Let's talk bounty's

[AlphaMirage]

Those are knights, not yeomen.

No Knights have Mechs and MechWarrior training in exchange for service.  Those guys would be planetary or regional militia

[massey]

Only if you have a legitimate actor, otherwise its kidnapping, piracy and assault.

I think I can find some minor noble somewhere to sign off on an attack for a share of $75 million C-Bills.  Or I can just buy myself a pardon afterward.

[The_Caveman]

If you can afford your own BattleMech and the facilities to maintain it, you are almost certainly at least a knight if not some other minor noble. If for no other reason than the local baron would consider it wise to have you as a loyal retainer. And while many planets probably allow some form of weapon ownership, it is very difficult to imagine ordinary citizens being allowed to keep functional BattleMechs in any era--if for liability reasons alone.

While there are plenty of stories of people hiding Commandos away in their barns, those machines are hidden for good reason. Think of it like the guy with the giant sea mine in his garden shed in Hot Fuzz.

Exceptions being mercenaries, who pay hefty guild dues to the MRB/MRBC (who are probably filing local license paperwork on their behalf), and gladiator worlds which tend to have a more devil-may-care approach to law and order to begin with.

[massey]

If you can afford your own BattleMech and the facilities to maintain it, you are almost certainly at least a knight if not some other minor noble. If for no other reason than the local baron would consider it wise to have you as a loyal retainer. And while many planets probably allow some form of weapon ownership, it is very difficult to imagine ordinary citizens being allowed to keep functional BattleMechs in any era--if for liability reasons alone.

While there are plenty of stories of people hiding Commandos away in their barns, those machines are hidden for good reason. Think of it like the guy with the giant sea mine in his garden shed in Hot Fuzz.

Exceptions being mercenaries, who pay hefty guild dues to the MRB/MRBC (who are probably filing local license paperwork on their behalf), and gladiator worlds which tend to have a more devil-may-care approach to law and order to begin with.

We're drifting a bit, but my head-canon is that there's sort of a circular relationship between nobles and mercenary units.

If you're a rich noble, what do you do about your second and third sons, the ones who aren't going to inherit land?  Well you either send them off to ComStar (functioning as the priesthood in our pseudo-medieval society), or you get them a commission in a prestigious unit (you go off with your Marauder and join the Davion Heavy Guards as a Captain or something), or you have them start a mercenary unit.

As a merc, hopefully you're successful.  You get rich, you conquer some territory, you earn yourself a title.  So if you're the third son of Count Jimbo von Doofus, your dad scrapes together a reinforced lance of medium mechs and sends you off to make your fortune.  After 25 years of fighting around the Inner Sphere, you've built that lance into two mech companies, and you see your big chance.  There's an invasion coming on some border world, and if they take it they'll need somebody to hold and administer the southern continent.  So you pull some strings and pledge allegiance to the Duke, you hire another merc company to back you up, and now you're Baron Steve von Doofus of the southern continent of Mudball IV.  You retire from being a mercenary and you settle in to rule your little border world.

If you're just some peon who happens to find a Whitworth at the bottom of grandpa's pond?  Well then you keep it quiet until you see your chance.  If you can get the thing up and running, and kinda learn to pilot it, then it's extremely valuable.  But if you let the local authorities know, somebody's probably gonna show up and take it from you.  "Thank you for your patriotic contribution to Baron von Doofus' defense of our world."  That's another reason why you join a mercenary unit.  When the Hell's Satans mech company is getting ready to redeploy off world, you've already met with Captain Harley Davidson and arranged to leave with him.  Rather than just walking your mech across the city to the drop port, you probably have a transport truck come out to the farm and load it up (along with some security you hired to make sure Hell's Satans don't rob you blind).  You get a contract and everything drawn up at the local ComStar center, and now you're officially part of the unit.

But anyway, there's be this circular relationship there.  Most merc units would have some connection to a noble somewhere, at least mech units.  It wouldn't be hard to get justification to attack somebody who had a big juicy insurance policy.

[massey]

To follow up (but more off-topic), I think this is one of those ideas that one gaming group thinks is absolutely brilliant, but doesn't survive contact with people outside the group.  That happens sometimes.  Somebody in the group comes up with what they think is a great idea, the GM buys it and so allows it to work, and nobody else says anything contradictory (either because they don't see any problems, or because they know once the GM is sold there's no point in arguing).

A lot of the setting for the game RIFTS is based on Kevin Siembieda's (the owner of the company) personal rpg campaign.  If Kevin likes an idea, it makes it into print and now it's official.  You can see in his game notes how he thinks the game should be played.  If he doesn't want a player to have a particular piece of equipment, he usually makes it super expensive.  One example was this magical amulet carried by his warrior assassin women that created a force field 3 times a day.  By itself it was kinda nice, but particularly powerful.  But he didn't want players to get them, so he said they sold on the black market for 10 million credits apiece.  Okay, no big deal.  Warrior assassin women are tough, you don't want to encounter them.  But then he creates this city where every member of the town militia and police force carried these magic amulets.  I guess he wanted to show how rich the city was, and that they had a secret connection to the assassin women's masters.

But really it just meant that there was a near infinite supply of money if your character could just rob the local 1st level cops of their magic amulets.  There were thousands of them, and he was specific that they wore them all the time.  I don't know what he was going for, but what he created was an easy get rich quick scheme.  Our group immediately wanted to take advantage of it, requiring the GM to say "no, I'm changing the setting, they don't have any of that stuff".  I don't know if anybody in Kevin's group tried it.

I think this kidnapping insurance is basically the same thing, down to the little amulets they wear.

[Colt Ward]

Funny you should mention kidnapping insurance . . . because that is a real world thing, and DOES happen overseas when execs or talent goes to the worlds crappiest destinations.

Why is it done?  Because that is one way you get people to go there to work- besides paying for expensive security on those people.  Private apartment towers with a fortified lobby (BP glass, metal barricades, limited access through main door, security desk with two armed guards holding pump shotguns & body armor), electronic controlled lock-style door to the garage with walled off ramp under security cameras, security room with video monitors & ready response security team, roving patrols on ground level and in garage, and mag card access to stairwells & elevator to go up.  Probably more that I did not see, but as a teenager it was a bit weird to walk out of the building and be followed two blocks by a SWAT level geared guard until I caught a cab- as the kid of one of the contracted exec level techs.

So IRL kidnapping insurance exists and is a viable business- but the above level of security was probably a requirement for the written policy for the telecom my dad worked for at the time.  Funny enough, I saw the movie Proof of Life 4 or 5 years later and wondered why the setting looked familiar . . .

He worked for another tech company with contracts in Nigeria, Yemen, and a few other holes in that area- mostly short duration instead of living on site for years.  I know that company had some problems with kidnapping insurance after someone got grabbed in Yemen which led to the company going bankrupt.  My mom freaked when the company was talking about changing the kidnapping insurance policy & terms.  Lol, we did NOT talk to her about some of the DoD hostage stuff he went through for Afghanistan.

Having a ransom policy is a solid idea- and of course with the way mercs are, its probably self-financed just like their life insurance & health care.  Its not something you are going to broadcast on the planet's media when you take that parade from the spaceport to the garrison base ("Here is a Lyran Zeus walking down the street Martha, built on Defiance its one of the larger mechs these mercs have.  Interesting fact, it and the owner-pilot are covered by a 5 mil ransom if they are ever taken captive in battle.  Next up is the Hanse Davion High School Marching Band, winners of the 3045 Planetary Band Competition!").

IIRC my history, several Middle Ages battles had prisoners separated out between those who were expected to be able to afford a ransom vs those who could not.  Things did not go well for those who could not be expected to pay ransom . . . like being sold into slavery.  So having a ComStar verified chit- maybe a holoseal or whatever could not be forged form them- anyone can take to the local ComStar office and verify X amount is in escrow for the safe return of the warrior & mech makes some sense.  Especially in a interstellar setting.

[Mohammed As`Zaman Bey]

So $75 million.  LOL..That is a legit merc Contract at that point.   If your GM doesn't have someone coming after you for $75  million then your GM isn't doing his job in my opinion.  That is too big a target.

  No, it isn't. Attacking a DCMS unit in their own ground is just suicide, and no hiring hall would even think about it, because failure means they wind up in an unmarked grave. You're talking about attacking a unit known for sending invitations to Clan units, for "training purposes"...and winning. You're talking about a unit that looks at Walcott as a vacation resort... Maybe, the commander could post a contract on his own unit to see what shows up. Thanks for the idea.

[The_Caveman]

You're talking about attacking a unit known for sending invitations to Clan units, for "training purposes"...and winning.

*coughmarysuecough*

Funny you should mention kidnapping insurance . . . because that is a real world thing, and DOES happen overseas when execs or talent goes to the worlds crappiest destinations.

Got a close friend who worked for a major oil company overseas. They had pretty detailed K&R policies and the thing was sufficiently hush-hush that I don't think even he knew what he was "worth". He certainly wouldn't tell us.

[Mohammed As`Zaman Bey]

*coughmarysuecough*

  You can blame the GM. Unless its a scenario with all the forces in print, he relies on the random tables for everything. That means, depending on how he rolls, you could face an elite assault unit or a green light unit, and everything in between; Balance was not in this guy's vocabulary. The GM is also a stickler for doctrine -If you are given a lance with a Spider, a Stinger, a Locust and an Urbanmech, you are no allowed to split up the lance or allow them to break formation. More than one unit was been crushed because a commander could not reorganize their unit after deployment. This rule has also hampered Clan units that were randomly combined. "That's how they were assigned, that's how they trained." There was no arguing.
Beginner players units get 2-3 training missions and have been annihilated on their first real tabletop battle. Some players won't accept a contract that didn't include their units at full strength while one player only took garrison contracts, or never entered a battle that he hadn't already won.
  Three players had their units participate on Luthien, so I played both IS and Clan, to the point that I memorized the scenarios. There were also random battles with random forces. One battle could have wave after wave charge IS lines until they all died, while another could have the Clans give up the field without committing half their forces' Random rolls will do that.
  My main advice for new his players was "Don't grow attached to your character." and "Once your unit reaches Crack, your survival is better than 50-50."
  My GM is a hard core BT player. He buys vehicles by the company and could field a battalion of Crabs. He has thousands of minis and has run regiment on regiment actions more than once, including huge battles without a single mech on the field.
  I'm sure if there were a table that had "bounty hunter" as a result, he would have used it, but he never strayed from the rules, even though I expected assassins, at the very least...but I wasn't going to bring it up.

[deathfrombeyond]

So, in a related topic, I believe I’ve said that the bounties listed in one of those mercenary updates for the jihad seemed a little on the light side for how dangerous their quarries are...

[Two Guns Blazing]

I've finally got around to reading the short story that you get with the new beginner box set "Golden Rule: A Colby's Commandos Mission"...I'm only a few pages in so I'm not sure how hard the mission will turn out to be...but so far it seems to be a mission where they have to take their 2 lances (with potentially one of their Mechs out of action before accepting the mission), and lay the smack down on a warlord that seems to be threatening some mining interests on a very inhospitable planet 19 light years away (so a single jump???).

They accept the job with the offer of;

800,000 C-bills, + 110,000 C-bills per Mech + travel costs.

[Elmoth]

So roughly 1.8M cbills (2 lances) for that particular mission

[Bosefius]

Re-reading TRO:3050 Upgrade it makes mention of several people with bounties on their head and the lowest price is 10 million C-bills.

[Two Guns Blazing]

So roughly 1.8M cbills (2 lances) for that particular mission

If they are including the damaged Thunderbolt that they own (and I guess the employer would not know if they took it or not), then the total would be 1,680,000 C-bills. If they didn't include the Thunderbolt (because they didn't use it in the mission), then the total would be 1,570,000 C-bills.

Not sure if that would be worth it, I'd want more, much more, especially when you consider the possible death or injury to your command and damage to and possible loss of your Mechs.

As it turns out (not giving too much away to ruin the story for those who haven't read it), they...obtain...some extremely significant "Salvage", which it is yet to be determined what they do with it (the story continues in the short story found in the new full-rules box set). If they end up keeping the "Salvage" then the mission would be incredibly fruitful through sheer luck...

[truetanker]

"Luck" as you call it, is a GM's fiat.

Rule #1: The GM is master of all, their whim is a tale to behold.

Rule #2: See Rule  #1.

TT

[Mohammed As`Zaman Bey]

So, in a related topic, I believe I’ve said that the bounties listed in one of those mercenary updates for the jihad seemed a little on the light side for how dangerous their quarries are...

  The thing is, anybody who owned a battlemech would be a target (or their immediate family), as they they had proof of wealth, in the form of a mech. Every mechwarrior (or family member) with their own machine would be fair game 24/7 due to that fact, whether they wore a blood chit or not.
  "Pay up, or we are sending your little girl home in installments, if you know what I mean, nya ha ha!"
  If mechwarriors were such fair game, so would bounty hunters capable of facing mechwarriors on the battlefield. It would be a feeding frenzy because bounty hunters would not have armed guards and trained units to back them up. The easy targets would be other bounty hunters, then solo mercs, with mechs or aero, who live in apartments without any guards or unit-owned facilities.
  One of my characters was a member of a merc unit that, when not on contract, ran like a 9 to 5 job; Check in, engage in regular online training, rent sim time, attend briefings, go to lunch, attend more BS stuff, then clock out. Warehouse and mech bays were all rented, living facilities were all on the unit employees. Of all the PC unit members, my character was the only one to hire body guards for himself and his family and use blood chits...but never once was the unit on Galatea bothered by anybody in ten game years...go figure.

[Colt Ward]

So, in a related topic, I believe I’ve said that the bounties listed in one of those mercenary updates for the jihad seemed a little on the light side for how dangerous their quarries are...

Thing is, its not a headhunting contract- its icing on the cake of whatever contract you ran into them on.  So its not the primary pay-off, just a encouragement to pound on them a little harder if you run into them.  Interesting note . . . the reward for Jesse James that brought him down (by conspiracy and murder) was $5000 . . . which is $125k today.  Apparently it was a common amount for some of the more notorious types.  The Mexican gov't in the 1830s & 1840s were paying $100 a head for a male Apache, $50 for a woman and $25 for a kid- no wonder they hated the Mexican state.

[The_Caveman]

Of all the PC unit members, my character was the only one to hire body guards for himself and his family and use blood chits...but never once was the unit on Galatea bothered by anybody in ten game years...go figure.

If you're hunting mercs on Galatea of all places, you'd better be a badass. Even the baristas at Starbucks have cockpit time on that planet and unless they have an active feud with the unit in question, pretty much everyone is going to react badly to the news that someone is targeting mercs. It'd be like killing a cop at a police convention.

On Mudball VI, yeah, it's a lot more dangerous to live outside a fortified compound.

[General308]

  The thing is, anybody who owned a battlemech would be a target (or their immediate family), as they they had proof of wealth, in the form of a mech. Every mechwarrior (or family member) with their own machine would be fair game 24/7 due to that fact, whether they wore a blood chit or not.
  "Pay up, or we are sending your little girl home in installments, if you know what I mean, nya ha ha!"
  If mechwarriors were such fair game, so would bounty hunters capable of facing mechwarriors on the battlefield. It would be a feeding frenzy because bounty hunters would not have armed guards and trained units to back them up. The easy targets would be other bounty hunters, then solo mercs, with mechs or aero, who live in apartments without any guards or unit-owned facilities.
  One of my characters was a member of a merc unit that, when not on contract, ran like a 9 to 5 job; Check in, engage in regular online training, rent sim time, attend briefings, go to lunch, attend more BS stuff, then clock out. Warehouse and mech bays were all rented, living facilities were all on the unit employees. Of all the PC unit members, my character was the only one to hire body guards for himself and his family and use blood chits...but never once was the unit on Galatea bothered by anybody in ten game years...go figure.

Yes but this is the thing you said it is wide known that your unit has this chits.   It isn't that you have this insurance that is the problem.  It is that you have advertised it and let it be known.    There is a big difference in thinking I might get paid if I go after someone.  And knowing it you have created a situation were they would know it.

[deathfrombeyond]

Thing is, its not a headhunting contract- its icing on the cake of whatever contract you ran into them on.  So its not the primary pay-off, just a encouragement to pound on them a little harder if you run into them. 

I don't have access to that Jihad related mercenary book, but I vaguely remember mentions of some mercenary groups whose primary source of income was bounty hunting...so much so that multiple mercenary groups would cooperate in bounty acquisition.

Didn't make a lot of sense to me, especially with how low the bounty payouts seemed, compared to the cost of even getting to where the bounty target was, without factoring in the costs involved in combat, etc.

[Mohammed As`Zaman Bey]

Yes but this is the thing you said it is wide known that your unit has this chits.   It isn't that you have this insurance that is the problem.  It is that you have advertised it and let it be known.    There is a big difference in thinking I might get paid if I go after someone.  And knowing it you have created a situation were they would know it.

  That was the point. The average mechwarrior isn't even worth capturing -Kill him and take the mech. My unit's personnel were worth ransoming, to the point were even a sniper would think twice about pulling the trigger. If any of my characters were out of their mechs, they would either run or surrender. He was no grunt. As a mercenary, the commander was so cheap that  mechwarriors walked guard duty, when not in their machines. None of my characters drew ammunition, ever, because resisting capture was not part of his job. When the commander wanted to arm the techs, my character was the first to refuse: His tech was his employee, and forbidden to carry weapons. He was a tech, not a soldier. If he could not run, he was to surrender and wait for ransom.

Didn't make a lot of sense to me, especially with how low the bounty payouts seemed, compared to the cost of even getting to where the bounty target was, without factoring in the costs involved in combat, etc.

  During the Medieval era, the two things that compensated for a battle were looting and ransoms. A noble who yielded in battle was hastily removed from the field because of their value to their families.

  In the BT universe, blood chits compensated civilians for preventing soldiers from being captured, and rewarded civil treatment of prisoners by opposing units. The idea of kidnappers stalking around a battlefield is ridiculous, I'd shoot them on sight, as looters. Nobody would travel several jumps, risk entering a war zone as a neutral, attack and capture a combatant, just for a cash reward. It doesn't happen, and I think my GM figured that out, too.

[Kovax]

Nobody would travel several jumps, risk entering a war zone as a neutral, attack and capture a combatant, just for a cash reward.

This is my take on it as well.  If you're already at war with the guy with the bounty, it's a little extra incentive to take his 'Mech out of action first, rather than take out his lance-mate and have him retreat to safety.  You'd probably shoot him or his 'Mech anyway, it merely adjusts the priorities.  It doesn't warrant sending men and equipment 30 light-years to some other planet to take on a combat unit just for the bounty, unless the bounty is well into the tens of millions.  It does inconvenience the individual with the bounty, because he does have to watch out constantly when NOT on the battlefield for that random dude from the local housing project or trailer park trying to make a few extra bucks without a clue about how to do so or the risks involved.  If the bounty is high enough, then he might have to worry about some local professional trying something whenever he's out and about on his own.

[Two Guns Blazing]

Nobody would travel several jumps, risk entering a war zone as a neutral, attack and capture a combatant, just for a cash reward.

Famous last words...there are some very desperate people around that do a lot of crazy stuff for cash in real life on our planet...multiply that by the amount of people you have in the BT setting, and I think you'll find that there would be some candidates...

[idea weenie]

The chit is a reward for returning the character to a Comstar location, alive and healthy, not merely a reward for kidnapping.  So if the character is kidnapped, and the character has a ~1M C-Bill chit, lots of people are going to try and find them to rescue them.  It makes any kidnapper's job much harder as all of the local population is now looking for their target.

You could even have an issue where if the rescuee chooses, there is an additional reward for the bodies of the kidnappers (or for the live capture of them).  Something like this on planet's evening news: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haThIxPnYro

Plus, if someone on the planet kidnaps one of your people, and it is supposed to be friendly or somewhat safe, word of that is going to get out and other mercs will want to beef up their contracts citing lack of local security.  Chances are the planetary ruler will pay the ~1M C-bill chit back to the merc unit, hoping that they don't leave a 1-star review "got kidnapped on the planet, would not guard again"

[Sir Chaos]

The way I see it, there´s going to be two kinds of bounties.

The first kind are for things that are pretty much universally agreed to be war crimes - using NBC weapons, burning down a city for shit and giggles, talking in the theater, that sort of thing. Whoever issues the bounty is going to deposit the money with either ComStar or the MRBC, depending on the era, after ComStar/MRBC have reviewed the issue, so that everyone who considers going after the target knows that, firstly, their target is legitimate, and secondly, they´re really going to get the money.

The second kind is where someone - Sunnyboy Liao, some petty noble, or whoever - promises X amount of C-Bills for whoever brings him the head of a particular person or a member of a particular unit. To collect, you have to show up and present your catch, either in person or to a representative of whoever issues the bounty. Anyone who considers going after that target knows that, firstly, it´s anyone´s guess if the target actually did something wrong other than annoying someone with too much money, and secondly, it´s anyone´s guess if they´re actually getting paid, and if they´re going to survive turning in their catch instead of being turned into a very convenient dead hero for the local propaganda efforts.