The Smuggling discussion thread

[Uncertain]

won't work, at least not with the sothis bottleneck. you need around 15 jumps to sothis/from sothis, that's alone 20 minutes jump time in the very best case, without docking and interdictions.

Oh, I don't use Sothis. I also wouldn't go all the way back to the starting point after finishing the time-sensitive missions, but you're right, there is probably at least a 15-minute travel period at the start that throws it off. I usually find that I can go from delivery point to delivery point in a single jump after I arrive in the little bubble the missions tend to appear in, though.

Maybe 15m/hr + a mandatory 0cr/15 minutes?

 

[goemon]

from this (and other ;-) ) threads i would like to add:

i think, what many cmdr's enjoy is, that this "sothis longrange smuggling goldrush" provides something like an episode/project.

for me i can say, the experience is similar to "reaching the highest point above sol", "trading all rare goods ingame", "going clockwise into the center of the universe", "flipping aganippe to unlock the rare good aganippe rush" - something which gives your action somehow "a story".

re-outfitting my exploration Asp for smuggling. going via takuara and robigo to sothis. picking up missions on the way, there, and back. being interdicted regularly. making it back into the bubble. delivering goods. running from the cops. big payout. cheers. perfect saturday evening/night/early morning.

 

[ocflyer]

https://forums-cdn.frontier.co.uk/images/frontier/misc/quote_icon.png Originally Posted by Ben Ryder https://forums-cdn.frontier.co.uk/images/frontier/buttons/viewpost-right.png
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.

NO you're silly

You miss my point. My point is that you are locked in to the activity and there are repercussion for non completion.

For intance you can bounty hunt at a resource extraction and log off any time you like and come back to it days later.

The same for A to B trading.

Both without any penalty.

However, with the missions failure or simply abandoning them comes with penalties (loss of rep, less missions and so on) and an over simplistic X per hour does not compare. Further, the missions must be stacked to make big credits and as they are all time sensitive, you contract the amount of time you have to complete them in.

Simple enough?

True enough but that's not news. Are you saying that have a timer to complete your work is relevant to the value or fun in the gameplay for missions?

 

[Wyrm]

And you don't have to pay them. It's not like you're wanted. Should you not pay them off they end up as a "Legacy" and you have to pay the fine + your insurance if you die. You don't die very often smuggling. If you lose rep at the destination it doesn't matter. Rep is also very easy to gain.

That means however that most mission from minor factions, allied to major faction, with which you have low reputation won't be available to you anymore And those very few that will be available - will pay significantly less.

 

[Ben Ryder]

I can't quite grasp this problem. I'm not sure that the timer has a great deal of impact on the situation, although I tend to play many hours per session, so maybe it's a problem I have no frame of reference for.

I use the "per hour" thing as a way to compare profits, because of course you can't really decide whether a billion-credit profit is worthwhile without knowing how much time it takes to make that billion. A full hold of smuggling missions could be taking as long as 3 hours to collect and complete on average, depending on more factors per player than I can think up, but the cr/hr is meant to indicate how much you might get at best per unit of time spent; you don't necessarily have to spend any particular length of time at it to make it useful.

The shortest mission timer I've seen thus far has been ~1.5 hours, so I might prioritise that one, but more often they're so forgiving that I can forget about them and just go about it at my own pace. Having 45 minutes to land at a place and click a button, especially when you're being chased there, does not seem very tight (assuming we spend 45 minutes waiting on more missions before departing).

Additionally, I've been caught smuggling the mission cargo probably 10ish times, and have had to abandon one that I misread. They don't seem to mind in the least, and I've ended up allied with 2/3 of the issuing factions and friendly with the rest in the process. I expect outright losing the cargo for 8 missions at once might set my standing with them back to square one, which seems to mean that they'd go back to giving me slightly fewer millions of credits.

Do tell me if I'm wrong, I feel like I'm misunderstanding the points made here.

Edit: I also want to re-mention the huge trader ships coming in 1.5. I expect 1.5 profits to dwarf the pre-1.4 profits in yet another way, so this all might be small potatoes.

It's no problem. It's a consideration. The frame of reference is significant. If you play for half an hour to an hour once or twice a week, the 20m cr per hour does not work because you could only complete perhaps one mission giving you, let say 2m per hour. However went to a resource extraction site you could make double that. Missions have different factors compared to A to B trading so X per hour is completely relative to how many hours you play in a single session.

Yes you are misunderstanding the points.

I'm here to enjoy the game play. Fly safe

 

[Uncertain]

That does make sense. I hadn't considered the time you have to invest before you actually begin the period in which money-making starts and ends.

 

[Cmdr Eran Mintor]

That means however that most mission from minor factions, allied to major faction, with which you have low reputation won't be available to you anymore And those very few that will be available - will pay significantly less.

It takes 30 minutes at the most to raise your rep from a 70k fine. These are real scary risks for smugglers...........

......
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.

 

[Wyrm]

It takes 30 minutes at the most to raise your rep from a 70k fine. These are real scary risks for smugglers...........

......
....
.
.

So 30 minutes more to spend

 

[cluelessforumuser65578]

what sort of stations are in the sothis system?

 

[Neflite]

These forums baffle me sometimes.

We've all been crying for months that we need more engaging missions, that we need more things to do, that the low paying professions need to be buffed.

And what does FD do? They create a play style with quite a bit of variety, some risk and a sweet payout. Smuggling and silent running finally have their day.

And how does most of the forum react? With pitchforks.


This is just crazy to me. What is the issue here? That there now exists a fun, varied way of making a lot of cash? How is that a bad thing? Do we all have to be bored to tears when turning a profit for it to be ok with you?

I don't know, but I am very happy to see that not everyone shares this opinion.


Great post OP, somebody needs to keep the toxicity around here under check.

 

[Jmanis]

Maybe if we didn't shout down every other addition to the game that increased the income of some particular activity (e.g the old Archon Delaine-black market bonus) then changes like this wouldn't be some much of a drama llama for people.

 

[ShadowWolf Kell]

If they keep making the game easier, see what happens in a few months. People won't be playing anymore as grinding is about the only thing to do at the moment. Now, give them the opportunity to get to end game in 2 weeks and see how many remains after a while.

This isn't how any other great MMO did to keep their player interested in the game.

The current "end game" is going to be nonexistant in a month or so when they add in crafting. If it's anything like REing parts in Star Wars Galaxies was, end game might take at least a year.

 

[Cmdr Eran Mintor]

These forums baffle me sometimes.

We've all been crying for months that we need more engaging missions, that we need more things to do, that the low paying professions need to be buffed.

And what does FD do? They create a play style with quite a bit of variety, some risk and a sweet payout. Smuggling and silent running finally have their day.

And how does most of the forum react? With pitchforks.


This is just crazy to me. What is the issue here? That there now exists a fun, varied way of making a lot of cash? How is that a bad thing? Do we all have to be bored to tears when turning a profit for it to be ok with you?

I don't know, but I am very happy to see that not everyone shares this opinion.


Great post OP, somebody needs to keep the toxicity around here under check.

Have you run any of these missions? Yes I want smuggling to be profitable. Both independent and mission smuggling. But I also want it to have risk which it does not. Smuggling should have some THRILL. Fines aren't a risk. Fines are a joke. You get fines at the destination system which is not where you're picking up the missions anyways, so who cares about rep? And if you do, you can quickly grind it back up. When I say quickly I mean less than an hour.

Example. I was allied with one faction. I killed 8 of their authority ships. I went from allied to unfriendly. I killed some pirates in their system and with about 200k cr in bounties I went from unfriendly to neutral. Done. Took me 15 minutes.

As far as I'm aware, chaff and silent running rarely works. When you are scanned with illegal cargo, you should be destroyed if it is a high offense. Smuggling tobacco? Maybe not. Smuggling narcotics? Death. That is a risk. Set up your approach and hope for the best; use heat sinks and chaff (does this even affect NPC scans? not sure).

Smugglers in the real world don't get fined. They get shot or put in jail. There's a risk for you.

 

[Druid]

from this (and other ;-) ) threads i would like to add:

i think, what many cmdr's enjoy is, that this "sothis longrange smuggling goldrush" provides something like an episode/project.

for me i can say, the experience is similar to "reaching the highest point above sol", "trading all rare goods ingame", "going clockwise into the center of the universe", "flipping aganippe to unlock the rare good aganippe rush" - something which gives your action somehow "a story".

re-outfitting my exploration Asp for smuggling. going via takuara and robigo to sothis. picking up missions on the way, there, and back. being interdicted regularly. making it back into the bubble. delivering goods. running from the cops. big payout. cheers. perfect saturday evening/night/early morning.

Spot on dude. Its a game enjoy what it gives us. I havnt actually played for weeks . This popped up and Ive played for 3 hours tonight and enjoyed it. Stuffed 30 mill in the bank account, watching TV, playing casually and eating pizza. Perfect.

 

[goemon]

Have you run any of these missions? .

this thread is about sothis longrange smuggling. please go there, collect as many missions as you can. deliver them and than talk about your experience. don't compare it with picking up one smuggling mission somewhere.

 

[Uncertain]

We've all been crying for months that we need more engaging missions, that we need more things to do, that the low paying professions need to be buffed.
And what does FD do? They create a play style with quite a bit of variety, some risk and a sweet payout. Smuggling and silent running finally have their day.
And how does most of the forum react? With pitchforks.

This is just crazy to me. What is the issue here? That there now exists a fun, varies way of making a lot of cash? How is that a bad thing? Do we all have to be bored out of our minds when turning a profit for it to be ok with you?

I've been on both sides of this argument (Uncertain, herher). It's because the problems change as FD changes the way the systems work. If missions pay a tiny amount compared to X activity, they end up considered irrelevant by many, and few people care about the missions' details. If missions pay the right amount, people will start stacking them and become stinking rich immediately, which starts to make X activity irrelevant, and the details of the missions are suddenly noticed and called into question (a payout of millions for driving 2 slaves to the shops).

The amount of money we're allowed to make seems to be getting ramped up over time, and I suspect this is made more jarring as the frequency of the patches slows. They could have made it 200 slaves instead of 2 though, and I think people would be much less angsty.

I also think that unless you mindfully type in a very positive, polite way, anything you write in a forum will be read in a more negative tone than was actually intended. Most people will just type what they want to say, and five minutes later they're eating each other's throats despite being nowhere near as upset as they sound. I mean, nobody's crying. We're all cool. Everyone here is wearing shades.

 

[Cmdr Eran Mintor]

this thread is about sothis longrange smuggling. please go there, collect as many missions as you can. deliver them and than talk about your experience. don't compare it with picking up one smuggling mission somewhere.

It's not about Sothis. Read the threads title.

 

[Druid]

If they keep making the game easier, see what happens in a few months. People won't be playing anymore as grinding is about the only thing to do at the moment. Now, give them the opportunity to get to end game in 2 weeks and see how many remains after a while.

This isn't how any other great MMO did to keep their player interested in the game.

Oh I dont know, I thought Horizans was coming out and multi player ships, crafting and other sexy stuff . My end game is having a bit of fun and this created a bit of fun for me . It certainly didnt get me anywhere near this mythical "end game" you speak of. But hey maybe we play for different reasons. I was terrible in Starwars Battlefront beta but I enjoyed that as well.

I must be wierd. /wibble

 

[Wyrm]

If they keep making the game easier, see what happens in a few months. People won't be playing anymore as grinding is about the only thing to do at the moment. Now, give them the opportunity to get to end game in 2 weeks and see how many remains after a while.

This isn't how any other great MMO did to keep their player interested in the game.

Except E: D is not an MMO,and never will be

 

[Bevz]

Spot on dude. Its a game enjoy what it gives us. I havnt actually played for weeks . This popped up and Ive played for 3 hours tonight and enjoyed it. Stuffed 30 mill in the bank account, watching TV, playing casually and eating pizza. Perfect.

Yep, similar for me too... Not played in weeks, heard about Sothis, popped over there tonight; had great fun avoiding (and not avoiding) interdictions, had to fight my way out of a few sticky situations and i think i'm wanted in a few systems now, but i had 2 hours of fun and made a cool 24mil in the process so happy days