Federal Security Service and the Bandit?

[Edith_The_Hutt]

Just a bit of idle speculation while I jump back from the core: Has anyone tried smuggling with another player flying Bandit?

It's an idea I got from the film Smokey and the Bandit. In that film the Burdette brothers place a bet that their best trucker, Snowman, can smuggle a shipment of beer East of Mississippi (where it is illegal) without the police (Smokey) intercepting it and fining Snowman for smuggling. Other have tried this task and failed; Smokey is vigilant and Smokey always gets his man.

I'm sure the parallels to the current situation with smuggling missions is apparent.

The Burdettes' solution is to hire a Bandit (Burt Reynolds) to distract the police. Bandit drives a fast car and shadows Snowman's journey from state to state. Where Snowman is calm, cool and law abiding (aside from the illegal beer in his hold) Bandit is loud, obnoxious and violates as many items on the highway code as possible. The police scramble to chase and capture Bandit while Snowman calmly drives his illegal cargo all the way to market free from police interference.

So has anyone tried this in Elite: Dangerous? Or do they have thoughts about how it might work? Is there a way of pulling police away from another player with a loud, obnoxious display of law-breaking obscenity? Would you have to be in a wing for parts of the journey, or could you have someone ride ahead, clear a system and let the cargo flow through?

 

[GilliganTX]

Oh man, I have "East Bound and Down" playing in my head everytime I make one of the LRS runs. Hell, one time, from 17 Draconis, I had an anaconda hold full of illicit beer that I had to smuggle on a time limit to boot!



I always thought it would be awesome if you could wing up and have someone run blocker, or the bandit role, in an asp or something. But thinking on the game mechanics, the NPC's spawned to antagonize you are only relevant to YOU since you have the mission attached to your account. Now, if there was a way to "share" the missions between two players, and just let the blocker make each jump first and clear out the NPC's in that system, maybe?

 

[S~P]

Depends if it's basic trading in illegal wares or Shadow mission 'deliver illegal wares'. Shadow missions authority ships will spawn and target the ship carry illegal wares, just trading illegal wares wont. But you could have a wingman to shoot at authority ships so it wont scan the ship carrying the wares as they wont continue scanning once they are shot at. So I guess it could work but the cmdr doing the shooting is going to rack up some hefty fines so it may not payoff.

 

[Midian27]

Won't work. We don't actually have a "living breathing galaxy". When you take a mission you get a flag, that flag means every system you jump into gives you x chance for y encounter.

Y varying from an alternate mission offer to pirates to police vessels. So the police vessel that locked on to your flag won't care at all for the knife welding maniac murdering innocents right next door.

 

[Salami]

Another movie comes to mind: Convoy.
I think you get the picture?

Should you try this, do play C.W. McCall's Convoy theme: [video=youtube;FcaeYmT4wsg]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcaeYmT4wsg[/video]