I'd like to see a slave trading CG to create a new rare good meat commodity.
How to make Slave smuggling more immersive.
- Thread starter JTW
- Start date
Elite right now preys on the basic instinct of greed. These jobs pay more, a lot more, millions more. Same with the narcotics ones. I don't think it will stop anyone doing it. Look at robigo. I'm sure you could do almost anything and players will just keep churning out the slaves. You want people take a moment to reflect and possible not do it, hit them where it hurts, in the credit balance.
Make it so there is no possible way to come out on top if you get caught. Make the cargo unsalable, and the fines huge.You get caught with slaves, you lose money, and the cargo.
One of the other problems is in the empire slavery is legal.
Didn't mean to be a huge about it.
In other games (Rebel Galaxy recently), even when going down the pirate/bad guy road I refused to smuggle slaves. Even in a game when it's not real people, my moral compass kind of considers it a hard limit.
Yet, in Elite ... Robigo smuggling has been so profitable vs. other options that I've found myself doing it anyways... which I suppose makes an interesting statement on ethics and society. Would you be willing to move a human slave from point A to point B for a ridiculous sum of money in real life? I imagine (and like to hope that) most people would say no to the hypothetical, but if actually faced with such an offer... greed is a powerful motivator.
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No apology needed, you gave your point of view and to be honest i hadn't seen it from that side. I might have come off as too morbid in my first post, and i guess i could have been more clear about my reasons for wanting something like that.
You're also probably right when it comes to whats needed to change what makes people do these kinds of jobs, which i agree is the money. I'm just hoping to find something that could be changed/added that's different from simply lowering the payouts from slavery, or increasing every other job. Imperial slaves being legal in the empire might be a problem gameplay wise, but it makes sense when looking at the history of the empire, which is also why i'm looking for something different.
Like i indicated earlier some of my friends might be put of smuggling if something were done to make it feel more evil, but that's 3 people and i haven't been around the forums long enough to know if others might share this view.
So thanks for your input, and if you or anyone else have more to add i'm very interested in hearing it
If you get into a particularly bad firefight and suffer some damage to internal systems, there should be a chance that some of the cargo pods burst open in your hold, letting the slaves loose. Sometimes, if you pay attention, you'll have time to pop the cargo scoop and asphyxiate them, but sometimes the last thing you'll see before the rebuy screen is an arm reaching from behind the pilot seat to grab your throat.
That's actually happening to you? Overheat so much you lose cargo? O,o
No, I don't have any first hand experience in that regard.
And we don't need mechanics to cheat us out of millions of credits. Maybe if you could obtain slaves for cheap somehow. But not when you buy them at 10k a piece.
1 and 2 I could do without, but number 3 seems like a no brainer.
id like there to be "pirate outposts" but I think that should be handled differently.
but dirty cops tracking a smuggler would be fun.
id also like to see getting caught having real consequences. Say you have a load full of missions worth 50 mill and get scanned. What happens now is you get a fine for a paltry amount and fail your missions waisting your time. Big whoop a new player can afford that fine and can mindlessly keep rolling the dice until they get it right and still make way more money than they lost in fines.
id like to see some real risk to smuggling. An instant bounty worth your missions total on top of losing all your missions and time.
id also like to see bounties not be avoidable, if you get a bounty and blow up there should be no way to weasel out of it. That can be exploited and would need to change if we are going to see any real risk to illegal activities in elite.
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Re: slaves screaming etc: No. The slaves are in stasis, suspended animation. It has been well established that 1 tonne of slaves = 1 slave. So that "1 tonne of slaves" is actually one 50-100 kg slave, plus 900-odd kilograms of life support gear to keep them alive and undamaged while in transit. They can't get out, they have to be let out by their owner.
Re: making slavers "feel bad" about their trade: what, having the cops shoot at you, fine you and otherwise harass you isn't enough of a clue that what you're doing is considered unethical and against the law in most places?
Re: increasing risk for smuggling: absolutely. The simplest, easiest and best way of doing this is for the station to confiscate your smuggled goods if you got caught with them coming in. So you get fined, PLUS you don't get to sell your illegal cargo.
Re: corrupt cops: no. This is 3302. The Authorities know that corrupt cops within their ranks could wield considerable power and influence, so they keep a watchful eye on all their patrol ships. Each one continuously records all its comms and activities and streams that data back to police HQ. This keeps each cop on their best behaviour. So any corruption would have to come in the form of official, government-sanctioned corruption i.e. in smaller indie systems where the governments themselves are corrupt.
Re: making slavers "feel bad" about their trade: what, having the cops shoot at you, fine you and otherwise harass you isn't enough of a clue that what you're doing is considered unethical and against the law in most places?
Re: increasing risk for smuggling: absolutely. The simplest, easiest and best way of doing this is for the station to confiscate your smuggled goods if you got caught with them coming in. So you get fined, PLUS you don't get to sell your illegal cargo.
Re: corrupt cops: no. This is 3302. The Authorities know that corrupt cops within their ranks could wield considerable power and influence, so they keep a watchful eye on all their patrol ships. Each one continuously records all its comms and activities and streams that data back to police HQ. This keeps each cop on their best behaviour. So any corruption would have to come in the form of official, government-sanctioned corruption i.e. in smaller indie systems where the governments themselves are corrupt.
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Strange meat?
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I didn't know that, although my context was in-ship monitoring.
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Spoiled!
Eww.
Reminds me of Frontier and the Cargo Bay Life Support module required to move slaves, livestock etc. Pain in the rear if it got damaged, that 500t of valuable slaves just became 500t of animal meat, and yes, the game turned them to animal meat.
I was thinking about it a bit more today, and since there's no prisons in this game, your suggestion on a bounty seems like an pretty good way to go. 7 day wanted status that's gonna cost a lot to remove. Selling human beings for slavery is just as evil as killing a person, so the punishment should be equal at least.
Well yeah, it does ofcourse. But they do the exact same thing if you're caught smuggling narcotics, and slave smuggling is both alot more evil and alot more profitable, so i think it should either be alot more risky, or have something in the game hit you in the feels.Re: making slavers "feel bad" about their trade: what, having the cops shoot at you, fine you and otherwise harass you isn't enough of a clue that what you're doing is considered unethical and against the law in most places?
That would be a way of doing it, and it might reduce the amount of smugglers for sure. But still doesn't really show what an appalling business you're in.
Now i don't wanna get into a whole discussion on whether or not cops are even able to be corrupt, but there's several security forces thats "Lawless", surely they wouldn't be as supervised as you're saying? Either way i believe corruption can sneak in anywhere, no matter what kind of supervision they're under.
