(02-27-2015, 12:56 PM)Croft Wrote: 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.
what you are saying may be right, however the context you are using it in is just completely wrong.
because there are obvious paths across the galaxy to which smuggling has to go through, it is not hard to catch a smuggler at all. if the players responsible for catching the smugglers could be bothered they would just catch the smuggler. and if you are going to claim that all smugglers fly X amount of K off the plane you are lying. it is not worth doing.
I've seen smugglers do almost anything to avoid being caught, flying above or below plane is just one of the old classics. It may not seem worth doing but if you're just watching a movie or an old TV show while you glide through empty space an extra few minutes during an hours boring flight is a drop in the ocean. Some go to even greater lengths to avoid being caught, I'm sure if Hone was still around he'd give a spectacular sermon about quick docking and F1'ing smugglers. (Also, kindly don't call me a liar especially when it's something I haven't even mentioned)
(02-27-2015, 01:09 PM)Hidamari Wrote: So basically smugglers get punished because law enforcement is too dumb and lazy to use their brains and move between the two most direct paths across a system (which might not be on a lane), so its more like "Hey! since nobody could be bothered trying to catch you, weve made the amount of money you made from this not worth it!"
I wouldn't say punished, more like abandoned.
(02-27-2015, 01:09 PM)Hidamari Wrote: people will ALWAYS use the fastest route to get to a location. if somebody enters colorado via the galileo jumphole and is heading to new york, without the lanes (because unless they want to get caught they wont be using them) there is 1 path that can be taken, which cuts across TWO lanes and moves directly past a Xeno base.
back in the BPA we actually flew around the systems to catch smugglers because the paths are obvious, and now with light fighters being so much faster this issue should not exist.
There's a fatal flaw in your example there, you're assuming that someone knows the smuggler has entered colorado but without metagaming like hell no one would notice which brings me back to my initial point. Without forcing smugglers through jumpgates the police are utterly unaware of anyone coming into a system, even with patrols you are highly unlikely to catch any but the most well known smugglers and that's by using the chat list.
Unless you want police to camp jumpholes all day long it simply isn't going to work so it leaves us with two options, change the jumpholes or change how smuggling works.