[malloyd]

Originally Posted by cptbutton

I am thinking my PCs may get a bounty on pirates they kill or capture. What are plausible rates? ICr500 each, 2000 for officers? That’s dead. Alive and interrogatible is double.

Presumably that depends on who you turn them over to. The Imperium might offer a little cash, but seems unlikely to pay out on corpses without really incontrovertible evidence. Paying rewards on less than "evidence leading to conviction" or equivalent isn't a good idea even if the Imperium weren't a relatively just government - encourages too much fraud. Individual worlds, or people who have been robbed by any particular pirate might offer more, and/or demand less admissible evidence, which the Imperium might or might not consider it kidnapping (or slave trading) to hand people over in exchange for.

Salvage or prize money on captured ships is separate. As is the bounty of destroyed pirate ships.

In a setting with sophisticated shipping economics of the sort that it's possible to get loans to buy ships, salvage will be the real money. Recovery fees for stolen ships are likely to be a couple percent of their value (or at least of the outstanding mortgage (paid by the bank) and the value of any insurance policy (paid by the insurer)). For ships that aren't actually stolen taken in piracy, honest governments might cough up a similar percentage when they seize them as assets used in a criminal activity, or they might insist it's your civic duty to turn them in. Ships taken in space would presumably be turned over to the Imperium, which does seem like it might pay something, but not all member worlds will if you somehow capture them in somebody else's jurisdiction. For destroyed ships, well you're back to those rewards mechanics - there's no apparent reason for anybody to pay anything more than they would for corpses.

(But the kicker is that it is only redeemable at a Naval Base. Or you can sell the voucher to a discounter.)

If the payments are small, this seems unlikely. The administrative overhead (to counter the risk of forged vouchers if nothing else) is a substantial burden for no obvious benefit to the Imperial Government. Not every Starport Authority has megacredits lying around, but for a handful of pirates at a few thousand each? That's petty cash.