Contraband: Will It Ever Change?

[Croft]

A question for you folks, why is smuggling treated as nothing more than a money-maker?

Almost every suggestion or idea to change smuggling focuses around how much money can be made with no thought given to any other aspect, especially the most vital part of the mod, interaction. Of all the RP roles in Disco, only smuggling has this "you shouldn't be seen" mentality forced upon it. Nomads, pirates, wilde, revolutionaries, insurgents and privateers. Every single one of them should work in secret but lo' and behold you find all of them floating around the lanes doing what they do.

So why does this huge red flag get ignored by the community at large?

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Jimmy The Rat | Croft's Feedback | The Rat Pack

[jammi]

Because primarily it's just another permutation of regular trading. A far more profitable one at that.

I'm in favour of more docking points that favour teamwork and freighters. All I'm doing is making people aware that there is a trade off in implementing them and consequences that may affect non smuggler characters.

The money is a big part of the discussion because it's vital the figures are balanced.

[SpaceTime]

How about ultra powerful NPCs spawn

Anything involving strong NPCs is a big NO from me. The only good thing that powerful NPCs are good at is to decrease player-player interactions or make some areas unhospitable. Like Gallia used to be.

[Croft]

Because primarily it's just another permutation of regular trading. A far more profitable one at that.

I'm in favour of more docking points that favour teamwork and freighters. All I'm doing is making people aware that there is a trade off in implementing them and consequences that may affect non smuggler characters.

The money is a big part of the discussion because it's vital the figures are balanced.

The profitability of smuggling is about on par, if not slightly below what could be done with a regular trading ID in the same amount of time and I agree the figures must remain balanced but I would rather see improvements to how smuggling is achieved over bumping up of figures.

Simply put, we need to do away with the "never seen" attitude and judging by the changes made to jumpdrives and cloaks it seems the right time to do so. I'd like a word from upon high to confirm my assumption, nothing more than a "Yes, it's open for improvement" or "No, not at this time" would do.

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Jimmy The Rat | Croft's Feedback | The Rat Pack

[t0l]

The problem with buffing contraband prices across the board is that people will just powertrade at 2 AM whilst 20k below plane, getting all of a contraband buff's bonuses without any drawbacks.

How is that any different than a powertrader who buys Ores from POBs at 2:00 a.m. and flies below the plane?? IMO, that's no argument for not buffing contraband. Powertraders can powertrade whenever.

If we wanted to make it more fair, buff Contraband sell prices, but also buff the purchase prices a bit so that Smugglers face greater risk of loss if they get caught or lose their cargo.

Besides...2 a.m. server time is also prime time for some OTHER time zones to be active, so they can actually do some policing and smuggler catching if that did occur.

First off, ores are not an NPC base commodity. There's a limited supply of it, and if a group of miners neglects to supply the PoB, there won't be any ore to get. Of course, this is a rare occurance for more active PoBs, but a factor to consider nonetheless (Samura Platinum base in Nagano, anybody?). You can only trade so much ore before the base runs dry, but you can powertrade NPC base contraband until the cows come home.

Plus, if you actually want to curb the whole silent powertrading under the plane thing, the most logical course of action isn't to buff contraband and bring OC 5kers out of the woodwork again.

Next, I meant 2 AM EST. You know, when server pop is 27?

Could it use a small buff? Maybe. Could it use admin-commodity buffs? Sure. Just don't permanently overdo it.

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[RmJ]

Contraband should be SO risky people lose their crew, ship, and even hookers should they be discovered!

Contraband in the years past seemed less illegal due to the lack of urgency in enforcing embargo or extracting house-hold illegal items.


Higher the risk the greater the reward contorts the reasons NOT to smuggle. If no one is serious about blowing the blank out of smugglers than I feel buffing contraband would be a unpleasing change to gameplay and interactions between players.

In short I feel no threat smuggling, I shouldn't feel this way, I feel more threat doing legal trades. We need policing agents to be more like pirates MUAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

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[Lythrilux]

It'd be nice to see more contraband going through the Omicrons. That place can be dangerous, especially for afk traders if they go through Kappa or even Zeta sometimes.

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[Croft]

Contraband should be SO risky people lose their crew, ship, and even hookers should they be discovered!

Contraband in the years past seemed less illegal due to the lack of urgency in enforcing embargo or extracting house-hold illegal items.


Higher the risk the greater the reward contorts the reasons NOT to smuggle. If no one is serious about blowing the blank out of smugglers than I feel buffing contraband would be a unpleasing change to gameplay and interactions between players.

In short I feel no threat smuggling, I shouldn't feel this way, I feel more threat doing legal trades. We need policing agents to be more like pirates MUAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Without knowing before hand who is smuggling and watching the player list, police have nothing to alert them to contraband or blockade runners. The only bonus police ID's get is the TLAGS system, something utterly useless for it's purpose due to the jumphole system allowing ways around gates.
Personally I'd love to see some smuggler v police going on, maybe give police a special class of combat transport too, really make it a thrill to break the law.

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Jimmy The Rat | Croft's Feedback | The Rat Pack

[Blodo]

Would be nice if it was possible to somehow hide certain commodities (such as smuggled goods) from being displayed when scanning. Then we could possibly implement a command that would take like 5-10 seconds to output a list of cargo that the ship is really carrying. That coupled with the /nodock command would make for some nice minigame for cops and smugglers. Smugglers would actually try to hide smuggled cargo among other goods, while cops would have to think fast to decide whether to order someone to stop for scan or not - and now asking to stop for scan would actually make sense.

Of course the hardest part is coding the damn thing...

[jammi]

Would be nice if it was possible to somehow hide certain commodities (such as smuggled goods) from being displayed when scanning. Then we could possibly implement a command that would take like 5-10 seconds to output a list of cargo that the ship is really carrying. That coupled with the /nodock command would make for some nice minigame for cops and smugglers. Smugglers would actually try to hide smuggled cargo among other goods, while cops would have to think fast to decide whether to order someone to stop for scan or not - and now asking to stop for scan would actually make sense.

Of course the hardest part is coding the damn thing...

1. Buy 'scanner scambler', possibly as PoB equipment that takes up a CM slot. Requires energy cells same as cloak.
2. Buy contraband cargo. We'll use Black Market Munitions as an example in this case.
3. Type /scramble on, and your contraband is directly replaced by a 'dummy' commodity that is identical to its legal counterpart in appearance and infocard. Perhaps include a few small 'glitches' that will alert eagle-eyed onlookers. Retains the price information of its original contraband so it can be sold for the same price.
4. Scrambler runs until it uses up all its energy cells, at which point the commodities are switched back to their original form. Alernately, /scrambler off at any point.
5. Police IDs come naturally equipped with 'scan decrypters'. Type /descramble while targetting a suspect ship and stay within 500m for 30 seconds. Messages will be displayed on screen denoting scan progress. "25%, 50%, 75%, 100% - all in order / anomaly detected!" If there is scrambled cargo onboard, it will be reverted back to its original commodity.

Another piece of PoB equipment could also be introduced as a counter to scramblers for a more immediate / ranged effect.

Slaves = passengers.
Black Market Munitions = Side Arms/Light Arms.
Cardamine = Pharmaceuticals.
NOX = Pharmaceuticals.
Artifacts = Holosculptures.

etc etc.

Very feasible seeing as all it does is swap cargo types and set up the conditions by which it's swapped back again.