Smuggling

[Drake]

Freighters are my favorite ship type (the Aurochs is extremely sexy, by the way), and I love the idea of being able to use a freighter to make a sizable profit, even if it's primarily through smuggling (or especially if it's primarily through smuggling). This kind of thing has been discussed for years, but nothing has come of it yet. As 4.86 is released and FLhook continues to get tweaked with greater complexity, I hope something like this can be worked out.

If the Smuggler ID got tweaked to give bonus profit when selling contraband, but the ships were limited to freighters (and maybe the much smaller transports), that might work pretty well.

[Maelstrom]

I'd like to edit my last idea. It could be made so that with the right Id and ship you get 15% bonus. With the right ID, ship, and commodity you can get 25% bonus. Or it could go 20% and 40% I suppose. That way we not only encourage smuggling in certain ships for role play we also encourage smuggling role play commodities. For example, a slaver Id with a shuttle hauling slaves or organs gets a 25% bonus. A smuggler Id with a shuttle hauling the same slaves gets only a 15% bonus but would get the 25% bonus while smuggling things like cardimine. A merc smuggling could get the bonus on millitary hardware such as arms.

Smuggler types could still use the larger ships, but it would be much like mining is now. A couple of smugglers in freighters purchases some commodities from various bases and planets. They haul it to the larger ship and then escort it to the destination. There they fill thier holds again and then spread out to sell it while the large pirate transport or what ever remains deep in an asteroid field.

Addendum: I guess we could all just get together and form a smuggling faction that limits ship size as part of it's role play. It wouldn't have the increased selling percentages but would increase team work and roleplay while the percentage idea gets bandied about. It's something anyway.

An example of it's ship limits could be: Smugglers are limited to lf's, hf's, and freighters unless there are three people working together. At that time one of them could change in a hf for a vhf, a bomber, or a small transport. The key here is that three members from the faction have to be working together, not just online at the same time. If four or more are working together then they can run lf's, hf's, freighters, a vhf or bomber, and a medium transport. It would definately promote teamwork and roleplay in the faction. The guy flying the transport is liable to get bored, but the group can switch back and forth.

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[Hawk]

From a developer perspective - one of the difficulties is that right now, all cargo is driven by volume-profit. That means the bigger your ship, the more profit you make.
Han Solo didnt fly a mega-transport, he flew a modified freighter...

I'd love to see anything that would promote the use of freighters while smuggling. I cringe and grit my teeth every time I see or hear of a transport doing it. Smuggling in a firefly or anything bigger is pretty much the unlawful version of power trading in my opinion.

Both of these are on track. This is the problem that will be encountered. If you try and make smuggling as lucrative and dangerous as it should be it becomes the next thing for power-trading profit whores. How about this. Place stricter cargo size limits on the smuggler ID. That will encourage more freighter and firefly type transports. Also, make it illegal to carry cargo like cardamine and slaves on a corporate owned 5k transport. Personally, I don't think slaves should be carried on anything that is not designed for human cargo anyway.

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[Hone]

I disagree with hawk. Power trading profit whores is a perfectly good way for smugglers to act. Just make it dangerous, as he suggested earlier, and if you dont like em making all that money, pirate em!

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[Stuart.croll]

I'd like to thank everyone for their feedback. Several points and suggestions have been raised which I hadn't considered in particular the bonus for the Smuggler ID. Personally I've done most of my smuggling with Junker characters.

Thank you all again.

Hopefully something might be done to increase the challenge and interest in this aspect of the game.

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[Tachyon]

Hopefully something might be done to increase the challenge and interest in this aspect of the game.

You want a challenge ?
Smuggle Cardi from Malta to Manhattan, through Kusari and Colorado in an unlawful tagged ship (incase you are part of an off. faction)

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[Leo]

Little bit of a gravedig, but has this been considered by the dev's as a possible patch on down the line? I know 4.86 was just released and we've got bugs, but later down the line is this still plausible? If so I'd really like to see it in action!

~Leo

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[AeternusDoleo]

People would start to guard their contraband cargo the way they guard their ore.

By F1ing when a red comes into view? :laugh:

And as far as I know this was taken into account with the economy rework. You just need to find the right route.

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Wide awake in a world that sleeps, enduring thoughts, enduring scenes. The knowledge of what is yet to come.
From a time when all seems lost, from a dead man to a world, without restraint, unafraid and free.

Mostly retired Discovery member. May still visit from time to time.

[Boss]

Several years ago (!) I was working on this very problem with my good buddy Maskage (I think, might have been Kurosaur).

We derived an equation that would place the maximum value on cargoes delivered by ships with 500 cargo space. The idea was to make it so that larger ships would still make roughly the same amount of money for a load, but freighters would have a huge profit margin buff. The only problem is we couldn't figure out a way to stop a 5k from running with two freighters and making out like bandits.

(Assuming a 15m profit for a 5k on a 1-way trip, a freighter would make roughly 7m for that same trip. Thus, two freighters and a 5k would each make 28m for that run if they convoyed and offloaded cargo to the freighters.)

Food for thought?

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Just go play the game and have fun dammit.

all in all the conclusion is that disco doesn't need antagonist factions, it doesn't need phantoms, it doesn't need nomads, it doesn't need coalition and it doesn't need many other things, no AIs, the game is hijacked by morons to confuse the game with their dickwaving generic competition games mixed up with troll-of-the-day.

[Jaika]

I started to smuggle again and as i saw there was a few changes...like: the price of the Counterfeith Software on Ames was dropped and also the Black Market Munition got a lower price on Battleship Fes, i still don't know anything about the other illegal cargo but it seems many of it got some price change. I smuggle in a Salvager and i can make a decent amount of cash by smuggling. But i also support the idea to give some buff to the smuggler ID but don't forget about Junker ID. They do a lot of smuggling too.

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There is no such thing as too much firepower.