Long distance smuggling missions

[Eisen]

Brilliant description of a stupidly handled situation. Have reps!

I'm under the impression, that you exaggerate the "problem" on purpose. Doing Robigo-Runs still gives you between 20-30 Million in 2-3 hours of gameplay. That is a huge pile of money! And it is still very unbalanced compared with the revenues of bounty-hunting, trading, and *haha* exploring for example.
I know it used to be more than double than that ammount before the nerf, but I can understand FD to adjust a mechanic, that lets you become a billionaire in no time. You can still have a lot of fun, suspense and immersion from the runs while making more money than with every other profession in ED.

 

[Broon]

Ah so when we give money to "repair the station" etc it makes the missions better?

In short, yes.

By contributing to the factions in a system and becoming friendly or allied you will be offered better/more missions. Take a look at the unobtainable missions and notice that often the better paying ones may be "redded out" because you may lack being friendly or allied. Same as with your trade or combat rank which can affect mission quality.

- - - - - Additional Content Posted / Auto Merge - - - - -

I'm under the impression, that you exaggerate the "problem" on purpose. Doing Robigo-Runs still gives you between 20-30 Million in 2-3 hours of gameplay. That is a huge pile of money! And it is still very unbalanced compared with the revenues of bounty-hunting, trading, and *haha* exploring for example.
I know it used to be more than double than that ammount before the nerf, but I can understand FD to adjust a mechanic, that lets you become a billionaire in no time. You can still have a lot of fun, suspense and immersion from the runs while making more money than with every other profession in ED.

Yep, I'm good with making 15-20mil Cr in an evening of play!

 

[Jerakeen]

Once upon a time, Frontier released Long Range Hauling missions, some legal, some smuggling.
[snip]

I couldn't agree more. I fitted out an Asp for long distance travel, sufficient cargo and also enough firepower to defend myself if necessary. This was fun in itself. I hadn't flown an Asp in a while and balancing the loadout was satisfying.

I headed over to Sothis and gathered some missions. On my way back I was constantly having to watch out for pursuers. There was a level of excitement to just travelling that I haven't felt since I was doing rare runs in an unarmed Hauler early in the game.

Even when I got back and started turning in the missions I couldn't relax. After handing in about 3 quarters of my missions I was interdicted and destroyed by a wing of 3.

So I made some money. Maybe a bit more per hour than I could get trading in a T9 or bounty hunting with powerplay bonuses but not a lot more.

But it was fun!!! It kept me on the edge of my seat for 4 hours. Finally, I thought, Frontier have brought smuggling up to meet the income of other professions. And in such an exciting way.

The thing is though, I'm not travelling 400 light years to sit for an hour waiting for a decent mission to come back with. I haven't been back since the nerf. It's a shame. Every time anything good is found in this game the "Nerf It" squad make a loud noise and Frontier take it away.

 

[Hammerhai]

I can only observe that balance is when everybody is equally dissatisfied.
Also a significant part of the community loves using exploits and gain an advantage in Credits/hour.Remember the going afk thing next to a Battleship in a RES thing for instance? Stop whingeing guys, it is still plenty profitable. Or go back to trading rares for all I care.

I came in on the tail end of the missions boom, I have NEVER run a full up asp out of Fehu and still had between 2 mil and 5 mil per run. Which is more than normal trading in the Asp class. So...
When I get a Python priorities will change, and I may leave the long distance hauling behind. Simple as that.

 

[CapitanAceRimmer]

I visited robigo the other day and made around 10 million credits in about 3 hours. It was great fun and I had a few close moments but (IMHO) the haulage missions are still there and still worth pursuing.

 

[Dominatus01]

Once upon a time, Frontier released Long Range Hauling missions, some legal, some smuggling.

The most profitable ones were mostly available on remote, far away systems, as the reward scaled not only with rank, but with distance to destination.

They were fun, you had to equip a vessel not only for distance travelling but for fighting pirates and evading cops. You would travel to a remote, far away system, pickup a handful of missions, and then you were commited for 3 or 4 hours of high speed chase from pirates and cops, always on the clock, with a lot of far away destinations waiting for you, trying to scoop while being chased by pirates, trying to jump while being chased by cops. Then you had to enter stations undetected, land on outposts undetected. After a 3 or 4 hours thrill, you could finally put your feet up and rest.

You had to use fuel scoops, heat sinks, silent running, fighting, fleeing, navigating unscoopables, looking for gaps between cops in outposts, etc.

They gave you reasons to jump back to smaller ships once again, use various game mechanics, travel again to systems once forgotten.

But they had a terrible sin: they were fun AND profitable at the same time...

The grind inquisition could not stand the heresy, they picked up the pitchforks in anger, and demanded this to be stopped. People could not be allowed to both make credits and have fun at the same time! If they wanted credits, they had to suffer in penance, and repeat trivial menial tasks a billion times over and over and over and over! And after a short while, FD capitulated, and the missions were "made rare". Rare as in "mostly gone".

Now you spend a lot of time travelling to the @ss end of space in search for one, and risk finding none and having to travel back empty-handed.

Ironically, the only way to effectively get them now, is by cheating the bulletin board by playing login-bingo until you get a bunch of them in the login lottery. A whole new, fun feature which added diversity and encouraged use of multiple game mechanics was nerfed to the ground, and playing login-bingo was once again rewarded. Great job!

and yet more Rep for you!
Brilliantly summed up. The outpouring of misery from the "grind club" was absolutely tragic at what was a really (if all too brief) fun couple of days. Great profits (if not slightly too large), but more importantly massive amounts of fun long range smuggling. The most tragic part of all was that Frontier gave in to the whiners & this opportunity for fun was massively nerfed.


Even after the nerf bat hit though, I still frequently run groups of long range missions from Fehu myself in my Smuggling Asp. The creds are fairly good, I average a lot more than "puddle snore jump trading", Most of the missions are for legal cargo, and the legit smuggling ones are very rare. A loop run for me takes about 1 1/2 hours typically, but I normally do my utmost to make sure that I have some illegal cargo onboard in order to add that excitement level to the runs. A lot of the stops are to outposts, so that makes using my tradeconda impossible. I had toyed with using my python, but there are simply too many jumps and it gets a bit overkill. The smuggling Asp, being killable by larger ships, adds just enough excitement to the whole thing and docking undetected at high speed is a blast. Sometimes I stand & fight in the many interdictions, sometimes I high tail it out of there with my tail between my legs.

Here's the smuggling fit I use for my Asp, which is a balance of cargo, speed, defence, & speed-scooping. There are many other options, which is the beauty of the Asp, but after much dabbling this is my personal favourite for the task at hand .

http://coriolis.io/outfit/asp/04A5D...020124.AwRj4yvI.MwBj4ywRjAmeQ===?bn=Smuggler3

 

[Hammerhai]

Thank you for sharing your build - took away a few ideas there. Repped

 

[PEREGRINUS19]

Those were soooo fun, doing long smuggling hauls from Amagest & Takurua system....did a couple from Sothis & Robigo but made better time & more credits with my Asp Explorer

Spoiler

http://www.edshipyard.com/#/L=70g,0...4yH4yH,2-7_8S7_6u6Q8S8I,0AA7Sk05U05U4zM5fa2UI

before the amount of smuggling missions dwindle to a much fewer number & smaller payouts...lets see in my notes I made 59,765,030 cr on a trip, then 62,800,064 cr on another trip, & then 69,989,612 cr on another trip.....needles to say on those trips I also increased my Explorer & Trade ranks.

It was nice credits, full of action as I was interdicted time & time agian, and then there was sneaking into the stations with my illicit cargo....so much fun

Did the run out ot Fehu the other night & managed to get Empire donation mission, long range cargo haul missions, 161 scan reports (to the econmical route there & then back to the bubble...56 jumps to Fehu) for the current Exploration CG, hopped over to Aditi for some more Empire donation missions & a few hauling mission (got more long range hauling missions at Fehu than Aditi...maybe just my luck lol), made just over 15mil credits.....not too bad oh & 5 or so interdictions as I was in my Anaconda (as I had it full of food & meds for donation missions lol)

Spoiler

http://www.edshipyard.com/#/L=706,m...09Y8SBaD88I,0Bk0AA0AA0AA08c08c08c7Re07207203w)

 

[NavyBee]

Once upon a time...
fold

+rep for the storytelling

Still this is a bit exaggerated imho. Of course one can easily make more with simple trading, but LR missions are a welcome change and profitable enough.

 

[fyo]

I got two smuggling missions out of Varati this weekend on the same run. 2.2 million credits each, next to no cargo space requirements, all of 6 jumps away (5 to the first, one more to the second). That's a 4.5 million payday for about 20 minutes work. Of course, I added a bunch of transport missions to the same systems (and a nearby one), plus a bunch of courier missions which really press you for time. 45 minutes later I was back in Varati and about 8 million credits richer. These missions were from ONE station at ONE time, no waiting or logging or mode switching (in Varati, I could have just gone to one of the other two stations in the system had I wanted more missions). Just grab the missions and go.

My ONE complaint about these missions is that they are not dangerous enough. I got interdicted twice, once by a DBX (really?) and once by a Cobra, both of comparatively low level. Neither situation was even remotely dangerous and just for the added fun I submitted to interdiction instead of just evading (which isn't hard in a smuggling ship).

For those who say that smuggling missions should still pop up with the same frequency as it did previously, I can only shake my head.

My opinion my change with 1.5/2.0, which looks to dramatically increase cargo requirements. I really like the balance right now, although greater variety would be awesome, so I'm a bit worried about what the future will bring.

 

[B33 ENN]

Thanks everyone for sharing your knowledge on this subject. I did a trial run tonight to one of the outlying systems mentioned. At my Broker trader level, and low ranks, I took what I could get to fill my defensive trade rigged Cobra with 32T od cargo holds. I think it was like 8 or 9 missions averaging about 800 thousand each which got me 29T filled. Made my return trip and then started hopping to the destinations unloading and collecting. All in all, I got near 7 million in profit after 3 or so hours.

That's not too bad from the point of view of a small potatoes Cmdr like me that's mostly flying a Cobra and has a mothballed Python waiting for upgrade. Hopefully, as my level and ranks improve, I'll get better averages over a mil on mission rewards. It's a lot of travel time and a lot of monotnous hops and docks, so much like rare trading, I can't see this being viable to someone flying the larger ships and having to fund the extortionate price tags on those upgrades. They'd probably still be better off filling their big holds for short runs on high margin trade opportunities.

 

[DustyArne]

How do you guys find these missions?

Im only running into missions with 200k profit.. or less..

Plz enlighten me.

 

[askavir]

How do you guys find these missions?

Im only running into missions with 200k profit.. or less..

Plz enlighten me.

Remote systems on the outback of the bubble is where they are less rare.

The payouts scale with distance to destination, so the most remote and isolated they are the better.

Pick one:

17 Draconis
Aditi
Almagest
BD+22 4939
Canopus
Ceos
Exphiay
Fehu
HIP 74290
HIP 8396
LTT 9846
Quince
Robigo
Sothis
Takurua
Te Kaha

 

[DustyArne]

Thank you.

 

[B33 ENN]

How do you guys find these missions? Im only running into missions with 200k profit.. or less.. Plz enlighten me.

The stations need to be quite far out on ther periphery from the more inhabited region we usually fly around in. I had to go about 360LY away to Fehu which was the closest one to me listed by a poster earlier in the thread. Then when you get there, there should be some missions on the BB that have destinations going back into the more populated region, and these are pretty lucrative as mentioned, especially considering they have you transporting very little tonnage per mission. This makes using a small ship quite efficient too. I did well in my Cobra and it took a while to fill up 29T as I said. Hopefully they won't get hit with the nerf hammer again, because otherwise that length of trip and time spent collecting enough missions won't be worth the reward.

 

[Ferret06]

-snip-

Supremely put sir.

 

[DustyArne]

The stations need to be quite far out on ther periphery from the more inhabited region we usually fly around in. I had to go about 360LY away to Fehu which was the closest one to me listed by a poster earlier in the thread. Then when you get there, there should be some missions on the BB that have destinations going back into the more populated region, and these are pretty lucrative as mentioned, especially considering they have you transporting very little tonnage per mission. This makes using a small ship quite efficient too. I did well in my Cobra and it took a while to fill up 29T as I said. Hopefully they won't get hit with the nerf hammer again, because otherwise that length of trip and time spent collecting enough missions won't be worth the reward.

Ow wait, so, you go to one system, pick up the mission, go to the next, pick up another mission, till you fillup your cargohold, then you go back to the bubble and deliver?

Its common knowledge.. lol.. But im fairly sure, that if i didn't read your comment, i would do them 1 by 1... because well.. i can be like that... sometimes..

 

[B33 ENN]

Ow wait, so, you go to one system, pick up the mission, go to the next, pick up another mission, till you fillup your cargohold, then you go back to the bubble and deliver? Its common knowledge.. lol.. But im fairly sure, that if i didn't read your comment, i would do them 1 by 1... because well.. i can be like that... sometimes..

Yes, thankfully, they stack, meaning you can grab as many missions as are available or you can fit in your hold. That's essential, otherwise a single trip won't yield as much as it potentially could. Like some people said, you have to move around a bit to make enough missions generate as they don't spawn more than one or two high value ones (from what I saw) at a time. That process can take some time in itself, but it's a lot less boring than waiting for rare's to spawn to their total allocation.

 

[DustyArne]

Yes, thankfully, they stack, meaning you can grab as many missions as are available or you can fit in your hold. That's essential, otherwise a single trip won't yield as much as it potentially could. Like some people said, you have to move around a bit to make enough missions generate as they don't spawn more than one or two high value ones (from what I saw) at a time. That process can take some time in itself, but it's a lot less boring than waiting for rare's to spawn to their total allocation.

I never got into rares aswell..

Ive bin doing alot of fighting for Minor federation factions that want to over take stations and outposts. Warzones, and related BB missions. Fly a fully A graded FAS, with Military grade armor form it.. And i have a Type7. So i also did legal trading loops.. it was fun.

But the time has come the Federation have one experienced dangerous combat pilot on a carreer switch.. (for now)

Docking my lovely FAS, and get me a nice fast Cobra, or ASP for some smuggling, and like i said, i had to do it with 200k missions or less.. Till, i saw this thread.. Jaw dropping..

I dont have to hit those 20 mill/h, lol... im already happy with 5. since, now, with wars, im doing 3 a 4 mill hour..

 

[mviper13]

I've been doing these types of missions to build up money before the expansion drops. I am fairly sure this will be nerfed further when the update comes, so I'll explain what I've been doing and still making between 50-100million per day depending on play time.

I've found it's basically a matter of your trade rank, and your cargo hold capacity. If you have a lot of time to sit in the station before you actually get to playing, it's great. I will sit in the station for a couple hours and do chores and stuff between BB refreshes. Then when I need to get moving or my cargo's full I'll take off back to the bubble. In an Asp, I can make around 500k / ton * 80 tons. (40M). I tried this in my python (230-something tons) and I just ended up staying up till 4am which was a little much. But I made over 100M in that one trip. You just have to be a little picky with your missions. Only take the ones paying 500k or more/ ton. Or if you're short on time be less picky. It helps to be allied with the Sirius Corp / Robigo Cartel of course, and to be Tycoon or Elite in trade rank.

When you stack so many missions, the timers actually start to be the limiting factor. I once pulled into a station with 2 minutes to spare. I fought off pirates, cops, random military scans, etc. It was great fun. FD have a history of taking the things I find most fun in the game and nerfing them into the ground, so I fully expect another nerf when horizons drops. Then I'll find something else I find fun/interesting/challenging - that's the nature of online games these days.

For those interested, the builds I use to do this are below.

Asp: http://coriolis.io/outfit/asp/05A5A...WQ==.AwiMIyrSg===?bn=Asp long range smuggling

Python: http://coriolis.io/outfit/python/06...l00020404050505043745580201.Iw18eQ==.Aw18eQ==

Fly Safe, commanders. o7