Rule Discussion: Smugglers and Lawful interaction, 4.2, 4.3, 4.4,

[Laura C.]

4.2 Demands should be reasonable and only one monetary or cargo demand can be issued during each piracy interaction.

That is one grey area. The other regards 4.2 in general. In most cases you will see a smuggler be told to drop the contraband and pay a fine. If this was a unlawful ID pirating a trader - they would get sanctioned as you may not in any case issue a demand that exceeds the profit of the player.

I would like this to be elaborated a bit more and, hopefully, the 4.2 rule be amended to mention fines. This would make smuggling less punishing and in turn would allow lawful players to have more things to do in the offtime between Storta raids.

Lawfuls and pirates should not be put under same category when it comes to rules. There is crucial difference between them - pirate can demand money for any cargo or even from empty ship. Lawfuls can demand fines and confiscation only for very limited list of contraband, and prices of major commodities reflect that.

Restricting lawfuls to choose only cargo confiscation or fine would make playing lawful, especially cop, incredibly immersion breaking. Like "Hello dear slaver, I caught you. So now let me decide if I want a fine and let you deliver these poor slaves to their final destination, or I will try to save them (by letting you dock and risking you will not undock, log out, later just rename to avoid consequences and continue your business) but let you go unharmed even by fine".

Who wants to play that? That´s more the tag game which children play on the playground than roleplaying a law enforcement unit. Law enforcement roleplay and especially police one is the most restricted roleplay already, restricting it even more will definitely not raise interest. Especially when it comes to police faction which are already in position of just "more ZOI and ships restricted military".

The consequences are already limited when it comes to smuggling because we do not have game mechanics for imprisonment, so even the repeated offenders of most disgusting stuff like slavery have easy way out by just cooperating with lawfuls when caught and paying the fines.

If there is really need for any more restriction, put it on how much per cargo unit can the fine be so there won´t be ridiculously high fines like tens of millions for smuggling freighter. Nothing more is needed in this regard.

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On a ragebreak. Or ragequit. Time will tell.