Smuggling in freighters

[Janus]

This would really harm the slave/cardi runs in slave liners and other such ships, also wouldnt make sense for a slave liner not to be able to drop its load or pick up more. You do know that the traditional slaving ships are thrice the size of most 5k transports?

I'd actually be happy with an increase in slaving profits. Now, bear with me a minute, this'll take a bit to explain and swings a little off the topic of freighters before coming back to it.

Limit the Slaver ID to freighters, Liners and those transports that are actually designed to carry people, the yacht and armoured trans spring to mind. I'd personally also like to see a middle weight liner/people trans of some kind that isn't the yacht. 1800-2000 unit, mini liner. Anyway... Make the Slaver ID a requirement for carrying slaves. Then put slave profits up so that slave runs in Pilgrims are the most profitable runs in game, balanced by the fact they can't carry 5k of cardi or whatever back again. If you wanna be a junker slaver or whatever, get a junker IFF on your liner.

That protects RP slavers whilst making a boost to freighters possible.

With that in place, and having given this a lot of thought this morning....

Make some bases completely undockable by anything bigger than a gunboat (physically) or freighter (cargo capacity). Put the price sat these bases up for the stuff they buy. If they can't attract the big transport ships, they have to pay more for their commodity. Places like Armstrong spring to mind, some other bases that should be "small". This would also give legit freighters a chance to make some money.

The reason I've included gunboats in this is that they typically have half the cargo space of a drom/camara. This gives you a choice of space vs guns. It would also go some way to making the Conference the trading ship it's infocard says it's supposed to be, according to the infocard.

There would need to be some work done on the commodities again, but I think this could work.

As an example of this, for making legit profits - Take pharms from Cryer. You can take these to either Shasta or Armstrong. Leave the pharms price at Shasta alone, double the price at Armstrong. If you've got a big ship (and it's in RP) take your pharms to Shasta. If you've got a small one, go to Armstrong. The goal would be that the freighter would make more money at Armstrong than Shasta, less than a transport would at Shasta. In this particular example, you'd probably have to take pharms off Barrier gate as a buyable commodity.

This could be done with a number of legit bases, the other liners perhaps, although that affects living cargo routes. but makes sense. You could take your liner full of people to the Hawaii, but you'd need a small ship to transfer them. Given that those people that run the living cargo routes have expresed a desire for more, this could be part of an overhaul of the whole living cargo routes system. There are no doubt a number of other bases that could be designated "small" for this purpose, making them effectively freighter only.

Getting back to smuggling finally.

Have an unlawful route that allows big transports, for example, Malta to Rochester. Using the proposed "double base" system, the transport could offload at Rochester for similar profits to what it would make now but at that "base, you wouldn't be able buy Cardi. Alternatively, the transport could hire freighters to run his load into the "smuggling port" at Manhatten, increasing his overall profits, but increasing the time taken as well as the risk. As I mentioned earlier, these freighters would be more vulnverable to the LPI, giving them a useful role beyond than being shot down by every unlawful faction in New York. Who takes on the risk of that cargo being lost, the transport pilot that brought it in or the the freighter pilot that's running it to New York. Does the freighter pilot buy the cargo outright in the hope of making some money or does he get paid a flat fee with the transport pilot taking responsibility for losses? All that could be handled InRP adding a whole new element to smuggling.

In the meantime, the lone freighter pilot, having made it all the way in from Malta, heads straight for New York, sells his cardi and swans off back again.

As a further thought, the double base system could be used for more legit trading too. Rather than having pure "smuggling ports" on planets, they could be used for other commodties too. Sure, a planet wants 5k units of oxygen or food or whatever else it uses a lot of, but somethings it might only want smaller amounts of. Again, giving freighters something to do.

As a final note, heavy lifters and armoured trans should perhaps be refined as freighters for the purposes of this, with neccessary modifications to armament and such. The heavy lifter is, after all, designed to do what's been proposed, short distance shuttling of commodities and the A-trans is perfect for small, high value commodities as well as transporting people from a PC liner to a static one. The heavy lifter should perhaps be made squishier to keep it in it's in system role, with the a-trans being the best of the long distance freighters. Both could infact be shrunk, cargo wise, at the same time kicking out some of the un(der) used import freighters, giving a range of similarly sized but different purposed freighters and at the same time keeping the appeal of some of the faction ones such as the bactrian and correo.