I think I hardly need to explain it, but basically smuggling should be a high risk, high reward activity:
-You are risking high fines, ones that completely destroy any profit and rather put you on the red with any transaction involving illegal items.
-You are providing a hard to obtain commodity that at least in theory has a large market with an unfulfilled demand for that commodity, making any units you manage to smuggle a highly desired rare commodity, for that system/station at least.
As it stands, smuggling is mostly known as a "fun" activity you do if you want a change of pace from other activities. And while I do like that, I do wish that it also provided benefits for players that want to role-play as a pirate/raider/smuggler in Elite.
That being said, I do think the overall related gameplay could be further polished and expanded. Take for instance providing transport to criminals: if scanned all ships begin to shot you on site, no questions asked. That in my opinion is the other end of the spectrum.
I think smuggling and transporting criminals could share similar surrender/flee mechanics:
-If scanned, the authority demands you to surrender by reducing you throttle to zero. At that point your smuggled goods and/or criminals passenger are seized and you are fined or even sent to jail depending on the gravity of the situation. On the other hand, you decide to flee, so your goods or passengers aren't captured, at which point the authority does open fire on you. If you manage to escape, the criminal asks you to take him back to the location you picked him up from or to a backup location, likely a nearby outpost or small planetary location with large landing pads (if using a large ship) for a fraction of the original rate or simply in exchange of not losing reputation with the passenger's related faction. Perhaps you could even be given a chance to complete contract by making a second attempt from that location.
-In the case of smuggled goods, you get to keep them and can still attempt to sell them elsewhere. You still need to pay the fines/bounties, but since the authority failed to properly inspect the cargo, the fine could be lower on the assumption that they don't know for certain how many units of that illegal cargo you were carrying, and reduce the fine to the standard amount of cargo the ship can carry (the default cargo capacity of the ship when you buy it). For example, you could have tried to smuggle up to 790 tons in a Type-9, but since the authority couldn't board your ship, they will assume you could only carry 348 tons, which is what a stock Type-9 can carry by default. If we get only a minimalist fine for a single unit of every type fo smuggling item we carry, I wouldn't complain, but I guess a middle point between the two should exist to make feeling with the smuggled goods a better alternative than letting them being seized.
Alternatively, we could have the option to bribe the authority, which could work like this:
-We visit the station prior to the smuggling, visit the black market or another contact (customs or a political one) that will allow us to pay the bribe. This will allow our ships to not be scanned for a period of time while in their airspace (in-game this could be explained as our ship being filtered out from the scanner during that time). The availability of this service and its cost could be dependent on government type and the current state of the system (civil unrest, war, elections, etc.). I could even imagine that in some government types such as a dictatorship, if we are allied with the controlling faction we get a "free pass" to smuggle items and criminals while they are in power.
Anyway, just some ideas I came up with to make such types of gameplay more robust, partly inspired after seeing the raider ship kits in discount.
P.D. Piracy itself, namely PVE piracy against NPCs, could also benefit from some rework, that also makes it more viable at different stages (newbie, veteran, etc.), but that's a topic I will try tackle some other time.
-You are risking high fines, ones that completely destroy any profit and rather put you on the red with any transaction involving illegal items.
-You are providing a hard to obtain commodity that at least in theory has a large market with an unfulfilled demand for that commodity, making any units you manage to smuggle a highly desired rare commodity, for that system/station at least.
As it stands, smuggling is mostly known as a "fun" activity you do if you want a change of pace from other activities. And while I do like that, I do wish that it also provided benefits for players that want to role-play as a pirate/raider/smuggler in Elite.
That being said, I do think the overall related gameplay could be further polished and expanded. Take for instance providing transport to criminals: if scanned all ships begin to shot you on site, no questions asked. That in my opinion is the other end of the spectrum.
I think smuggling and transporting criminals could share similar surrender/flee mechanics:
-If scanned, the authority demands you to surrender by reducing you throttle to zero. At that point your smuggled goods and/or criminals passenger are seized and you are fined or even sent to jail depending on the gravity of the situation. On the other hand, you decide to flee, so your goods or passengers aren't captured, at which point the authority does open fire on you. If you manage to escape, the criminal asks you to take him back to the location you picked him up from or to a backup location, likely a nearby outpost or small planetary location with large landing pads (if using a large ship) for a fraction of the original rate or simply in exchange of not losing reputation with the passenger's related faction. Perhaps you could even be given a chance to complete contract by making a second attempt from that location.
-In the case of smuggled goods, you get to keep them and can still attempt to sell them elsewhere. You still need to pay the fines/bounties, but since the authority failed to properly inspect the cargo, the fine could be lower on the assumption that they don't know for certain how many units of that illegal cargo you were carrying, and reduce the fine to the standard amount of cargo the ship can carry (the default cargo capacity of the ship when you buy it). For example, you could have tried to smuggle up to 790 tons in a Type-9, but since the authority couldn't board your ship, they will assume you could only carry 348 tons, which is what a stock Type-9 can carry by default. If we get only a minimalist fine for a single unit of every type fo smuggling item we carry, I wouldn't complain, but I guess a middle point between the two should exist to make feeling with the smuggled goods a better alternative than letting them being seized.
Alternatively, we could have the option to bribe the authority, which could work like this:
-We visit the station prior to the smuggling, visit the black market or another contact (customs or a political one) that will allow us to pay the bribe. This will allow our ships to not be scanned for a period of time while in their airspace (in-game this could be explained as our ship being filtered out from the scanner during that time). The availability of this service and its cost could be dependent on government type and the current state of the system (civil unrest, war, elections, etc.). I could even imagine that in some government types such as a dictatorship, if we are allied with the controlling faction we get a "free pass" to smuggle items and criminals while they are in power.
Anyway, just some ideas I came up with to make such types of gameplay more robust, partly inspired after seeing the raider ship kits in discount.
P.D. Piracy itself, namely PVE piracy against NPCs, could also benefit from some rework, that also makes it more viable at different stages (newbie, veteran, etc.), but that's a topic I will try tackle some other time.
