I am not an expert in illegal trading, however, there are 2 differing models that I am aware of. One is fencing. You bring illegal goods to someone, who buys it at a discount against the expected price, then taking the risk of reselling it marks up the price and receives the difference. This makes sense when we are turning in 'found articles'..black boxes, rare art, etc. We sneak in the stolen goods and receive a price for them...since the items were 'found' we have no money in the inventory so any price given is profit. 'Smuggling' stolen goods in plays correctly within the game...this is not really smuggling, this is dealing in stolen goods and fencing.
Smuggling is altogether different. True smuggling is buying contraband in a system where said contraband is legal and bringing those goods to a market where they are prohibited. In these places, the contraband SHOULD be highly desired and short on supply, which would make the exchange highly profitable..until the prohibition is lifted OR demand is sated.
This is why people are upset with the smuggling system in E: D. We fence everything, there is no reason to bring in prohibited items since they are treated as a fenced good. I have done this type of trade run 4 or 5 times and lost my shirt each time. I have tried to bring in battle weapons to Civl War stations, Tobacco into various stations, etc.
How can this be fixed? Either allow the sale of a good that is traded on the commodity market to be traded there (even in a prohibited market), openly showing the price and demand or allow traders some glimpse into the demand for the prohibited item on a black market within the system.
Otherwise this gameplay is not viable...as the only 'smuggling' anyone will do is to bring in 'found' items that are illegal.
Why the hell is this even a thing???? Geez I'm seriously staggered this is occurring in Elite 4. This backwards version of the illegal goods mechanic was not present in the original Elite or FE2. Has DB gotten amnesia? Have any of the game dev's even played Elite and FE2 or FE3?
Seriously, I've not played the game yet because of too many things currently present I know I'll have a problem with if I encounter them and this is just a +1 to that LOOONG list.
If I were making Elite 4 I would have gone to my team months beforehand and said "OK, I want all of you to be properly grounded in the Elite Universe and what has come before, so go play Frontier for several WEEKS; I want to see at least 100 hours logged from each of you, make notes about what you like and don't like; then write a brief about how this or that may be improved or expanded, however trivial or outlandish you may think - I want all of it - Elite 4 has to be all Elite / Frontier / Frontier First Encounters had AND MORE AND BETTER!"
For those not familiar; in Elite, Corporate States had no black market, but would buy drugs if you had them in your cargo and for significantly higher than they are bought for (CS's giving you the best price with lower tier Govt's giving less money) - my moneymaker was Riedquat (anarchic) > Diso with DRUGS buying for 9cr and selling for about 100cr. In Frontier there was a black market, but the values were DOUBLE galactic average for prohibited goods and not just drugs / guns etc but occasionally weirdly "normal" things like Liquor. Also once in a while if you paid attention to the bulletin board you'd see a buy order for X amount of Y (which could be anything) at twice the normal value, but if it was an illegal item you'd get FOUR TIMES the gal average, giving you a real payday, and worth the trouble of going to an anarchic system, and possibly facing having to fight your way to dock.
@ FDEV Developers and code writers: ^^ This is how you have a Black market economy. Done by your predecessors in the SAME franchise but to a FAR SUPERIOR standard. Shame on you DB for letting this get bungled.
The more I read about the games economy the more I think the programmers in charge of the code have absolutely no clue how an economy works.... rare's are only rare within a certain band, yet further away from point of origin they are worth less and now this...
E: D has Anarchic states that sell goods prohibited many other places, and more vigilant police plus ARMED station entry scanners elsewhere, making station entry a real trick, but there's no point taking the risk because you are actually going to make a LOSS for doing so...
Stupid Stupid Stupid.
@ the fanbois - you think Elite 4 is great simply because you don't know any better.
Gobsmacked - I'm sat here shaking my head in disbelief this, and all the other problems, is the state of code in Elite 4; a game written 22 years AFTER it's predecessor Frontier that had better gameplay and mechanics almost across the board. In the gaming industry 22 years is TWO THIRDS the total lifetime of the industry
The sooner FDev get off their proverbial and I get my refund the better, then I can finally turn my back on this farce. I expected a Sirloin Dinner not a pierce and ping TV dinner.
