I agree smuggling shouldnt be done all the time with a Traders ID however occassionaly it may prove profitable...think bout it this way.
A trader arrives on Planet x and get a great offer on some illegal merchandise...will he try and smuggle it. Of cos Yeah!!!!!! after all a traders motive is profit.
As the old saying goes - everythings legal unless you get caught!
Just remember as Monk and Stoat said - its about the Role Play. Thats the most important IMHO. Docking at lawfull bases when pursued is a no no in my book too.
Enjoy....try out a few things and build up a good RP behind your character.If anything the peeps here will point out what you are doing wrong rather than flaming you
Smuggling will almost always be more profitable than regular trading, so it should be more dangerous. The unlawful ID a smuggler is supposed to carry helps lawful players to fulfill their proper roles in law enforcement.
Smugglers get tracked by law enforcement and are actively hunted down. They are put in wanted bulletins. When their ships are intercepted they are usually boarded, the captain arrested and the ship impounded. In Freelancer all they can do is demand the cargo dropped and/or destroy the smuggler. It is the one unlawful act that Freelancer fails to change your reputation for when you get caught. If an NPC scans a hold with contraband in it and you refuse to drop the cargo they will turn hostile until they are reset, but your player reputation remains the same. Its as if you never broke the law. Flaws or inaccuracies in the way Freelancer assigns your reputation are why IDs exist in Discovery. They are there to provide a tangible object to judge one's reputation by-rather than guessing by the color one shows up as in the HUD.
Your ID is what tells other people how to role play around you. How you role play should reflect the decisions you make in game and when you decide to smuggle you should role play as a smuggler. That means you have to avoid law enforcers. Smuggling with a Trader ID means you can do the occasional smuggling run with impunity when no one is looking and trade the rest of the time right in front of the House militaries, police, bounty Hunters, etc.
It shouldn't be necessary for a lawful player to write down every character he has seen who has smuggled. He should be able to scan a person's ship and know exactly how to behave.
If you do a forum search for the smuggler ID, you'll find more than one colorful discussion on the topic.
What the discussions ultimately boiled down to seemed to run as thus: The smuggler ID is a purely cosmetic RP item. You can do the exact same acts with a smuggler ID that you can do with a trader ID, despite what the trader ID claims about unlawful acts (which smuggling would be).
You'll also note that the smuggler ID claims that traders can perform unlawful acts, though the trader ID claims otherwise. It's a bit of a muddle.
I went through the effort of securing a smuggler ID myself, when I first started oh those long couple weeks ago, due to my desire to enjoy a bit of shady trading for thrills and chills only to note that I was being swarmed on those same routes by folks with an average trader ID.
If you want to go to the effort of securing the smuggler ID though, regardless of the fact that it doesn't lend any 'technical' aid, I've found that it prompts a very fun reaction from your fellow players, from pirate folk giving me the thumbs up and cops shaking their impotent fists in my direction every time they spotted me.
(Just to add to the main discussion. If a PC cop spots you and demands you drop your cargo/pay fine/step outside the vehicle and you go ahead and dock on a lawful base, that's a huge no no and will get you into a heap of trouble.)