Optimal routes are rarely used in my experience, due to two major factors. First is simply getting caught, no one wants to fly halfway across the sector to get blown up. The second is, it's easier to run Disco in a window and watch a film or a TV show between jumpholes. It doubles your flight time but ensures you get to your dropoff and your money.
That's why I'd like to shift the mindset of smuggling from credit farmer to a more fun, fast-talking, catch-me-if-you-can role. Something that can't be done if it's still viewed as an illegal trader who should never be seen. Sadly that kind of change will simply not happen if the easy option still exists.
Take jumptrading as an example, folks were told to stop doing it, which they did for a time but eventually human nature kicked in and the drive got nerfed in response. It's the same sort of deal with smuggling, if a role is not seen then it detracts from gameplay and the server suffers as a whole. In this case it's the police factions whose existence has been overwritten by the navy due soley to the lack of natural enemies, the ones the TLAG system is supposed to catch, smugglers.
Yeah, I'm not sure what you expect to be done in that case. Routes are already balanced to only really be worthwhile if you use the lanes and gates, forcing you into potential interactions. If you want to stop people from being able to AFK cruise between jump holes, you'd need to like, delete jump holes or something. That's not a workable solution for obvious reasons.
So what do you actually suggest is done to fix this? I mean, you're holding a slightly contradictory stance in any case - these people only want money, so they go to extreme lengths to avoid interaction. But they don't care about money because they do so in a way that sabotages their profits so intensely that it doesn't even compare to sub-optimal regular trade runs.
So what's the fix? That kind of mentality simply cannot be addressed via game mechanics or dev work.
