Advanced Smuggling / Bounty Hunting

[GunnyHighway]

I've started over a new game, and have grown to love the Eagle and smuggling and bounty hunting has been going extremely well so far, it's so fast!

But when I log on tonight I'm going to have an 8k bounty on my head due to fines in fed space. I'm not paying them on purpose as I want to experience the risk of trying to run and survive with a bounty only in fed space. I'm thinking about retreating to non-fed space, but I was thinking about NPC's and players with warrant scanners.

Besides cycling through each ship's loadout and looking to see if they have a warrant scanner (very cumbersome), how does one defend against such scans? If I get a scan on me, it doesn't tell me which kind of scan is being activated and I wouldn't want to worry about a cargo scan (when bounty hunting).

Going silent doesn't seem to do anything as NPC's still get a scan on me without issue even though they sit at 1km. Shouldn't silent running hide me from scanners?

 

[AndersonDG]

In theory silent running should drastically reduce the distance they're able to scan you from although currently it may be a bug that this doesn't affect NPCs. Since you're flying the Eagle the number one way would be to just break their line of sight, that will definitely be effective against NPC scans. It will be much harder around stations but should be incredibly easy in asteroid belts.

I did a lot of light smuggling for a while and the most effective ship I found for it was a "low" weight Eagle which was around 82T. As for identifying what type of scan it is, that's currently not possible unless you look at their sub systems like you said.

 

[mnemon]

You could also pop a heatsink that will drastically reduce the range they can lock on to you for a little while.

Also I'm not aware of any way to figure out what kind of scan is being done to you except checking out what scanners the other craft has ...

 

[MrGambler]

The chaff launchers are supposed to stop scans on you, some people claim they don't work and I have sold mine for another add-on. FD may have fixed it, or it still may be bugged. But silent running (while cold, use heat sinks), and chaff launchers are supposed to stop scans in theory. I have been able to 'not' be picked up while silent running and heat sinking, but if I enter silent running and a state of cold while being scanned it doesn't do anything for me.

 

[mnemon]

The chaff launchers are supposed to stop scans on you, some people claim they don't work and I have sold mine for another add-on. FD may have fixed it, or it still may be bugged. But silent running (while cold, use heat sinks), and chaff launchers are supposed to stop scans in theory. I have been able to 'not' be picked up while silent running and heat sinking, but if I enter silent running and a state of cold while being scanned it doesn't do anything for me.

Chaff launchers are supposed to stop gimbal and turret locks, does it say somewhere they will break other locks/scan too?

 

[GunnyHighway]

I thought going silent running (the button toggle to close ship vents, not going cold) was to make you an unresolved target (flicker, can't lock on). This should make is so that any target-required actions (gimbaled weapons, cargo scan, warrant scan, missile lock, etc) can't be done. At least this is my understanding since B1.

If you just go cold, anyone can still get close enough to fully target you, but the distance is like 100-200m (this is again info from B1).

 

[MrGambler]

Chaff launchers are supposed to stop gimbal and turret locks, does it say somewhere they will break other locks/scan too?

http://elite-dangerous.wikia.com/wiki/Chaff_Launcher

 

[Monk]

Usually NPCs scan from a pretty close distance. What I do is point right at them and boost with full power to engines. When you blast past them they lose their scan lock on you...keep boosting and you probably be out of scanner range. Quickly spool up FTL and jump before that Viper can catch up again.

 

[Ben Ryder]

I've started over a new game, and have grown to love the Eagle and smuggling and bounty hunting has been going extremely well so far, it's so fast!

But when I log on tonight I'm going to have an 8k bounty on my head due to fines in fed space. I'm not paying them on purpose as I want to experience the risk of trying to run and survive with a bounty only in fed space. I'm thinking about retreating to non-fed space, but I was thinking about NPC's and players with warrant scanners.

Besides cycling through each ship's loadout and looking to see if they have a warrant scanner (very cumbersome), how does one defend against such scans? If I get a scan on me, it doesn't tell me which kind of scan is being activated and I wouldn't want to worry about a cargo scan (when bounty hunting).

Going silent doesn't seem to do anything as NPC's still get a scan on me without issue even though they sit at 1km. Shouldn't silent running hide me from scanners?

Hi Gunny Highway (great name Sir!)

You can find some useful stuff on smuggling here The Black Market List - for smuggling https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=34610&highlight=

 

[GunnyHighway]

Thanks Ben! I have frequented your post quite a few times since B2, thank you for putting that all together. Though I am quite shocked at how rare Black Markets seem to be. I would think that any anarchy/independent systems would have a black market and it would be rare in more controlled space like federation/alliance?

 

[mnemon]

Thanks Ben! I have frequented your post quite a few times since B2, thank you for putting that all together. Though I am quite shocked at how rare Black Markets seem to be. I would think that any anarchy/independent systems would have a black market and it would be rare in more controlled space like federation/alliance?

Now it looks like it's completely random

I've seen them in a lot of high security systems and gone to small medium-sec systems that lack one.

 

[Ben Ryder]

Now it looks like it's completely random

I've seen them in a lot of high security systems and gone to small medium-sec systems that lack one.

With the little time I've got at the moment I've been tracking down anarchy systems and they seem a bit odd. The missions seem to be pirate only and outfitting seems non existent.

 

[Monk]

With the little time I've got at the moment I've been tracking down anarchy systems and they seem a bit odd. The missions seem to be pirate only and outfitting seems non existent.

I think anarchy systems lack the manufacturing backbone to properly build highly sophisticated space parts...they gotta go elsewhere to buy and steal them.

As for the missions, I don't think it is fully implemented at the moment and for beta they just have a blanket declaration of pirate missions at all anarchy stations.