tl;dr- There should be new modules which require highly illegal goods that have overly hefty penalties for getting caught with them. Players should be able to hire out other players using a bulletin board system to smuggle the modules to whatever station they need, so a new NPC contact type can let them craft the module
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So this is another suggestion along my series of "Make ____ Great" threads, similar to the very chatty one I made before about Space Trucking. The goal is to find ways to take existing gameplay options and expand them into a way for players to interact with each other, thus improving the overall sandbox experience as a whole.
At the moment, Smuggling is in a bad place. The entire purpose of Smuggling as a gameplay style is either to do it just for the sake of roleplay ("I'm Han Solo!") or to make money; the former is still valid as always, but the latter is easily trumped by many other gameplay styles to the point that it isn't even worth considering. But what if we expanded upon that to make it more valuable to other players than just the smuggler?
Right now we have several types of modules you can put into your ship, and a new category I'd like to recommend is Illegal Modules. Illegal modules would similar to guardian in that they are essentially overcharged or otherwise stronger than a normal module, but perhaps can't be engineered and are barely equivalent to a G4. Once crafted (by some new contact type at some stations), these modules could be fit to a ship and no longer show up on police scans. So the act of flying an illegal module would not, itself, be illegal. But making one would be exceptionally illegal.
In order to craft such a module, highly illegal new commodity items should be introduced through the game, to be gathered via various means. To be found with such an item in your ship should result in immediate fines, attempted execution right on the spot, and being locked out of stations owned by whatever faction or minor faction caught you with it until the fines are paid. STEEP cost for failure, essentially. To go along with this, players should be able to use the recommended Bulletin Board System from the previous suggestions to hire other players to smuggle these items to whatever station they need it at, which can then be placed into the "personal storage" that was also outlined in the other suggestions.
This system would basically make smuggling these items an extremely challenging and penalizing task for people who are not well practiced at smuggling, thus opening the door for players who are skilled and experienced in it to be able to be hired to do the job for them. This would essentially create a career path for players to specifically be smugglers for others. Modules are only 1 example; I'm certain other players and the FDev developers could think of more options.
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So this is another suggestion along my series of "Make ____ Great" threads, similar to the very chatty one I made before about Space Trucking. The goal is to find ways to take existing gameplay options and expand them into a way for players to interact with each other, thus improving the overall sandbox experience as a whole.
At the moment, Smuggling is in a bad place. The entire purpose of Smuggling as a gameplay style is either to do it just for the sake of roleplay ("I'm Han Solo!") or to make money; the former is still valid as always, but the latter is easily trumped by many other gameplay styles to the point that it isn't even worth considering. But what if we expanded upon that to make it more valuable to other players than just the smuggler?
Right now we have several types of modules you can put into your ship, and a new category I'd like to recommend is Illegal Modules. Illegal modules would similar to guardian in that they are essentially overcharged or otherwise stronger than a normal module, but perhaps can't be engineered and are barely equivalent to a G4. Once crafted (by some new contact type at some stations), these modules could be fit to a ship and no longer show up on police scans. So the act of flying an illegal module would not, itself, be illegal. But making one would be exceptionally illegal.
In order to craft such a module, highly illegal new commodity items should be introduced through the game, to be gathered via various means. To be found with such an item in your ship should result in immediate fines, attempted execution right on the spot, and being locked out of stations owned by whatever faction or minor faction caught you with it until the fines are paid. STEEP cost for failure, essentially. To go along with this, players should be able to use the recommended Bulletin Board System from the previous suggestions to hire other players to smuggle these items to whatever station they need it at, which can then be placed into the "personal storage" that was also outlined in the other suggestions.
This system would basically make smuggling these items an extremely challenging and penalizing task for people who are not well practiced at smuggling, thus opening the door for players who are skilled and experienced in it to be able to be hired to do the job for them. This would essentially create a career path for players to specifically be smugglers for others. Modules are only 1 example; I'm certain other players and the FDev developers could think of more options.
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