A Rule Ammendment - a poll with a point :)

[Jinx]

well - its much about dimensions here. - the police ( in its very original state ) deals with freighters. - the dromedary as the fastest of the freighters and the most efficient one - aswell as the rheinland freighter ( forgot the name ) which is the toughest.

thats the smugglers ships that the police has to deal with. - but that was vanilla 1.0

now we have transports, ships that were exclusive to the NPCs - and we do have warships that were exclusive for npc use, too. - the common police is not equipped nor appropriate to deal with one of those flying fortresses. - full wings of policecrafts ( like 4 ships ) are no match for even a dromedary with a lvl6 30k shield.
i think that is reason enough for the military to step in. - its the same difference like catching a smuggler in a car at the mexican border, who tries to smuggle heroin into the USA - or intercepting a heavily armed submarine in open waters filled to the rim with drugs. - the police is not equipped to take on the later one. - maybe the coast guards are ... but really, it is reason enough to call in the guys that are better equipped than the common police.

so - again ( like to many times ) smuggling and preventing smuggling is a responsibility that lays on both sides. - while i think that a battleship will not chase a smuggler - it will most certainly FIRE at a smuggler when he is stupid enough to fly into weaponrange.

a transport like a container transport or a liner is a formidable foe for a gunboat even - compared to a gunboat, utterly undergunned, but still able to take it down. - a liner can even withstand a single bomber, cause a liner isn t exactly easy to hit when its flying straight while firing its weapons ( provided its a good gunner ) - as a matter of fact... harder to take down than some huge battleships, cause on those, its harder NOT to hit them than to hit them.

so - i believe that a cruiser or a battleship can go after the big transports. - the question is ... why are those HUGE transports smuggling anyway. - from the point of view of the lawfuls, i d find it much more plausible when .... contraband ( the original, not the one made up by the factions ) was only allowed to be hauled in freighters, but the profit would be adjusted so that up to 499 cargo wielded as much profit as a big transport. - then a freighter would be a smugglers vessel and the police could take it ... without military support.

for example - make the profit span like 60.000 credits - but set the purchase value to 300.000 or so. [ so, purchase 300k, selling 360k ] - why so high? - the profit is supposed to be high, but also loosing the cargo should be a pain. ( that gets rid of those "kill me then" guys )

but as long as we allow those 220.000 armoured ( possibly Cap armoured ) transports with 100.000 shields and up to 12 guns carrying ships with up to 5000 cargohold to haul the same things - we ll NEED capships to counter them.

anyway.. i think the situation was mostly about "what a capship does when he faces a smuggler and there is simply no small ship around to stop it" rather than "if its allowed at all"

---

Shipdesigns made for DiscoveryGC