Negative consequences of moving best premium scrap selling points to Gallia

[Laura C.]

is all you do as an RFP catching smugglers? Im actually curious

Of course not, but it´s one of the most interesting things and often main reason why people join police factions (or create indie). And it´s what TLAGSNET is for, after all. See illegal cargo or equipment, go chase and catch it. Thrill of chase is something unique (like when you are in far corner of Stuttgart and you see smuggler entering Frankfurt with cardamine, so you have to run as fast as possible to catch it), what other IDs can provide only in limited fashion (because you need to physically meet and check smuggler without TLAGSNET).

So you are saying that you miss smugglers that are taking risks and get caught by you.
1) Before that there were more until more sever punishments came along. Smugglers actually, and even I too, liked to get caught sometimes.
2) Smugglers are here to entertain you? Are there only existence to get caught??

I somehow feel you judge everyone by Liberty (given examples you brought. I can hardly do anything with it. You talk about severe punishments for contraband smuggling, but I don´t recall any in Rheinland, especially not any issued by RFP. To second point - it´s not about getting caught, but about the chase. I play smuggler myself too from time to time. And I enjoy when I see cop in house where I´m heading, and I give him chance to get me by using lanes and gates at least on part of the route, and never leaving the plane level. Of course lot of people smuggle for credits, but in best case, the smuggler-cop relation should be about playing cat and mouse (or cat and cat, I remember smugglers which were able to fly through by hard way, when we had fight over three systems, because armored salvager or liner are hard target for lone cop if pilot knows well how to fly and how to shoot), giving thrill to both sides. If smuggler get away, that´s fine, it happens, you can´t always win. Some smugglers amazed me by their tactics or by way they were able to convince me to let them go. There were situation when I simply couldn´t resist and couldn´t be unyielding anymore.

Those mythical FR5s again? I asked you and Fluffy to bring me examples of FR5s for smuggling last time we got to this, and didn´t get any (except for one case of probable miscommunication with FL-ER). And you know when we talked on skype after AFC member got caught doing illegal things in Rheinland, I stressed that I don´t even think about FR5 for AFC as whole.

Not mythical, actually. You yourself posted such... if i remember... (and i can look it up) but the better example is that here....
http://discoverygc.com/forums/showthread.php?tid=133233

And also the IND incident where they got caught and the navy posted a fine of like 500 mills or whatever "or else" ...

I´m RFP leader since January and I never ever issued FR5 request for anything. So I would really like to know what FR5 I posted. The one you brought is valid (finally one), but it is very recent. You were talking about those FR5 which negatively affected smuggling more than once before this thread. So if this (and IND thing, which was one of the most silly things I have ever seen on Disco and involved hard ooRP actions) are the only one, I still don´t consider this as proven. After all, one (or two at best) case which happened in Liberty once in few years makes the long-term trend for all houses? I really don´t think so. I said that last time and I will repeat it again - in my opinion, these myths about FR5s for any smuggling are actually one of the reasons why people are discouraged from smuggling. Even if one house is overly hard in the attitude, there are still others. Yet you always talk generally, so including all houses.

no... we just dont want to get FR5ed.
really.
I keep saying this.
I wish i could do chases and catches more often but I am scared , as speaking about my faction, that when i do give police faction more activity then my own faction will be FR5ed to all houses.

See above.

I would love to have something like that. But you really believe that devs will let it happen? Cardi and Artifacts are now buffed to level where they provide just little lesser profit per unit than ores on highest profit sellpoint. Do you think devs will let any cargo from NPC stations have better profit than player mineable cargo?

What? no? What??? they sell for 5000

Cardamine
Malta 549-Houston 5255=best possible profit 4706 credits per unit
Artifacts
Crete 539-Manhattan 5643=best possible profit 5104 credits per unit
Black market munitions
The Ring 499-Argenton (best place where bigger ships than just freighters can dock) 6719=best possible profit 6220 credits per unit
Slaves
Pittsburgh 529-Ecommoy 5977=best possible profit 5448 credits per unit
Blood Diamonds
Freital 549 - Toulouse 5722=best possible profit 5173 credits per unit

Now compare with player mineable ores in case you don´t mine it yourself, but you are just trading it. Their buying price from POB or miner in field is usually between 2500 and 4000 credits, selling price from 9k to 11,6k, so profit is between 7,6k to 9,1k credits. Thus if you buff contraband even more, their best possible profit will be almost same. That´s what I meant and why I think devs would not be willing to buff contraband more, because reasoning for ore high profits was always that it has to be at least two player effort and cooperation (I know that it´s not true due to POBs, but that for another discussion).

And also is no one going to bother making Gallic Cops? That's actually something I am interested in seeing still since there is ALL this talk about people selling to Gallia. So why have there not been an increase in gallic law ships? Well yeah I know why... becasue there is no activity right? But See... maybe if some activity starts to happen then more will catch on?

GRP couldn´t stay alive even in times when the average player count in the evenings was double than now (so more than 100 players regularly). Their happy times ended when some POB commodities like cryocubes stopped to be available only in Gallia (for reason it only caused massive ooRP fest, unfortunately). Gallic lawfuls has nothing to do these days because there is barely any traffic. It´s not fun to fly around for hour and meet just two or three legal traders and that´s all (I experienced such even in Rheinland). Apart from that, there is minimum pirates and minimum unlawfuls. Minimum contacts, minimum fun. And usually when you finally see someone who is smuggling something, he metagames and avoid you. Frustration level 9000+ guaranteed.
Generally, playerbase is shrinking. If you manage to send some players to Gallia, majority of them will be rerouted from elsewhere, there won´t be any more players which will appear out of thin air. Sure, the logging mentality can increase it, so if people will see 70 players online, maybe 10 more would log which otherwise wouldn´t. But not another 70 (and we have 125 players server limit anyway). Basically if you would somehow manage to revive life in Gallia, it would be necessarily on expense of some other house. Though that´s just my opinion of course.

What about some changes to the way smugglers are handled? For example we have limits on what pirates can demand of traders yet there is nothing on police/smuggler interactions, even if its just a bare minimum for fines or cargo demands (e.g. Don't penalise players for giving you something to do). Focus on making smuggling fun if you want to see more of them, leave profit-whoring to the miners and traders.

It´s incredibly hard to balance it to not harm each other, yet not act silly. Sure, issuing FR5s, especially when smuggler just gets away (not by docking on police station) and don´t shoot. But then it gets complicated.

Just one example - smuggler manage to get away from cop because he has faster ship (not by docking) or because he destroys to cop, but cop manages to scan cargo so he has evidence. What now? Should police send fining ticket (or add him to criminal database in case he shot officer) or ignore that smuggler? And what if they will meet next time, should cop fine him for previous violation or not?

Or another: there is lot of cases of smuggling done by ships of same organization. Isn´t silly that police/government won´t do anything and won´t fine whole organization or outlaw them (means shoot them on sight, not FR5 them)?

Or: What is appropriate fine? 5ker full of contraband makes profit 20-25 million credits on usual routes. Current fine for it in Rheinland is 6 million. So every time he manages to get to the destination, he makes money for 3-4 fines. Is okay, not enough or too much? I spoke with several people and answers were very various.

I spent quite some time thinking about this issue and never managed to find optimal balance between what makes sense inRP (or at least don´t look silly) and what is "smuggling friendly", apart from few rules (I don´t issue FR5s for smuggling unless something would go massively out of line - adding to criminal database is usually enough in my opinion, I don´t issue fines based only on TLAGSNET scans and I keep fines on what I consider reasonable (actually right now I´m considering lowering the a little).

So that´s my another Chinese wall of text going off topic mostly anyway. Oh dear. Now I seriously need to go to bed...

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On a ragebreak. Or ragequit. Time will tell.