I personally don't like this idea as a faction, but that's because of my (somewhat strong) opinions about the Bounty Hunters Guild.
In my opinion, the Bounty Hunters Guild is a loosely organised group. Men and women sign up, they get a ship (from a loan), then they hunt the Sirius bounty networks looking for jobs. The organisation is primarily based on piloting and tactical effectiveness. Dumb bounty hunters don't get far.
The Bounty Hunters Guild may have a NPC faction, but that is just to represent the NPCs in game. They fly similar ships with similar weapons, because (I suspect) they are rented/loaned to them when they sign up.
Say it's like joining a Union. You sign up to the Union, you become a member with whatever benefits it gives you, you get a job or continue your current one. You may be a Union member, but you aren't linked to your fellow comrades by rank. While there are a few leaders, representatives (Guildmasters and other ranks unknown to us), the majority just go by with their daily grind (in this case, looking for bounties/contracts).
When you see two or more Union members working together at the same work place, it isn't because the Union has assigned jobs to the group to work on together, it's because they all have found a contract to work on.
While the Union might give you a job, as a member, they don't do this often. You are expected to find your own contracts, to make your own money.
They don't get given a large list of targets (IE the factions noted) and go hunt them over and over again. They look for appropriate bounties, depending on their skill and the credits offered.
An example, using NPCs as the basis (Outcasts being better than low level bounty hunters):
A rookie who accepts an Outcast bounty won't be alive for much longer...
Another thing about Bounty Hunters, from what I know from Vanilla and Discovery's background details (rumours, infocards etc), they generally don't form groups. A hunter may fly with his/her friends and collegues, but they don't form factions and stuff. They are out for money, not for power or anything.
About the "Trade Syndicate", the closest faction to this would be Interspace Commerce. As the owners of tradelanes throughout Sirius, they constantly place bounties on many unlawful ships and pilots (backed by infocards, if you want to know). IC is the largest bounty contractor in Sirius, from the information I've found.
Weapon and ship restrictions, those are fine. Except the battleships and cruisers, in my opinion, these are Bounty Hunter Core only. Out of the Hunter-section's jurisdiction.
A note about the Bounties, I don't particulary like the fact that every member of said factions can be hunted and killed for no apparent reason. Sure, they may be unlawfuls, but have they actually caused the Trade Syndicate trouble? Why would the Syndicate post bounties on random pirates? If its about eliminating pirates, that will never happen. Society will always have their "unlawfuls", and there are hundreds of thousands, if not millions of unlawfuls in Sirius. While the Bounty Hunters Guild is large, it is not going to take them all out.
Another problem, what is the recruiting process like? One could just put a BH- in front of their name, and pvp all these pirates with little or none roleplay basis. Keep that kind of behaviour in mind.
The way I'd handle this, I would not make this into a faction. Scrap the whole BH- naming part, and just have the group of Trade Syndicate members organised somehow.
Create a Bounty Board in the Employeement Office, where your Syndicate members can post bounties on players (factionised and independent), with a decent reason (not "they are unlawful). Post around 5 million or whatever sum you agree on for smaller ships, more for gunboats. Cruisers and capital ships would be worth a lot more.
Characters wanting to apply for the reward must provide a screenshot of the Kill, a screenshot of their Weapons and their ID.
**These ships may only take bounties against Cruiser or above class ships**
Allowed Capital Ships:
Bounty Hunter Destroyer
Bounty Hunter Battlecruiser
Bounty Hunter Battleship
Allowed Fighter/Bomber Weapons:
All Civilian weapons
All Bounty Hunter Weapons
All Codenames Codenames are considered universal currently, there is no admin-applied resource for determining the faction of a particular codename, otherwise everyone would be a bounty hunter (as they would appear to have the majority of them, according to wrecks).
All Fighter-Missiles
All Mines
Mini Razor
Supernova
Nova Torpedo Launcher
Sunslayer Torpedo Launcher
Starkiller Torpedo Launcher
Allowed Gunboat, Cruiser and Battleship Weapons:
All Civilian Missile and Basic Turrets (civilian)
All House Military Missiles and Turrets
Zoner Turrets
GMG Turrets
IMG Turrets
Cerberus Turrets (all)
Capital Inferno (all)
Razors (all)
Mortars (all)
If any of these guidelines are violated, the bounty is not awarded. Bad luck.
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