First... When I spotted this thread I dismissed it for two reasons. The first was that he provided a rather strong number of trade runs and also because he missed a great many trade runs.
There are a substantial number of legitimate trade runs. The most lucrative are legitimate in fact. They're also not listed here. Though you can find just a few of them in my welcome aboard primer.
If smuggling has an advantage it's in the mindless ease of the sport. F2, read your book for 8 minutes, f3, f2, read your book for 6 minutes and so on. Furthermore many of the smuggling runs are so simple that there is almost no challenge in them. A good example for both is the slave-cardi and the slave-diamond runs. Both of which I have grievance with. The trips are almost entirely mindless f2-f3 through territory which is almost entirely unpatrolled by "hostile" groups or chiefly controlled by friendly parties. It's safer than trading and easier to boot.
People like easy.
The Deut-Organ run of legend didn't make the most money ever. It was just mindlessly simple. Hence the attraction.
So I wouldn't say that there aren't any legitimate trade runs. I would say that claim is inaccurate. I would say rather that the smuggling runs are far, far too simple and safe which swings the balance of favor.
Mining is hampered right now by mining ships just hitting cruise the second ANYTHING shows up at 14k. Screaming NO NO NO NO NO STOP STOP STOP I REPORT YOU STOP STOP STOP before you can get within 10k or dashing for a quickdock in Omega 7. Yes I know why you're so popular Kruger and Omega 7. IMG capfleets lollerskates. Thankfully some changes are coming to correct that.
Now, onto some points.
1) ID based trade = Can be exploited.
2) Ship based trade = Can be exploited.
3) Dynamic economies = Can be exploited.
The problems with those three systems being exploited is in that it's damn hard to measure because, for all intents and purposes, parking two ships next to one another which can perform various tricks isn't "cheating", it's just abusing rule mechanics.
Let me give some example examples of various systems and their issues. Food for thought.
A) Cheating at mining. (RUS)KOOPLAH (name is a coincidence) reads a guide on some forum about adjusting an ini file to adjust the number of rocks that are spawned at certain parameters. Suddenly he can mine 10000 iridium a second. Cannon has a tool in place to monitor this sort of thing and collects various names and observes to see if there are any new tricks being brought to the table he didn't think of. Two weeks later a lot of battleships suddenly vanish from around Crete and Malta and Igiss gets a lot of angry letters asking him why they can't login.
B) Slaver ID gets a sell bonus to slaves if they have a freighter, for example.
- I move 5000 slaves in a transport next to sale point. I then jettison slaves into space/some other gimmick. Friend then moves back and forth selling slaves in his freighter while I get the next load. In a world where people drop their cargo and intentionally suicide in order to exploit one way trade (I encourage you to give that a try, spring is here and the ban will give you some time to spend outdoors.) routes.
The above can't be monitored. As far as the game is concerned everything is "working". Any system which rewards people for using a certain type of ship needs to build that reward into a larger cost. Such as the overall transit. We see this in terms of freighters becoming extremely nasty combat ships with excellent cruise speed for example. The reward over normal transports is there. They make either lovely escort ships or an different measure of security over bulky cargo.
C) Payouts on missions. Already falls under A in a fashion. However I personally feel that missions should play a stronger role and would like to see them take the place of code hunting, which is a failure in every possible sense. However again there is a snag.... This is entirely possible, anyone of the dozens of people clamoring for "better" missions are more than capable of doing the work. Mission work falls very very shy of being glorious.
So if you want to see better missions... Stop posting about it and get over to starport and get your hands dirty.
D) Dynamic economies: Kinda possible in a way. I have some ideas for this that will work, though my ideas aren't really "dynamic" so much as "accumulative". A dynamic economy within disco is such an insane task that I honestly cannot begin to process how it could ever possibly work. There are roughly 4832948290482309482309842390843284903284902384923842390842903 stations in disco. Mostly because every faction needs to have 1 more than everyone else otherwise their wang will fall off.
Simply coding in a viable static economic system is such a cumbersome nightmare that there is only one person who has risen to the task and actually accomplished any work. Xoria. Mostly because he isn't a person at all but some kind of creature who feeds off of hope and defecates* inis. Even the most passionate champions of a "reformed" trade system have been unable to produce anything more tangible or functional than a wall of text.
Now taking those hundreds of lines of code and turning it into a dynamic system? Extremely unlikely. Games like EvE use extremely complex systems which were in place at the time of the game's inception as a cornerstone.
Could we do it?
Yeah.
Will it ever happen?
Not unless we get a team of dozens to work on the thing and troubleshoot the living hell out of it. Even then probably not.
E) Certain factions receiving a boost to cargo types.
So I sit down. I do the math. It turns out that moving commodity X to destination Y makes exactly 4 c/sec more than any other run. If I use ID zed I can then fit 2000 extra of that commodity into my hold.
Suddenly every trader on the server is that ID. Diamond run abounds. ID is nerfed. People scream about how Cannon is trying, and has been from the start, to oppress Ageira/ALG/Junkers (LOL scrap field making 50 million an hour DUSTY HATES JUNKERS [and then 3 factions vanish literally overnight.] olololol.)/etc/etc.
To conclude the trade system isn't perfect. But it is a pretty decent mechanism by which to generate fundage while at the same time moving players along their nice little tracks in order to give people who shoot and defend them something to do. I feel there are a lot of weak spots. It's good to point them out. I do not feel that the entire system is borked or needs some kind of massive overhaul. I do feel that the best way to tackle the weak spots is to point them out one by one rather than claiming that huge sweeping changes are required which results in pages of often ill conceived or mis-informed speculation on how things should be.
