The biggest impediment to illegal activites are:-
1. Low payouts that are not at all commensurate to the risks taken
2. Overzealous, overcomplicated and oversensitive Crime and Punishment system that actively discourages any sort of infraction whether major or minor (and therefore makes illegal activities a chore)
The biggest issue relates to the onerous nature of bounties and the ease with which they are accumulated. Therefore, I would like to propose a few changes to make illegal activities such as assassinations, privateering and smuggling, along with other general wet work, more viable funa and accessible.
Suggestion 1: allow ships to turn off or change transponders.
This one is the simplest of the lot. Anyone participating in illegal activities tries to hide their identities, even real ships carrying illegal cargo operate under changed names and flags to prevent their original identities from being traced. I would like to propose that players be able to do the same when conducting illegal activities.
This could be done in 2 ways:-
1. General Option: Simply switching off the transponder in order to not reveal their identities. This would only be possible in deep space (to avoid witnesses) and make these ships an immediate target for any system authority ships that scan them. However, as their identities are concealed, no bounties would accrue when operating with their transponders off. SRVs would always have their transponders set to the same state as their parent ships; making stealth work in SRVs a more viable option instead of just immediately accruing a bounty.
2. Mission Specific Option: Operating under a false identity. This would be an option when doing illegal/covert activities for any faction. The faction would supply the player with a false preponderate tag that they could switch to when inside the station. While bounties would accrue as normal, they would only accrue onto the false identity, and would then die once the identity is removed on mission completion (therefore removing all bounties accrued under the false ID). In order to prevent abuse of such identities, these IDs would only last while the mission associated with them is active and any profits or bonds (or any other such funds) collected under the false ID would also be lost along with the ID since they accrued to the false ID.
Suggestion 2: give more context to smuggling
The reason people smuggle is because they can make extremely large profits on the goods smuggled. The problem with smuggling is that you're not really making a lot of money doing it (except for imperial slaves, which really makes no sense as those should count as passengers and not goods).
Smuggling should be operated under extremely profitable contracts issued by criminal faction inside their controlled systems. These would work like standard delivery contracts, with the difference that the player will have a chance of being targeted by competition and the goods involved being highly illegal. The better the relationship, the more profitable contracts would become available.
Once the player makes contact with any criminal faction in any system, the faction would list out items that they want smuggled in by the player. The items specified by the faction in question would be capable of being sold to them for large profits by the player. As relations with the faction increases, they (the criminal faction) would pay the player more for already demanded items and allow the player to know of more exotic and valuable items that they require (criminals letting trusted associates into more profitable ventures), which could be sold to them for even greater profits (and overall money).
This would make good relations with criminal factions an important factor in player interactions with them; especially since criminal activities generally tend to operate on trust.
Suggestion 3: make relations matter and criminal factions secret
Criminal enterprises are built on trust and criminals tend to not advertise in the open.
As explained above, missions for criminal factions should be even more significantly impacted by relations with them.
Criminal factions should not be so easy to find as just looking on the local notice board. The only place where criminal factions should be listed on the notice board should be anarchy or controlled systems. Otherwise, the only way to find out about the local criminals should be through existing contacts, such as already known criminal factions telling the players about other factions that they know about.
1. Low payouts that are not at all commensurate to the risks taken
2. Overzealous, overcomplicated and oversensitive Crime and Punishment system that actively discourages any sort of infraction whether major or minor (and therefore makes illegal activities a chore)
The biggest issue relates to the onerous nature of bounties and the ease with which they are accumulated. Therefore, I would like to propose a few changes to make illegal activities such as assassinations, privateering and smuggling, along with other general wet work, more viable funa and accessible.
Suggestion 1: allow ships to turn off or change transponders.
This one is the simplest of the lot. Anyone participating in illegal activities tries to hide their identities, even real ships carrying illegal cargo operate under changed names and flags to prevent their original identities from being traced. I would like to propose that players be able to do the same when conducting illegal activities.
This could be done in 2 ways:-
1. General Option: Simply switching off the transponder in order to not reveal their identities. This would only be possible in deep space (to avoid witnesses) and make these ships an immediate target for any system authority ships that scan them. However, as their identities are concealed, no bounties would accrue when operating with their transponders off. SRVs would always have their transponders set to the same state as their parent ships; making stealth work in SRVs a more viable option instead of just immediately accruing a bounty.
2. Mission Specific Option: Operating under a false identity. This would be an option when doing illegal/covert activities for any faction. The faction would supply the player with a false preponderate tag that they could switch to when inside the station. While bounties would accrue as normal, they would only accrue onto the false identity, and would then die once the identity is removed on mission completion (therefore removing all bounties accrued under the false ID). In order to prevent abuse of such identities, these IDs would only last while the mission associated with them is active and any profits or bonds (or any other such funds) collected under the false ID would also be lost along with the ID since they accrued to the false ID.
Suggestion 2: give more context to smuggling
The reason people smuggle is because they can make extremely large profits on the goods smuggled. The problem with smuggling is that you're not really making a lot of money doing it (except for imperial slaves, which really makes no sense as those should count as passengers and not goods).
Smuggling should be operated under extremely profitable contracts issued by criminal faction inside their controlled systems. These would work like standard delivery contracts, with the difference that the player will have a chance of being targeted by competition and the goods involved being highly illegal. The better the relationship, the more profitable contracts would become available.
Once the player makes contact with any criminal faction in any system, the faction would list out items that they want smuggled in by the player. The items specified by the faction in question would be capable of being sold to them for large profits by the player. As relations with the faction increases, they (the criminal faction) would pay the player more for already demanded items and allow the player to know of more exotic and valuable items that they require (criminals letting trusted associates into more profitable ventures), which could be sold to them for even greater profits (and overall money).
This would make good relations with criminal factions an important factor in player interactions with them; especially since criminal activities generally tend to operate on trust.
Suggestion 3: make relations matter and criminal factions secret
Criminal enterprises are built on trust and criminals tend to not advertise in the open.
As explained above, missions for criminal factions should be even more significantly impacted by relations with them.
Criminal factions should not be so easy to find as just looking on the local notice board. The only place where criminal factions should be listed on the notice board should be anarchy or controlled systems. Otherwise, the only way to find out about the local criminals should be through existing contacts, such as already known criminal factions telling the players about other factions that they know about.
