(02-27-2015, 05:39 AM)MetalPheonix Wrote: Dumb question, what's FR5? I've never heard the term before now....
Anyways, I concur with OP. Smuggling could stand for some "buffs" to the risk, adding excitement (and honestly worth). Right now smuggling is almost basically capped at the ptrain, already limiting the profit by a considerable amount of cargo space.
As a smuggler, you have a target on your back, that anyone who has the brains to scan you has a chance at shooting. Any freelancer can collect a bounty, cops, navy, greedy pirates, etc. Why not reward it?
You also get cool RP chances, like talking your way out of a situation, bribes, blababababa. If people sacrifice interaction and speed for a for reassuring chance at getting their cargo to point b (not taking tradielanes) they minimize their money making speed. Which in my opinion is a fair trade off.
Also, why force people to communicate? Like I understand that's the driving factor of the game. But if they wanna solemnly grind money and avoid player-to-player interaction. They shouldn't haaaave to find someone to mine for them, or whatever. Otherwise we lose the free from freelancer.
Rewarding people for avoiding interaction is a really bad idea (See cloaks and jumpdrives for further proof of this) this mod thrives off meeting someone else, it's the only reason it exists. To say "Hey! You've avoided everyone on the server for a solid hour, have a big wad of credits!" is inviting disaster. It's why you'll never see smuggling prices made competitive to trading, not in it's current state anyway.
In a nutshell, Disco lives off traffic and the majority of this resides on the lanes. If you aren't on the lanes you are literally out of sight and out of mind, almost like you didn't exist.
In my opinion smuggling should be reworked entirely, from the ground up. Move it away from the big transports and focus it on freighters, push it as far away from normal trading as possible.
Make it a two part system, give pirates and unlawfuls a sell point closer to House space, price it for 3.6k cargo ships but NOT junker bases, give folks a little choice for a change.
From there, place docking satelites (like the one at Leeds) at certain planets and price the sales for freighter sized cargo.
Next MOVE THE SELL POINTS OUT OF LIBERTY, give each House a high demand for certain blackmarket items.
Now for the risk, the capital planets of each House will have their smuggler satelite NEXT to the docking rings with considerably higher sell prices.
Finally, for a bit of flair have the ID give a chance when flying a freighter to show TLAGs scans as a random basic commodity (food, goods etc).
For pricing, it should not contend with trading or mining/hauling that way folly lies. This system is about high risk, high reward but not excessive reward. For a full freighter at a main planet satelite I'd expect a payout of around 5 mill, for the backs of other planets around 1-2 mill. Max flight time from buy point to sell would be about 15 minutes tops, quicker if you use the lanes of course.