Aren't the consequences to smuggling just legal 'piracy' of "Pay X mil fine or you go red to lawfuls" on the forums? Basically what you're suggesting is that people would be pirated without even getting an in-game interaction and they will have to keep looking on the forums to make sure they have not missed a fine when they last played because there is the risk the next morning/week/etc their ship will be red to the smuggling drop off point. You're literally asking police gameplay to become a desk job, you park on top of Newark and begin parsing all the TLAGSNET data without ever taking off to actually do a patrol, because why would you need to - you can do your fine gameplay without even the other side knowing you've found them. So instead of having a reason to fly the ship, you'll have a reason to log the ship and "afk" in space, collecting data and collecting money on the forums via fines. How would that be any more compelling and fun way to play the game for both sides?