Bounty added after pirates are destroyed

if they were advent there is a research called karma that automatically places bounty on you for killing trade ships, it could have been this increasing your bounty.

The correct name of that ability is Karmic Retribution. It applies 100/200 bounty on the person who killed the trade ship (depending on researched level) and I believe is also subject to the Persuasive Offers research subject (increases bounty purchased by 12.5%/25%).

Yeah i guess there could have been confusion between that and all the other advent karma based abilities... sorry.

edit

50 percent sarcastic at the pointless name correction

50 percent I guess you gave numbers so your post wins on statistical evidence.

no need to bite his head off mate, he simply corrected you, and maybe the info helps the OP. if you dont want to be corrected, dont be wrong, but dont be sarcastic and self-righteous because you were wrong.

plus, the numbers, whether useless or not, are an accustomed thing on the Sins forums. i personally, dont care about the exact value of shield mitigation against me, but some people do, they like doing the math and being able to know for certain how much punishment a ship can take before it gets nailed. given, here, i guess it does not matter but dont be sarcastic, its simply bad manners and poor forum ettiquet.

back on topic: i sometimes get the same thing, players keep raising bounty on me after i kill the pirates, though i cant remember if there were other players at that stage or not.

if it is a bug, i guess it should be fixed, if it was advent then you know the reason why, in the meantime, be happy hes spending credits on useless bounty rather than on more ships to attack you with

There is a method behind the madness of placing bounty on other players even after the death of the pirate worlds. This method seems to be easily overlooked by players so let me divulge the secret.

The secret is: It attracts other players to attack the player with the bounty.

Idea behind the madness: Bounty isn't just for the pirates. Yes it decides who the pirates are going to engage, but there is another use for it. When another player attacks and destroys ships of the player with bounty on their head, the attacking player recieves X amount of money from the total bounty for every ship he/she destroys.

Lets say that player Blue is currently fighting a heated war with player Red. Blue is worried about player Green's forces on the other side of his territory, but he can't send many troops to patrol far borders. The pirates have been eliminated from the game so Blue can't get them to attack Green and distract his ships. Blue still decides to place 10,000 credits of bounty (just a made up number) on Green. Player Orange who borders Green sees the 10,000 credit bounty and thinks "Wow, I could really use some extra cash right now," and sends her fleets to assault Green's planets. She destroys everything she can and gains credits from the 10,000 bounty for each of Green's ships and structures she destroys. With this new invasion of his territory, Green sends his forces to defend his worlds; leaving Blue to focus his efforts on the war against Player Red.

So placing bounty on other players even after the destruction of the pirates can be very beneficial at times. This goes for both Human and AI players.

what you describe only applies if it there is 3 or more team or FFA, but it kinda useless if you are playing 2 teams

edit: However, it would be nice if they changed how the pirate system worked though, instead of putting bounty on a single player how about putting bounty on a team instead

Yeah, I was playing against an advent AI.  I didn't know that that feature existed.  I wasn't aiming to kill trade ships, but I wouldn't be surprised if I was.

 ...darn, didn't catch that in the OP. I feel dumb now, excuse me for a minute while I go sit in my corner.

Ok, minute is up. Yeah, whoops, well in that case then yes, that would be a waste of money if it was only a 1v1.