Contraband commodities re-price

[Haste]

I did about 18 Cardamine runs in a Serenity in .87 in like the span of a month. Made pretty good moolah per unit of time invested. I always used the tradelanes, though.

Smuggling is not nearly as bad profit-wise as people here seem to think. An increase in risk for an increase in profit would be nice to see, however.

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[Croft]

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)

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.

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.

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Jimmy The Rat | Croft's Feedback | The Rat Pack

[nOmnomnOm]

Croft it's not like regular indy traders RP anyways.

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[Croft]

I know but that doesn't mean we can't aspire to better things, be the change you want to see in the world and all that jazz.

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Jimmy The Rat | Croft's Feedback | The Rat Pack

[Hidamari]

Metagaming is a central part of this games design, it has annoyed me for years that people STILL complain about this day in day out. The player list allows you to find other people when you otherwise should/would not know they are present.

This is NOT a bad thing as without it nobody would ever meet anyone outside of the new york circle. perhaps if the server limit was in the 10000's (*drool*) then it would be an uncessecy part of the game beacuse the player density around the server would be much higher, so you wouldnt need to have a universal view of whos online to be able to meet another person and do some RP/PVP

this is something that should be expected the moment you log in, because as explained it is central to the game and unavoidable.

and yes i appologise for calling you a liar without cause.

I dont need hone to tell me about people F1'ing and quick docking smugglers, because ive experienced it for years, again its not really a MAJOR problem, people let their egos get bruised too easily. and there are systems in place to stop these things from happening for a reason.

a lot of smugglers dont bother to put themselves off the plane because the population density is so low, the likelyhood of actually encountering somebody else is minimal, even back in the day when the server was 225/225.
yes, there are some that do, particularly convoys of cardamine I have lead myself, it is undeniably safer to be off plane, but if you are trying to make money, time is far more important.

Not only is time important because of the amount of money you can make. but also because the longer you spend somewhere the higher chance you have of being intercepted before you leave the area, and the more of you there are the greater that chance increases.

perhaps a system should be introduced where moving more than 10K above or below the plane would cause rapid attrition of your cargo as a balance measure.

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[AceofSpades]

Weeee this conversation again!

As was mentioned, I did bring this up in a very detailed way before.
No doubt the current 'smuggling economy' is broken as all hell.

The managing of only a profit margin, and no variable for risk factor, makes such inevitable.
While it is a shame, people will argue all sorts of bat**** reasons why things 'can't change'.
The reality is, smugglers will always smuggle, no buffs needed for that... they just want an risk-based economy that isnt cheesy as hell.

Idk why folks are so intimidated by the idea of smuggling being revisited, but the real truth is, if you made the cost of such items upwards of 10k, coupled with a reasonable profit [some are already close to Ores], youd actually generate alot more gameplay, as cops and BH's would have considerably much much much much much much much much much more reason to actually seek out smugglers.

If you think this will allow for idle gaming, 'easy profits', or afk goto travel... and that mining somehow encourages the opposite, where its boosted profit margin is 'protected', I chuckle. Its remarkably easy to manipulate all parts of the Disco economy, people simply want some realism and risk for smuggling. Its honestly boring buying 'illicit high-risk' goods like these but having no problem dumping a full load when its convenient since it only cost me <2 mil to fill.

Also, smuggling routes are notoriously long. Some Ore routes are quite short. Long smuggling routes further provide risk and reason to make such a thing [intelligently balancing input cost versus profit margin] possible. It's not like the time required to mine Ore [input cost] is very high anyways, and POBs have removed the need for player-player teamwork on that one.

Oh well, argument has been made before, like most Disco things it is immune to improvement or change until someone up top decides so. Best shot for this is to apply for the dev team and offer your aid in tweaking the economy [something id considered as well being a mathematics freak].
Until then, managing contraband prices on a POB is the best one can hope for ^^

But hey, why not try I guess. Someone please listen, and at least give it a try! (Use our bi-weekly economy bonuses to reprice a Contraband commodity in this way instead of just boosting its profit, damnit!)

[WesternPeregrine]

How about instead of increasing the costs and risks of smuggling, we increased the costs and risks of regular/industrial commodities? That way regular trader would have a greater profit and greater need of escort/collaboration, miner would still be miners, and smugglers would remain those that dare to make a quick but risky cash.

I don't mean all the regular commodities, but it feels weird to be able to buy consumer goods, or engine components, for a penny, and get a dollar in return, while others are hitting rocks for 300 or 900 dollars a piece.

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SIGNATURE

Kusari Former Mastermind

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[Croft]

I'm not sure how folks would react to an increased buy price for blackmarket items, the greater risk of loss would probably push smugglers further away from interactions for the sake of profit and that's really the opposite of what we should be aiming to do.
I'd suggest an increased risk of detection rather than loss, in an ideal world the simplist way of doing it would be to only allow fighters and bombers through jumpholes in the House capitals. That of course would open up an entirely new can of worms regarding caps and gunboats even if it does make sense to keep larger stuff out of the main systems.

What we really could use to improve things is a bit of direction, could one of the dev team give us a short list of what they'd consider or reject so we don't get bogged down in cyclical debates?

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Jimmy The Rat | Croft's Feedback | The Rat Pack

[MetalPheonix]

While it is a shame, people will argue all sorts of bat**** reasons why things 'can't change'.
The reality is, smugglers will always smuggle, no buffs needed for that... they just want an risk-based economy that isnt cheesy as hell.

Idk why folks are so intimidated by the idea of smuggling being revisited, but the real truth is, if you made the cost of such items upwards of 10k, coupled with a reasonable profit [some are already close to Ores], youd actually generate alot more gameplay, as cops and BH's would have considerably much much much much much much much much much more reason to actually seek out smugglers.

I find this argument very well stated.

Slightly off-topic but not really. I think that a reworked smuggling system could really utilize faster ships (the dozens of freighters that sadly are unused even though they're cool as hell.) Adding realism, and giving a use to the ship class. Maybe make a type of cargo only freighters can carry via a special equipment hardpoint, similar to carrier bays and the like, If you get what I'm saying. It'd be extremely expensive, loseable, but for high reward, and of course illegal(as far as smuggling is concerned). Now I understand this is probably too complicated too implement but, a boy can only dream...

[kikatsu]

In addition, a couple years back people were throwing around ideas of freighter only docking points on planets. It was implemented on planet Leeds only, but if used on a wider scale you could have freighter only docking ports on house capital planets that could buy the commodities for a higher price, letting freighters get more bang for their buck smuggling wise.... something like Junker docking satellite on the far side of Manhattan for instance.