Please look at Smuggling as part of the upcoming balancing

[Ozric]

I think it's very good that the team are looking at balancing and that they are aiming to do smaller incremental changes. But I would like to ask that you look at other areas rather than the ones that always get changed? Mining and Combat have had by far the most attention since release anyway. I would be very grateful if as part of this you could do a balance pass on Smuggling.

It has had only one change to it since the release of the game to my knowledge, and that was when Silent Running was changed to give it virtually no drawbacks at all because of the amount of time it takes to heat up your ship. One of the things you talk about wanting to get right is risk vs reward, I guess in this case it's not far off the mark because there is virtually no risk and so therefore there is virtually no reward, sometimes it's hard enough just to find somewhere you can make a profit.

I decided to do some back of a Buckyball Beermat maths and conduct and small sample survey (market images expand on clicking). I found a random station selling Imperial Slaves, Battle Weapons and Personal Weapons and brought 1 of each, and each would have got me a profit if I then sold it at the galactic average.


I then visited a bunch of random stations, trying to pick a mix of economies, and as you will see the figures for each place were all over the show and didn't make much sense. Just focusing on Personal Weapons, I brought at 3,513 which, according to eddb (which I do realise doesn't cover every station, but it's the easiest way to get figures for research) is only 83 credits above the lowest buy price possible, and would have got me ~1,180 profit at Galactic Average (in game and eddb figures pretty close to each other).

The first station I would have made a loss of 500 as they were buying at 3,006, which is over 500 credits less that the lowest buy price of any station!

For selling to stations, the galactic average means nothing. If I could make 1,180 profit selling at the Galactic Average, which we already know is ~4,700, and then according to Savinykh Dock I could make ~1,440 profit if I had brought at the galactic average, that means the sell price would be ~6,140. But actually it's 4,601, which is just over 1k profit, and less than the Galactic Average.


Narcotics are a similar story, even trying to sell them to tourism stations (which I thought should do a good trade in illegal narcotics ) only got me 351 profit. Again at one point I was offered a price ~1,200 lower than the lowest sell price.

Because you can't search black markets using the Commodities Market, or the filter in the Galaxy Map, you have no way of being able to work out what the prices are going to be before you get to a station. From my small sample set, state didn't seem to make a difference and demand didn't make the difference I would expect it to either. There is almost no reward in Smuggling!

But there's no risk either. I visited 6 stations for the first set and 3 stations for the Narcotics. When I dropped into each station instance, I didn't use silent running, I didn't even think about the fact I was carrying illicit cargo. I just flew towards the station, requested docking clearance, and casually flew into the station in my Cobra Mk.III. All were Medium or High security systems.
We know from when the Krait Mk.II was released that Sandro said there was a 'conspicuous' figure for the likelihood of being scanned by security for each ship, and the Krait Mk.II had the lowest figure. You can also engineer your ships for cold running. My smuggling Krait runs at 12% heat generation on full throttle, but I'm not really sure what the point of all that work was.

A bigger issue perhaps is the need to actually make some proper changes to the way security respond in different security systems, like the revamped C&P system was supposed to do. Make it more likely to be scanned in high security systems. Make Silent Running work more like it used to, so you actually had to do some heat management, rather than just flicking it on and sauntering towards the station with no risk of cooking your ship. Give powering off modules, or cold engineering some purpose.
Introduce some risk.

And as for the rewards, well they clearly need to be so much higher. At the moment there's no reason at all to do smuggling other than some rp. The return is far less than you can make from normal trading and given how much harder it is to find a reliable profit, it's more frustrating than anything else. If a commodity is illegal in a system, then the buyers should be paying at least the top end of the market for it (if not more), as they will be selling it on to their buyers at a far higher price due to the difficulty sourcing it.

There have been plenty of threads over the years about this, but I don't remember smuggling having been mentioned outside of that brief bit by Sandro. However this thread is more about hoping to make a start to the changes, by at least getting some decent reward for taking part. Smuggling is even the first of the core gameplay elements that is mentioned on the website

No they can't

Thanks for reading, and here's to hoping that something can and will be done.

Some bonus viewing, this was the video I always used to show to people around the start of Elite to get them excited by it.

Source: https://youtu.be/KbaLJTGHkj8?t=331

 

[Screemonster]

Smuggling used to be a nice little earner but sometime around the time Beyond came out the black markets started applying the -25% "stolen" markdown to non-stolen goods and utterly destroyed the ability to turn a profit. @Jmanis has done more testing with it than I have.

 

[Ozric]

Smuggling used to be a nice little earner but sometime around the time Beyond came out the black markets started applying the -25% "stolen" markdown to non-stolen goods and utterly destroyed the ability to turn a profit. @Jmanis has done more testing with it than I have.

I did think there had been another big decrease, but I wasn't confident enough to know where or when. But thanks for confirming that, and I'm sure J has done a lot of testing he is normally rather thorough

 

[Jmanis]

Good writeup Ozric.

I reported the issue here a long time ago.

FD: You simply cannot hope to attempt to balance smuggling without removing the incorrectly attributed -25% markdown on illegal goods. This markdown should only apply to stolen goods.

@Ozric ... I've been constantly kicking myself over this since 3.3 beta.

I noticed then that when I tried to smuggle goods, the black market reported all the prices you'd expect to see correctly, but when you went to hit sell, it'd report a loss, because between the black market pricing display and the final calculation, it incorporated the -25% debuff in the calculation incorrectly. Everything else displayed the correct pricing.

I reported this bug, and FD resolved it by incorporating the -25% debuff in the display values as well -.- I've been beating the drum on this ever since. Just fixing the incorrectly applied -25% debuff would at least let it turn a profit!

EDIT: I'll try and find my old beta report.

 

[sgurr]

Please look at this FD.

Smuggling's in my nature, just have to do it for fun right now.

 

[Ozric]

Good writeup Ozric.

I reported the issue here a long time ago.

FD: You simply cannot hope to attempt to balance smuggling without removing the incorrectly attributed -25% markdown on illegal goods. This markdown should only apply to stolen goods.

@Ozric ... I've been constantly kicking myself over this since 3.3 beta.

I noticed then that when I tried to smuggle goods, the black market reported all the prices you'd expect to see correctly, but when you went to hit sell, it'd report a loss, because between the black market pricing display and the final calculation, it incorporated the -25% debuff in the calculation incorrectly. Everything else displayed the correct pricing.

I reported this bug, and FD resolved it by incorporating the -25% debuff in the display values as well -.- I've been beating the drum on this ever since. Just fixing the incorrectly applied -25% debuff would at least let it turn a profit!

EDIT: I'll try and find my old beta report.

Oh that's great, thanks a lot for that J! Some real good information here.

I have posted again in the main thread about balancing that has been posted. Bruce doesn't seem keen to look at Smuggling at the moment, but I think that getting that 25% penalty removed would at least be a good start.

 

[Killnine]

Smuggling used to be a nice little earner but sometime around the time Beyond came out the black markets started applying the -25% "stolen" markdown to non-stolen goods and utterly destroyed the ability to turn a profit. @Jmanis has done more testing with it than I have.

Yup. I've filed a bug report, and undoubtedly so have others. Now please, everyone go report it or confirm an existing report.

 

[Factabulous]

In case y'all missed it:

For players talking about smuggling - we're don't intend to change the rewards for illegal goods just yet. First, we'd like to have Authorities deliver more dynamic fines based on local conditions, not just the galactic average.

Until then, we risk it becoming essentially the same as regular trade but more powerful and we'd prefer it to be a 'higher risk, higher pay' alternative rather than strictly better.

Edit: Also in favour of smuggling being fixed - but at the moment it looks like they're just tweaking numbers rather than fixing mechanics

 

[Ozric]

Yup. I've filed a bug report, and undoubtedly so have others. Now please, everyone go report it or confirm an existing report.

JManis already has an issue that was made in January with a lot of information on it, he's linked to it above. You should definitely vote on that.

In case y'all missed it:
Edit: Also in favour of smuggling being fixed - but at the moment it looks like they're just tweaking numbers rather than fixing mechanics

As J replied to Bruce and said I would take them just fixing the bug, so we don't take the penalty when trying to sell goods. I didn't hold out much hope when I initially raised it on the livestream, which wasn't acknowledged, or made this thread. I did try to make it clear in the OP that this is about balancing the rewards rather than a wider change in mechanics, as that's been asked amount many times over the years. But you never know if you don't try

I might get lucky for once

 

[Factabulous]

At least Bruce's reply seemed to indicate they've had some thoughts about it - so hopefully things will happen. In terms of balance I'd tend to agree with fdev that Mining & Combat are more of an issue, but making Smuggling at least minimally functional comes a close 3rd

 

[Jmanis]

JManis already has an issue that was made in January with a lot of information on it, he's linked to it above. You should definitely vote on that.


As J replied to Bruce and said I would take them just fixing the bug, so we don't take the penalty when trying to sell goods. I didn't hold out much hope when I initially raised it on the livestream, which wasn't acknowledged, or made this thread. I did try to make it clear in the OP that this is about balancing the rewards rather than a wider change in mechanics, as that's been asked amount many times over the years. But you never know if you don't try

I might get lucky for once

Yeah... peak trading profit is something like Military Fabrics or Tritium which is 10k and 40k profit respectively.

With the smuggling price debuff bug fixed, you might get 5-6k profit out of some of the higher end items like Narcotics or Nerve Agents... that's hardly a dealbreaker considering how hard it can be to find a black market at times.

It's all FD need to do, and considering it used to work, I can't understand why it could be so hard to fix.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Yeah... peak trading profit is something like Military Fabrics or Tritium which is 10k and 40k profit respectively.

There's a few others in the 25k range with the right (very rare) state combinations ... or Agronomic will do it reliably.

 

[Jukelo]

To be frank I think smuggling needs much more than a mere income balance pass. Before we consider fixing the smuggling payouts, we need to look at what makes it supposedly more risk and skill-based than trading, and atm it's hard to see much of a difference.

A big aspect of the balance for smuggling is supposed to be the fines you get when caught, which should gate who can actually turn a bigger profit by smuggling than doign regular trade, assuming avoiding getting caught is subject to some skill check.

But if you're at least pretending to try not to get caught, you wont get caught, even in, say, a Type 9, at least around stations. The police are too slow to react, they take too long to pick a arget (the conspicuous rating doesn't seem to do much), to close the distance and conduct the scan. I like to repeat, and I stand by it because that's how I have been doing it for years and it hasn't failed me once, all you have to do to steal into a station is to fly a ship that can maintain ~200-250m/s. At that speed you'll stay on the patrols' radar for 20 seconds max, because they spawn and remain too far from the path the player actually takes to enter the mailslot, and they just can't make it in time even if they try.

Also the supercruise threats are the same as for trading, and just as with trading NPCs are incapable of interdicting the player if the player isn't afk. And I know that it's only just barely hyperbole to say you can evade an interdiction even when AFK, because I regularly try, in the sick hope of one day witnessing it. It often comes close.

Mind you there are a few exceptions which sometimes make smuggling interesting. Planetary ports are more tricky to approach, because contrary to a station there isn't the mailslot protecting you from NPC scans, and the police are patrolling closer to the landing pads. You can boost your way to the surface and survive the collision just fine (another one of my pet peeves), but if you then fumble it and spend too long recovering from the collision and aligning with the landing pad you can get scanned. I have on occasions had to pay attention to the police patrols and slip in between them, and that was the fun experience smuggling should consistently be. Military outposts, which have ships patrolling them, should offer the same 'challenge', but I can't say I've had any trouble with them just bruteforcing it as if they were a station.

Also, stations are more tricky if another player is already present in the instance as you arrive. In this case, the police are likely to have veered off their predictable and poorly placed patrol pattern to scan this or that ship already, and so might be in a better position to cover the approach to the mailslot. And there might be more civilian ships in and around the mailslot already (as opposed to still being in their convenient instance start positions), making a fast approach more risky.

 

[Ozric]

In terms of balance I'd tend to agree with fdev that Mining & Combat are more of an issue, but making Smuggling at least minimally functional comes a close 3rd

I disagree, because I don't think the two things in this game that have had more attention than anything else, really need more attention. It's the other things that need balancing.

To be frank I think smuggling needs much more than a mere income balance pass.

That's a very good post indeed. It does need far more work doing to it indeed, and there have been many suggestions by myself and others over the years.

But I'm far more realistic these days There's no chance at all it's going to get reworked, so I'll settle for getting it work correctly at least

 

[Jmanis]

To be frank I think smuggling needs much more than a mere income balance pass. Before we consider fixing the smuggling payouts, we need to look at what makes it supposedly more risk and skill-based than trading, and atm it's hard to see much of a difference.

Sure, but my primary grievance here doesn't need smuggling to receive a balance pass. I just want it to function again.

And achieving that is simple; remove the ridiculous -25% price debuff incorrectly introduced in 3.3. It's as basic as the miners who want the PWA fixed. No balance pass needed, and indeed any balance pass would be doomed to fail without this issue fixed first.

 

[Valen Zendaris]

Agree with all of the above.

Fixing the 25% on illegal (not stolen!) goods is fine – doesn’t make smuggling any different to normal trading though (outside of RP). No amount of balancing is going to fix that either, considering the gameplay stays the exact same. As Bruce mentions in the other thread and Jukelo implies above, a key issue lies within the lack of authorities’ capability of detecting illegal activities AND their measures of preventing such.

As it currently stands, I too cannot recall having ever gotten caught by authorities during hundreds of smuggling runs. Regardless of system population, security level, controlling factions, or be it in a starting Sidewinder, unengineered T9, or fully engineered whatever-I-felt-like-flying… Pretty certain that holds true for the vast majority of players. Equally certain FDev is well aware of that.

While Odyssey brings the possibility of an “inside man” hacking into station security, I would really love to see something along the following implemented to reward both flying skills and/or outfitting choices:

NB: this assumes stations (not patrols) rely solely on sensors when tracking CMDRs.

1: Station airlock automatically scans any ship that passes through it regardless of speed. Reasoning: it’s the most basic and logical countermeasure against known criminals or illicit cargo, and anyone speeding their way through is an automatic suspect who would get inspected after successfully docking (the ATC can track each ship once detected by stations sensors = a CMDR is automatically tracked if ATC has welcomed them to the station up until that player leaves the vicinity and ATC wishes them farewell).

2. To remain undetected by the station sensors you need a cold ship (and you must enter station proximity cold!).

3. You then need to hack another ship, to duplicate their docking permission (do not request docking as ATC will then automatically track your ship and notice the lack of a scan within the airlock). This could possibly be done via a limpet, though it would be far more feasible via a data-link of some sort (perhaps a utility module that works similar to a wake scanner).

4. Then you need to pass through the airlock undetected, which should not be an issue thanks to already flying a cold ship.

Side note: during the above steps, patrols will still attempt to detect you, upon which you may be scanned or at the very least tracked by ATC again. If the former happens, you may need to flee the instance. In case of the later you may simply exit station proximity for another attempt.

5. Now proceed to steal the landing pad designated for the ship you originally hacked. Be quick, as otherwise you’ll need to hack another ship for a new docking clearance (and without blowing your cover/heat signature).

Note 1: When a player steals the landing pad of another player the landing clearance is automatically revoked for the original player. This "theft" is a great indicator that the “pad thief” should be one to watch out for. Whether to avoid being their next victim outside of the station, or as a possible next bounty target...

Note 2: Failing to remain undetected when passing through the airlock will immediately grant a fine (up to a certain threshold cargo value, minimum that of the cargo value) or a wanted status. This could depend on various factors such as security level, controlling faction's government, etc.

Perhaps I’m missing something, but I imagine that to be a fairly simple and still versatile way of stealthily entering stations that isn’t too tedious in the long term and makes full use of mechanics already in the game. Would love to have some sort of moving obstacle course to fly through in order to enter stations discreetly, but that would require a lot of work from FDev.

Regarding exploits: the only real exploit would be to have another player “give” you a docking pad. I don’t see that as an issue though, as the player would still need to enter the station undetected and such an accomplice is perfectly natural among this line of work.

Sorry if this is deemed as hijacking the thread/off topic. Not intended that way...

 

[Florenus]

Regarding exploits: the only real exploit would be to have another player “give” you a docking pad. I don’t see that as an issue though, as the player would still need to enter the station undetected and such an accomplice is perfectly natural among this line of work.

I think it could be great way to grief players too, as you would just need to hack his ship and deny him docking access again and again.

Maybe simpler idea would be to just hack Traffic Control, with varied difficulty depending on security level. Some minigame, like the ones for subsurface mining f.ex, might work there too. Cold ship would be needed to not be detected and disturbed while hacking. After that you are given landing clearance without airlock scan.

 

[DJBezoar]

I've beaten on this drum a fair bit myself. I really wish it could just get functional. All that needs to happen is the debuff being removed from illicit goods. It's insanely frustrating lmfao

But if there were a rework: My idea that (might) be simple would be to have a smugglers hold. Make illegal goods a bit more valuable, but smugglers holds hold less cargo. have a frequency you tune your hold to, which would split ones attention between docking and making sure you cannot be scanned (might even make multi crew "smuggling" a thing). If you don't maintain the frequency- fine and your hold gets taken from you along with the cargo, if getting blown up is seen as too steep of a penalty.


Might even be better/more convenient for piracy, as you wouldn't have to worry about heat/flying a bulkier ship.

 

[Valen Zendaris]

I think it could be great way to grief players too, as you would just need to hack his ship and deny him docking access again and again.

Maybe simpler idea would be to just hack Traffic Control, with varied difficulty depending on security level. Some minigame, like the ones for subsurface mining f.ex, might work there too. Cold ship would be needed to not be detected and disturbed while hacking. After that you are given landing clearance without airlock scan.

That’s a fair point. However it could be solved very easily: a cool-down for hacking the same ship multiple times. Such a cool-down would apply to anyone trying to hack that ship again (consider it an automated temporary firewall that boots up after the first successful hack). That should eliminate ganking a “victim”.

The reason I’d love to see such a mechanic used: it rewards flying skills, smart outfitting choices and an understanding of heat mechanics. At the same time it is reasonably sound in regards to “realism” without being tedious, or too repetitive.

Yes, you would repeat the process every time you wanted to enter the station, however it relies on a dynamic variable: the presence of a ship to hack and seizing the right moment based on your own flying skills and/or ship load-out. Such is not a fixed circumstance/completely in the player’s control (with the exception of working with an accomplice, but that’s a player’s own choice and thus responsibility).

Hacking into the ATC using a mini-game would likely become repetitive quite quickly, as the activity itself would always remain the exact same based on fixed variations of the same mechanic (read as: the buttons you press will be the same, just in a different order). That is unless they make it a rather complex mini-game, which risks making it tedious.

I've beaten on this drum a fair bit myself. I really wish it could just get functional. All that needs to happen is the debuff being removed from illicit goods. It's insanely frustrating lmfao

But if there were a rework: My idea that (might) be simple would be to have a smugglers hold. Make illegal goods a bit more valuable, but smugglers holds hold less cargo. have a frequency you tune your hold to, which would split ones attention between docking and making sure you cannot be scanned (might even make multi crew "smuggling" a thing). If you don't maintain the frequency- fine and your hold gets taken from you along with the cargo, if getting blown up is seen as too steep of a penalty.


Might even be better/more convenient for piracy, as you wouldn't have to worry about heat/flying a bulkier ship.

Flying a cold ship should remain a requirement, as this gives a lot of depth to heat management and choosing suitable ship load-outs for varying professions.

Furthermore the above suggestion would need to be expanded on a bit:

1. Any station that is not controlled by an anarchy faction, will automatically conduct scans through the airlock as described in the aforementioned post. Anarchy controlled stations would NOT conduct such scans, however don’t give any profit aside from normal trade values as nothing is illegal there anyways. (It would allow hot ships – specifically large ones – to dock without fear of getting automatically scanned by the station authorities though.)

2. Outposts and mega-ships would continue to function as is currently in-game (no auto-scan), giving significantly reduced profits for any illegal goods in comparison to stations, yet still slightly higher than that of the normal trade value for that system. Consider these “easy-mode”.

3. Not certain about planetary outposts, but I’d reckon increasing patrols, specifically scan-frequency by them, would make it balanced to gain a higher profit if you manage to slip past them.

--
tl;dr

Whatever FDev decide to do regarding smuggling - if anything - I certainly hope it is based on existing, core mechanics of the game and not simply some additional side-task. Otherwise it would be an utter shame.

So back on topic: I'm hoping that with Odyssey's release, FDev will take the time to flesh out smuggling in some form and then rebalance the profit margins of smuggled goods based on the difficulty and risks involved. Let me state that again, difficulty and risks involved...

o7

 

[Killnine]

Liking the ideas for reworking smuggling. As it is, it's outright silly. Then again, it's perfectly in line with the authorities (lack of) ability to interdict. With Odyssey, simply have them practically incapable of hitting commanders with hand guns, too, and we'll have humorously replicated the inept Stormtroopers from Star Wars!

Yes, entering stations undetected should be a very difficult task indeed, and be more involved than just boosting in. Even if a "new", challenging way in was implemented, lazy, busy or beginner smugglers should have an easier, but less rewarding method. Sell cargo by communicating with the local criminals and jettisoning it for them? Surely they'd pay less, since they'll have to arrange a way in? Also, unless you've built reputation with the criminal faction, there could be a risk of them trying to rip you off - ie. pirate you (with the normal methods, ie. deploy hatch breakers, blow up your engines and defenses) when you show up. Outposts could continue to provide an easy to access, lower reward black market.