of which nation primarily killed the frigate) be able to trade in their own home sector to get 2x or 3x the amount per widget. I'm just pulling this out of my butt, it's just an idea.

A special half-breed of pirate -- the vulture -- would surely arise to pick from others' kills. But that adds depth so it's ok.

Well, the biggest problem at present is that the fighter wings keep respawning even when the frigate isn't around. If they didn't you'd see less of an unorganized free-for-all with the salvage loot, and more factions trying to protect thier cut of the booty. I personally think that the wings shouldn't respawn except when the frigate does.

Stop calling them "wings." They're "purple alien fruit fly ships!"

The frigate is risky to kill. Bomber hunting pirates have arisen latley.

no, they're Furies.

Really? Cool. I want one.

=D

Furies as in the ancient god-type-things that were supposed to avenge the wrongs done unto innocents? Neato. I never knew the name before...

On topic:

The bounty should be MUCH higher, and for more people. The max bounty should be about 20000 and should go to whoever hit it the most. A smaller bounty goes to each of the five people that hit it second-most, third-most, etc. That way no one person can swoop in with a gatling turret and get the kills after I dump 40 avalons into the frigate.

Idea! each hit gives you some bounty, if a ship has 1000 hit points and a 100 vounty, you hit it for 400, then you get 400 bounty, but if it has 100 hit points and a 1000 bounty, you hit it for 1 hit point you get 10 bounty. Get it? No? Too bad!

One of the reasons that I made the suggestion I made was I hoped it could be implemented with the minimum of new code and still address the short term issues of division of the bounty to a limited extent. If that isn't true, then I wouldn't want the devs to bother putting a bunch of work into a game feature that isn't part of the long term feature set (like capture-the-flag). I don't know if in the long term frigates will enherently have bounties, and the ability to salvage the wreckage is a much more interesting in most regards anyway.