The Smuggling discussion thread

[Sheepykins]

Hi,

Is there a way to tell which systems deem what cargo illicit?

Or is this simply a case of anything stolen? I've tried missions but some people say you can buy commodities from one market and sell them in a system that deems it illicit and has a black market.

I just cant seem to see what would be illicit in one part of space but not in another

Other than that, I suppose i'll just go pirate some ships.

 

[LeetNoob]

Yes, if you go into galaxy map and system view, and click on a station. It will tell you what is prohibited.
It is done by station so differant stations in the same system can have different rules.

An example.

This station has Narcotics, Toxic waste and Slaves as prohibited.

 

[Mikalus]

Hi,

Is there a way to tell which systems deem what cargo illicit?

Or is this simply a case of anything stolen? I've tried missions but some people say you can buy commodities from one market and sell them in a system that deems it illicit and has a black market.

I just cant seem to see what would be illicit in one part of space but not in another

Other than that, I suppose i'll just go pirate some ships.

When you are on the galaxy map click on system information. Then select the stations. Information for that station appears on the left hand side of the screen. In that list will be something named "Prohibited goods" or something similar. Sometimes the goods you have are okay at one station in a system and not another depending on the faction that controls that station.

EDIT - If you like smuggling, consider joining Archon Delaine, our systems have a good bonus for it.

 

[Sheepykins]

Ah, both you guys rock! i thought there must be a way.
i do enjoy smuggling, Archon Delaine is this powerplay? I havent gotten into that much at all, could be fun - PM me some deets!

 

[Red Fox Four]

Smuggled 16 tons of Imperial Slaves: profit? -11.500Cr

Been discussing this somewhat on Reddit too at https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/3f6wjl/smuggling_needs_more_excitement/

Why am I losing money when I smuggle Imperial Slaves to a system where they are illegal (a system controlled by Aisling Duval) ?

The real question is... why does the black market offer below galactic average prices on illegal wares?

This makes NO sense.

Certainly I can understand the point of "If smuggling has much better profit per tonne than trade, then noone would do trade".

To this the solution, as discussed on Reddit as well, is to make smuggling more risky.

• Frequency of scans increased across the board, and scaled depending on security of the systems.
• Scans performed on ALL arriving ships, and some departing ships.
• Higher presence of police/security at outposts to prevent them from being zero-scan sanctuaries like they are today.
• The higher the presence of police/security the larger the profit margin (e.g. smuggling to remote outposts is not as lucrative as getting drugs to high-end tourism systems for instance).
• Ratio of legal wares compared to illegal determines chance of finding illegal goods (e.g. with 10 tonnes of cargo and carrying 9 tonnes narcotics and 1 tonne of tea the chance is much bigger than when you carry 29 tonnes of tea and 1 tonne of narcotics)
• Addition of modules that prevent scans from finding illegal goods (chance to block scans, hidden compartments that decrease chance of detection, modules that convey the incorrect information to the scanner so your illegal cargo looks like it is legal). Success chance varying depending on class and rating of module.
• Improved mission system where bulletin board requests you to get illegal wares and smuggle them into the station (e.g. go buy imperial slaves in empire and bring back to a federation system).
• .... more stuff

Please make smuggling an actual trade with risks, bounties, fines, police chases and nerve wracking docking, and scale the profit accordingly.

The system we have today is nothing but a boring shadow to the current trade system. I have done 100's of smuggling runs into regular stations and NOT ONCE have a scan successfully caught me. And I don't even use no heat sinks or cool the ship. I just boost once and fly normally into the station. The scans take too long to be started and never finish on time (if they even get them started at all before I am in).

It's an absolute disgrace that game calling itself Elite Dangerous has such a lackluster smuggling system.

Get it sorted.

 

[PulsarShark]

The Princess is the anti-slavery power.

You really expect to make a profit hauling illegal slaves into the territory of the one authority figure in the game who most actively opposes all slavery?

You're lucky to end up with only a small net loss, as opposed to thrown in a station's jail or floating cold in a cloud of metal shards

 

[Red Fox Four]

The banning of slaves in those systems should make the price for slaves triple.

It's still an Empire system. It's old traditions that don't die easy.

Like I said about Prohibition era in the US. Alcohol price nearly tripled, and speakeasies flourished.

It's absolutely ridiculous that you take a loss.

And yes, I would have accepted a bounty or fine if I had been caught red-handed with cargo full of imperial slaves in a system where they are illegal.

However, that relates to what I said above (and on Reddit)... Smuggling has no risk.

Risk needs to be increased ALOT, and the profit margin needs to follow.

 

[CMDR Hagglebeard]

The banning of slaves in those systems should make the price for slaves triple.

It's still an Empire system. It's old traditions that don't die easy.

Bam! This!

I miss the beta feature where being scanned with illegal cargo resulted in death. 3301 police are simply too lenient.

 

[Stealth Gamer92]

I wasn't around for BETA, but I'm actually glad I wasn't as just hearing of it sound's about perfect(the "golden age" if you will) for the smuggling career.

 

[Greythorne]

The Princess is the anti-slavery power.

If that area of space is the most hostile towards the slave trade, AND there's still black market demand slaves, that should actually lead to higher slave prices than the galactic average.

It certainly shouldn't lead to a loss on the black market.

 

[Schmack]

If that area of space is the most hostile towards the slave trade, AND there's still black market demand slaves, that should actually lead to higher slave prices than the galactic average.

It certainly shouldn't lead to a loss on the black market.

Would that market be supply/demand driven as well? Meaning, just because they are banned doesn't mean they aren't being inundated with smugglers trying to make a profit.

Buying something legal in one place and selling it where it's not legal is profitable if everyone isn't doing it. You flood the black market (small market, at least it should be) with something like diamonds or gold and you'll have to wait a while for it to move. They'll buy more from you to clean money but at a reduced rate.

However the game mechanic is most likely broken here. I doubt it's as complicated as I made it.

 

[Red Fox Four]

The smuggling game mechanic is very broken.

I've bought narcotics before and smuggled to stations where it was illegal, of various economy (tourism, extraction, high tech etc) and you never make a profit.

Put simple, if you buy the item on the Commodity market and smuggle it to sell on the Black market, then you are almost always guaranteed a loss (I have not yet found a single lucrative Commodity->Black market trade route).

The only smuggling you can earn a profit from is scooping cans in USS and Strong/Weak Signal Sources, or by taking missions off the bulletin board.

There is NOTHING about the smuggling (besides the rare and inefficient scans) that make smuggling different from trading.

Aren't all careers in this game supposed to be profitable?

So far the careers I can see are (decent profit in green, poor in red):

• Bounty Hunter - Random bounties in Nav Beacon, supercruise, RES
• Mercenary - Doing missions in conflict zones or hunting down ships like civilian, auhtority and pirate or assassinate 'named' NPC
• Trader - Regular Commodity market trading or pulling missions off bulletin board.
• Miner - Really slow, too much micromanagement and overall poor profit per time ratio compared to others (in my experience)
• Smuggler - Broken and just a shadow feature of the real trading.
• Pirate - Slow way to make profit. Hard to get proper valuable cargo and requires scanning, tracking or just luck (again, in my experience)

(disclaimer, been up all night so might have missed something.. head not on straight)

Overall the criminal lifestyle is simply not rewarding. Being a pirate and/or smuggler has an appeal that people like, but the profit is insignificant compared to the other ways of making money. Which, again, makes NO sense to me... Shouldn't the primary incentive for choosing a criminal career be the fact that you have a bigger potential to make money, but with the higher risk of being caught, fined and having a bounty on you?

Seriously Frontier... where is the logic of having legit careers make MORE money than the criminal ones, and besides the appeal of such a career (something that gets old real fast though) what is supposed to be the enduring motivation to keep being a pirate, or smuggler, and not simply go back to bounty hunting and trading again?

 

[Nonya]

I think FDEV made the entire BGS so complicated that they no longer understand how it all works. It's all so intertwined now that buffing one thing auto-nerfs something else.
They literally have very little control over it now other than hand-jabbing certain things into it.

 

[Marra Morgan]

The smuggling game mechanic is very broken.

I've bought narcotics before and smuggled to stations where it was illegal, of various economy (tourism, extraction, high tech etc) and you never make a profit.

I make 2.8k per unit from drug smuggling. For the reletively low risk, that's not bad at all.

I agree that things should be riskier. I'd like to see smarter AI in the security patrols so they make a bee line for ejected heat sinks and ships coming in over a certain speed threshold. Or something like that.

 

[Vasious]

I guess you have missed all the previous debates on this.

Unless things have changed and I missed the patch notes; I would say that you were losing money on the Slave smuggling as the system you were taking them to, prior to HIH Aisling's takeover, was a Exporter of Slaves.
The current system still classifies systems by import and exporter of the good even if illegal, so you would be selling in an exporter and thus making a loss.

Take the slaves to a traditional consumer of the goods, and where illegal the black market will turn a profit, this applied to all good, so you wont make a profit smuggling tobacco to Argi worlds where it is illegal for instance as it will have 0 demand and 0 but low/medium/high supply.

Here is the bug report for your reading pleasure

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=153208

 

[Dark Ted]

Bam! This!

I miss the beta feature where being scanned with illegal cargo resulted in death. 3301 police are simply too lenient.

Except when it comes to docking without permission. They still take that quite seriously

 

[Ryan Murdoc]

Hello everyone out there.

Playing ED for about a week (or was it already more ? Time flies so fast...) and so far the most lucrative i've found to do was "smuggling" Slaves, Personal Weapons and the likes via Bulletin Board. Got fined every now and then (so i didn't actually smuggle in the literal sense, since i was discovered) but so far only paid the fine and went on with my life, receiving no other hassle at all, which kind of makes no sense at all. I mean, getting scanned, the Cops know you got contraband loaded, but simply going to land in the Space Station, paying your Fine and then go on selling the illicit goods anyways is ridiculous in a real-life sense. The few times some Patrol Ships attacked me new a Space Station i simply switch from Open to Solo Mode (or vice versa), and they're gone. Never had my cargo removed after a scan or the whole place turning hostile towards me.

I started in the Eravate System (as i guess does everyone else, considering the traffic over there). After a while i decided to search for less populated areas, since the damn Griefers got on my nerves and i had to switch from Open to Solo too much. Decided to go powerplaying with Ms. Winters, didn't do much in her favor yet though, since i found myself a nice area to do my shady business. Currently operating between NECHE and NLTT21088. No scan ever in Neche System (Anarchy), and if you avoid Weber Station in NLTT21088 alltogether (no risk delivering to Hertz or Dobrowolski Stations) things are really smooth going. Had a trying to snack me in his Python, but my Asp is already well equipped enough to make a break from it. Also getting the occasional Interdiction from other powerplaying NPCs or some cargo-hungry pirate, but they don't last long enough to regret it (4x Small Beam Laser / 2x Medium Multi-Cannon, all gimballed).

So. yah....i guess thats the way to go for me. Everything else is either too boring or too deadly (first Assassination mission for 50k i found my target sitting in a damned Anaconda, me in a Cobra....yeah, you can guess that outcome).

Going to stay in that area until i have maxed out my Asp, probably looking for some Conflict sites in a System to satisfy my bloodlust. Oh, and in case you find it morally wrong in-character to haul slaves and such around - everyone makes their gains out of the misery of others. Has been on this planet for since mankind exists, and isn't different to in-game here. In-character wise, my guy slips some ceramic knives to some slaves though. For to fight their oppressors or to commit suicide, whatever they prefer.

 

[Sandmann]

The real question is... why does the black market offer below galactic average prices on illegal wares?

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away... two idealistic young programmers named David and Ian dreamed of a future galaxy in which law and order reigned and everyone was nice to each other and nearly noone nailed anyone else to a tree... and they made a game about it called Elite. They were going to call it Star Trek but that was already taken. They invented a bunch of planets where some planets had things that were illegal that were legal in other planets coz that seemed like a normal thing to expect, right? Except then they realised that maybe they needed a mechanism to get rid of stuff that you couldn't sell on the open market. That's what the black market is... a dumping ground for stuff you couldn't otherwise sell. You couldn't expect the economy to actually make sense and pay a premium for illegal items, could you? To do that they'd actually have to implement REAL security and REAL stealth techniques to present a REAL challenge to smuggling, just to prevent everyone simply trading in smuggled goods. And that'd NEVER happen in a galaxy where everyone's nice to each other... except if you're a "power" and you decide to declare open war against someone else every week for no apparent reason and noone actually did anything about it.
</SARCASM>

(Apologies to both Douglas Adams and George Lucas)

 

[Shtehfawn]

The current customs policy at stations is a joke. I wonder if I could fly to another country and sprint past the passport control, and they'd say "Let him go, we never got a chance to look at the paperwork.".

One idea I've is landing pads could be equipped with cargo scanners instead of patrol craft, and then once landed you could have to do some sort of minigame (a la interdiction) to keep their scanners from detecting your goods (with jamming module upgrades making it easier to "win", but more contraband making it easier to "lose"). Then, if you're caught, you have nowhere to go and your cargo is seized, and if you can't pay the associated fine your ship is impounded. That would warrant improved black market prices, I think.

 

[Sandmann]

One idea I've is landing pads could be equipped with cargo scanners instead of patrol craft, and then once landed you could have to do some sort of minigame (a la interdiction) to keep their scanners from detecting your goods (with jamming module upgrades making it easier to "win", but more contraband making it easier to "lose"). Then, if you're caught, you have nowhere to go and your cargo is seized, and if you can't pay the associated fine your ship is impounded. That would warrant improved black market prices, I think.

Reminds me of storm troopers carrying scanning equipment into the Millenium Falcon to scan it for contraband, and the heroes hiding in the smuggling bays. Of course, DBOBE's unlikely to include Wookies as optional anti-scanning equipment.