The Smuggling discussion thread

[Ziljan]

How much exactly can you make per hour with this powerplay bonus?

In ALD with rank 5, people make 17 Mil per hour in CZs.



OP, I agree. The only thing that should change about smuggling is an increased risk of failing the mission. Eg. get scanned before docking and lose the mission, and also the penalties of getting caught should be pretty high as well. Higher penalties. Docking privaleges revoked. Bounties for known smugglers, etc.

 

[rucky]

Dont get me wrong - I like it the way it is .. But I am Tycoon and Tronda and making 7 mil/hour trading (booooring) and people on this forum say it is uber!. So Conda 140mil <> Asp 4.9 mil ... lets be serious about this not?

Don't get fooled by ASP...

To get these supa-high paid missions you have to
- be friendly or allied to sirius corp
- be tycoon or elite

so no such thing for newbees in their first asp...

only to get the "wording" and "meaning" right.
I'm only entrepreneur and not friendly so the highest payout is 1-2 mill for 5 units... so compare! I will get per load 20-30 mill for 4-6 hours so... what's OP about that?

=> its fine as it is!

I'm absolutely sure anybody who made 20mil/hour DOES ALREADY have an Anaconda!
He's only not using it in THIS particular "mission"...

Now I'm waiting here at Sothis, for 45 min now, I have 6 missions, payout 10 mill...
AND ?!!!! Completely OP?!
You know I have to drive home with that, and there will we some danger en route...

 

[Cmdr Eran Mintor]

Question - is there anything else you can do that makes 17 million per hour? Sure you can grind for rank 5 ALD or Hudson and make comparable amount bounty hunting, but that requires you to spend several hours in advance to do so.

Should smuggling be profitable, more so than regular trading? Yes. Should it also come with comparable risks? Definitely. Does it have these risks? Nope.

 

[askavir]

Dont get me wrong - I like it the way it is .. But I am Tycoon and Tronda and making 7 mil/hour trading (booooring) and people on this forum say it is uber!. So Conda 140mil <> Asp 4.9 mil ... lets be serious about this not?

The Asp costs 6.6mil, unless you get it in a discount system. Anyway, why should the ship you choose to fly determine what is fair revenue? Surely your choice of ship provides you other advantages as well, asides revenue. There are also people making much more than those 7mil per hour with Vultures or Couriers or diamondbacks, turkey-shooting at res sites, and those ships are even cheaper than Asps.

 

[Mississippi Jones]

This "if you shoot the cops before completed scan to receive a LESSER FINE" flawed mechanic needs to be exposed for what it is - ridiculous.

Kudos to the people who discovered it and yes, the reputation loss is increased + angry cops on to you....

But consider its application in the real world:


SCENE: Courtroom

MAGISTRATE: "Willl the defendant please rise. You sir, have been found guilty to be in possession of a considerable amount of prohibited narcotics and have also been found guilty of intent to supply them. Normally, I would be considering a stiff, custodial sentence bordering on the two-digit mark for your crimes. BUT....since you also DREW A FIREARM AND DISCHARGED IT TOWARDS THE ARRESTING OFFICERS, in a manner clearly negligent of the grave harm and immediate life-threatening danger to these aforemention officers....I see no other recourse but to....minimise the sentence to 3 weeks community service. How do you plead regarding this?"

DEFENDANT: "Thats cool, Daddy-o! Nice wig, by the way."

MAGISTRATE: "Less of that you wee nyaff! Ok, I'm running late for going to the <ahem>...social club, but you are free to go. But know this, you little..... ! WE ARE ON TO YOU! And Officer Friendly over there has got a bumblebee in his knickers over this entire sordid matter. So you better watch out, alright?"

DEFENDANT: "No probs, Chief."

MAGISTRATE: "Right, beat it!"


Defendant leaves court and exits the building, a free and happy chappy. Meanwhile Angry Cop takes off after him, waits till he goes into a shop, pulls out an Uzi and opens up full auto on defendant.......




- Maybe I've taken a few liberties making the point , but you get the jist of it.

20k Fine for smuggling, but if I open fire on Authority - drops to 200?? ............. insanity!

 

[cmdr awesome]

I had quite an intense hour this morning before heading off to work. My plan had been just to reposition my stealthy asp to Sothis ready for this evening. On arriving there I found a 5M mission, together with a 100K mission for a nearby drop off that was for a faction I wanted favour with. I just about had time to do it so off I go. At the first stop there are two more 5M missions (I'm a broker, but have spent some cash on donation missions and a few hours on smuggling). I can't resist, so I have 15M to earn and the clock was ticking as I needed to head to work IRL.

After a couple of scary interdictions I made it - just. So 15M an hour is just about possible if you're lucky with the bulletin board. 5-10M is more likely once you factor in the camping at the BB and the return trip. As Ben says, there are big reputational risks too. Losing your ship just costs insurance, but being caught out and losing rep with a major faction can hurt that next ship purchase and take weeks to recover from. I've avoided being scanned so far, but I've been shot at on final approach to an outpost, been interdicted by an eagle to then have an anaconda drop in next to me, and had to wait for other commanders to clear outpost pads - "docking request denied" makes you clench a bit when you've got a hold full of dirty contraband.

Having said that, I've gone from ~2% broker to ~75% and almost earned enough for a 140M mining python I've got my eye on...

My verdict - smuggling is lucrative and fun, but not OP

 

[Iskariot]

So, yeah, 17 millions per hour in Asp and Broker rank.
Is it good profit? - sure. Is it OP? - nope. Get rank-5 with Zachary Hudson or ALD, and you not only get 50 millions weekly salary, but also TWICE bounties in new Hazardous sites and compromised NAV beacons. Only CNBs and HESs can already provide over 17m/h profit in bounties.

I think the 50 million weekly salary is too much too.
The incentive to partake in PowerPlay should lie in compelling gameplay, not in these ridiculous amounts of salary.
Can you imagine any leader paying his/her soldiers 50 million a week?
It is downright absurd.

Are wars fought by millionaires and billionaires in the future?

 

[Uncertain]

So after hearing how OP new smuggling is, and reading some angry topics on forum about it...

So obviously nothing like "OMG, its 60 million in 20 minutes!". Tbh i not sure how numbers like that popped out.

So, yeah, 17 millions per hour in Asp and Broker rank.

Eh? You mean you read the topic called "OMG! You can make 20+Mil Cr per Hour", made approximately 20mil credits in an hour, and instead of adding to that thread you made a new thread to inform people that you can't make 60mil in 20 minutes?

 

[Varrag]

I don't mind whatever they decide to do with these missions. I've been running them yesterday and today, in 40 ton cargo shieldless Cobra (couldn't bother to refit my explo Asp) and made ~100 mil, which was more than enough for what I needed to do. Maybe I'll spend another day or two but after that I am going back to my regular activities (currently, farming HazRes zones).

Since I was smuggling just rarely before this, I can tell that my impressions about this part of the game remain the same - it's unfinished and buggy:

a) interdictions are joke: submit, chaff, boost, jump; when some especially persistent ship keeps following me, I simply make a jump to adjacent system and then go back - he's usually gone after that. At least system authority vessels should be faster, and equipped with some kind of FSD blocker so that I cannot enter supercruise or hyperspace just like that. Also, what's with all those NPC interdictors crashing into the stars while I am merrily scooping fuel? By the time I notice and read their one-liner threats, they have already commited suicide.

b) entering stations with illicit cargo is another joke: even when I get "ship scan detected" message, nothing happens; I am still free to rush through the letterbox, dock and unload stuff. Silent running and sneaking around system authority vessels are waste of time. Stations should prevent me from docking and attack when they, or the police ships detect illicit cargo - which they should be doing much faster. Also, why can't we have police ships blockading the station entrance? Sometimes at least?

All in all - it was interesting for the first few times, my wallet is noticeably thicker, but I am not particularly impressed with all this.

 

[Ben Ryder]

These "an hour" folk don't take in to account the missions are timed so once you take it you are locked in to doing it. Fail or abandon a few and you wont see many more.

 

[Hadron-Higgs-Boson]

Still, the old saying two wrongs don't make a right applies. in E: D *ALL* of the bulletin board missions involving (legal or illegal) seem to be generating unfeasible amounts of cash for what is actually being done. It's not just smuggling per se. Likewise earning 50 million credits per week from PowerPlay strikes me as, erm, excessive, as is doubling bounties.
.
Not digging at anyone, I don't really care who's got what ship and how long they took to get it, just that, the 'believability' of the universe and 'willing suspension of disbelief' are shot for me at present. When moving a few tonnes of scrap pays as much as assassination or bounty hunting, something's amiss.

THIS!

None of this stuff is particularly over powered, but it has more or less killed any actual immersion in the commodities being traded and smuggled (if you accept there ever was any in the first place of course). Why would station x pay 500k for 3 things they can pop next door and buy for a tenner? and why are so many of these 'everyday' items illicit in the first place? there really should be an major overhaul of the commodities in game and a complete set of appropriate black market and illegal goods added

 

[goemon]

to rush through the letterbox

how do you rush through the letterbox of an outpost?

 

[CMDR Derrida]

Well said. Good to read some sense from some one who has tested objectively rather than the flood of knee jerk reactions. Bravo

Ben, the knee jerk reactions are to the 'exploit', not to smuggling as a whole.

 

[goemon]

the knee jerk reactions are to the 'exploit'

it's hard to balance exploitative gameplay. "i can make xxx cr/h ... i log off after undocking, so i save the time to manouver my t9 through the slot."

 

[ocflyer]

These "an hour" folk don't take in to account the missions are timed so once you take it you are locked in to doing it. Fail or abandon a few and you wont see many more.

You're just being silly. Of course we know that ALL missions are timed, whether smuggling, charity or whatever. But that doesn't change the validity of what we're saying - that certain missions can result in a per-hour payout. Nobody wants to hear stories of "how I made 30M" without also hearing how long it took the person to earn it.

 

[Bacalao]

17 million an hour in an asp is well out of whack of everything else. Smuggling needed some love though, thats undeniable.

If fd leave this as it is though, it means there is no mid game anymore.

I disagree, this is bringing the mid game to the end game. Now it makes sense to fly an Asp despite the fact that I have a Conda/Python/whatever I want. Now I have a reason to run a quick, silent cobra beyond style points.
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If you look at this from the perspective of not having an end game, these kinds of missions just opened up a huge amount of utility for ships that were otherwise just being used for flavor once people had reached the end game.
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I don't really get the backlash. People complain forever about the grind through the "mid game", they complain about the uselessness of the small ships relative to the big ones, they complain about the dominance of the big ships for "progression", so FD presents a way (with significant risk to average pilots) to reduce the grind, increase bubble traffic, extend the utility of the low-mid range ships, create a great niche for smaller ships over the large ones (without reducing the relevance of the large ships one jot), and the community essentially complains that there isn't enough grind anymore.......
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I really don't see the problem with everyone having access to every ship after 20 hrs of play, I don't see the problem with anyone with 100hrs of play having 9 figures in their account all the time. Why not? Because it gives players freedom. When it is so painful to get in game assets (that trade grind...) that you won't risk your ship, the gameplay suffers. Giving players the ability to increase their bank accounts takes a lot of the sting out of getting blown up in PvP, and while that trivializes loss somewhat, it makes it much more enticing to engage in to-the-death pvp or high stakes fortification/undermining, or trading in populated areas. If players know they can go lose a few FdLs and it's okay because it doesn't mean they have to grind for a couple weeks to make it all back or end up in a sidey, they'll be more likely to play more of the game. Isn't that what we want? People experiencing the gameplay avenues? I'm all for harsh consequences but when the risk of loss is high, and the difficulty in recuperating after it is so harsh, a huge slice of your player base (the casual 5hrs per week players) are going to avoid any of the really meaty, really risky parts of the game (open play, PP, CGs).
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I like the long range smuggling and I like the payouts, I don't particularly care if you log for 4 hrs to max out a t-9 cargo hold to one destination system. I like the risk, I like the options it gives players, I hope FD will continue to evaluate the professions to get more of them on board like this one (maybe up the number of trade missions available in station by a factor of 2-10 depending on population?). There isn't any reason rate of progression to "end game" should be very slow, especially not just because "in my day (Jan 2015) that's how it was! AND WE DID IT IN THE SNOW! With no landing gear and only one headlight!"

 

[CMDR Derrida]

it's hard to balance exploitative gameplay. "i can make xxx cr/h ... i log off after undocking, so i save the time to manouver my t9 through the slot."

Pre exploit:
50 million per week undermining after a difficult slog reaching level 5 in the first place.
4-6 million per hour trading gold/slaves in a T9 or Conda
Post exploit:
20 - 30 million per hour for switching modes to get big bounty smuggling missions.

 

[Bacalao]

THIS!

None of this stuff is particularly over powered, but it has more or less killed any actual immersion in the commodities being traded and smuggled (if you accept there ever was any in the first place of course). Why would station x pay 500k for 3 things they can pop next door and buy for a tenner? and why are so many of these 'everyday' items illicit in the first place? there really should be an major overhaul of the commodities in game and a complete set of appropriate black market and illegal goods added

I think this is more an issue of being given context over any issue with an exploit. If there were flavor text about packages being marked or custom or decoys full of experimental tech, or whatever. At the same time, the apparent "normalness" of the biowaste I'm shipping for such a high payout makes my imagination run away with what might actually be in my cargo hold....(but I've been told many times I have a tad too much imagination). You can also assume that they don't know what is on sale next door, I mean, even with trade data purchased, I can't tell most the time unless I check a 3rd party app.

 

[ocflyer]

...max out a t-9 cargo hold to one destination system...

I shudder to think what it would be like using a T9 for stacked, long range smuggling missions. Probably wouldn't get past the first star system.

 

[Grenian]

Another thing that people fail to mention is that every single system for 400 ly that you're loaded you're getting interdicted by a npc in almost every system-sometimes 2-3 times in a system while you're trying to scoop. If you're running something like a cobra or asp or w/e and trying not to have shields/weapons so you have max jump range this can be a problem with the broken interdictions. So I don't think it's really OP no, I think it's risk vs reward. Yes you can make about 15-20m an hour but people aren't taking into account all the interdictions and moving between 10+ stations to deliver all the missions I don't think. That's your AVERAGE once you spend 2-3 hours getting the missions and then running around delivering everything. It's not OP at all in my opinion.

Edit: If mining was working right you could make about the same only grabbing platinum, painite, and osmium and doing nothing but open-solo swaps and delivering those for mission completions at a high tech station... assuming you had a large enough cargo hold anyway... and it would be safer.