Shops

The purpose of a Shop system is to provide a healthy supply of contract missions. The best Shops have easy Starport access, many factions present, and few (if any) disruptive faction states.

INTRA tracks all reported faction activity in real-time, so bounty-hunters always have fresh information when searching for locations.

Search

The Search function judges the value of a Shop based on whether it has a Starport as opposed to an Outpost, the travel distance from the main arrival star, and how many useful factions are present at the moment. Useful factions are those which are able to offer bounty-hunting missions; for example, an anarchy faction is never useful.

Supplying a reference system name will bias the results in favour of nearby systems. Farther-out results are still possible if the Shop distance is low and the number of factions is high; enter a maximum light-year distance if you need to limit it explicitly.

Some additional filters are available:

• Minimum number of useful factions.
  This can be imposed both in total and by allegience.
• Maximum distance to a Starport or to an Outpost.
  Supplying either distance will also require that such is present.
• Local Powerplay territory.
  Three Powers relevant to bounty-hunters are promoted, but all are available.

Missions

Bounty-hunters can overlap their contracts by accepting them from multiple different lawful factions, but where all target the same pirate faction. Those contracts can then all be completed efficiently, especially if only one Starport is involved.

Bounty contracts always target a pirate faction from another star system up to 10 light-years away, so at least one such faction must exist. Two or more will divide the contract targets, so it is best if there is exactly one pirate faction in range.

Other faction activity can impact the types of contract available. For example, warring factions only target each other until the war is resolved, such that bounty-hunters may wish to find a more lucrative location in the meantime.