Thx everyone for the input. In case someone misunderstood me, by legitimate, I do not mean legal. Whether something is legal in a certain jurisdiction is a completely irrelevant matter in many cases. I always check the politics of the controlling faction. If it is a democracy then I assume that legal = legitimate most of the time. If it's a dictatorship I assume that illegal = illegitimate only around 50% of the time. That is why I don't mind the federal navy giving me missions that are locally considered as illegal. That is what basically the CIA does and I don't mind. That is also why I don't bounty hunt in Empire and other authoritarian systems as there is no guarantee that wanted ships have engaged in illegitimate activities. For all I know they could be perfectly legitimate freedom fighters.
Upon entering that High RES watch out for spawns of other ships. If you spot a wanted pilot but they're flying a small craft like an Eagle, Sidewinder, Cobra, Diamondback Explorer, Adder or Imperial Curier leave the RES.
Super Cruise about 500km away, turn around and re-enter the RES.
That is a rely stupid mechanic. They should change that. It's basically an exploit.
There should never be a way to make more money legitimately than illegally.
I agree. Illicit activities should be the most lucrative as they are even in the real world. But that doesn't mean that they are common or easy. It can certainly be very lucrative to be in the mafia, but that definitely isn't a common nor an easy job. Right now whenever you meet a cmdr in an Anaconda, you can almost be 100% sure that he is a slave trader. And I heard here in this thread that they are doing it whilst watching YouTube. It makes no sense why someone would pay you that much for an easy job (ignoring the fact that I think that these slave cargo canisters from Robigo seem quite overpriced regardless of how difficult it is to transport them. Slaves in the real world were not worth much more than cattle).
So I do think that some balancing is still needed. FD should for example include missions for bounty hunters to hunt down slave traders on the fastest routes between Robigo and their popular smuggling destinations and/or add missions to patrol the popular smuggling stations outside the docking port alongside local security and scan passing ships. The more slaves you find the more you get paid. That would balance out gameplay somewhat as people could get rich legitimately whilst keeping the illicit activities still the most lucrative albeit more dangerous as they should be in the first place. And if people decide to do it in solo mode, well Anacondas in wings should do the trick. That will teach them about watching YouTube whilst driving.
This balancing should be made adequate enough so that less than half of rich players are criminals even though the richest most capable ones maybe still are. Right now ED is a kind of a parody of the real word as everyone who is rich is a criminal. Most people in my country would actually say that this is actually the case, but I for one don't believe it.
Why? From a game balance perspective, legal bounty hunting requires more skill and/or much better equipment than illegal smuggling. It is also considerably more dangerous.
True but jobs aren't paid in relation to the difficulty. That is why mobsters are richer than legal workers with equally difficult jobs. Work difficulty is only one factor.
