Smuggling as a true high risk/reward endeavor - for realistic gameplay and behavior

[Stoner_Steve]

No thanks why, Vredes?

Same low profit, bigger the loss from being shot by some lolwut. If contraband buy prices are to be increased, so should the profit be.

I don't see how 16 million profit is considered low considering other routes on this server.

Further more this entire post is about increasing profit risk, what you are complaining about is the goal of this post, an increase in interaction for smugglers, as said before there are plenty of "safe" power trade routes, I believe this should be implemented to increase Role Play, if someone doesn't like it there are other items to run around Sirius that don't have such a high profit risk

---

SLRC Faction Document | SLRC Recruitment | SLRC Feedback | SLRC Message Dump

[Sath]

@ Captain_Nemo: Well, as that might sound quite appealing and all, but in reality, do you think that people will opt for smuggling over normal trading? Take into consideration profit, risks involved, losses which might occur if the cargo is lost and any other relevant statistics. Smuggling would become more bleh, if this happens.

Again, there is another option as Highland stated, to do the same to all trading commodities instead of just contraband. This would not change the situation now that much, apart from again alienating smuggling more (risk factors of losing cargo is more). But this might open up another issue of a larger money sink, which might in turn not sound quite appealing to the ones that join here fresh from Vanilla. They will find it tougher and tougher to set a solid foot here, while the already established players won't have much of a problem from the odd one or two cargo losses suffered.

Though, I couldn't exactly assess how the above said situation might come into place. Whether it would cause an economic overhaul or something of that sort, but my guess is that it makes newbies' life on the server tough. Which is the last thing this server might want apparently.

[Danny-boy]

Moriarty raises a valid point.

First of all, a change to: High-risk Same-reward. won't make smuggling any more fun (unless you pirate a smuggler then smuggle their goods ). What we would need is: Very-high-risk High-reward (as I said not as profitable as mining, cos more player interactions = good). this would increase risk meaning escorts/jh's need to be used as well as increasing profit so more people want to do it and escorts can be paid for.

As for the other legal commodities. Do not increase their universal prices, just don't. It will make starting out so much harder.

[Vredes]

No thanks why, Vredes?

Same low profit, bigger the loss from being shot by some lolwut. If contraband buy prices are to be increased, so should the profit be.

I don't see how 16 million profit is considered low considering other routes on this server.

Further more this entire post is about increasing profit risk, what you are complaining about is the goal of this post, an increase in interaction for smugglers, as said before there are plenty of "safe" power trade routes, I believe this should be implemented to increase Role Play, if someone doesn't like it there are other items to run around Sirius that don't have such a high profit risk

With this proposal you want to kill what remains of the activity called smuggling. I love RPing, but I dont want to do so if I have nothing else to be backed with. That would be profit.

Smuggling-High Profit/High Risk
Corporate Trading-Medium Risk/Medium Profits

Sorry, but thats how I see it. For an example:

I am from Bulgaria but I live in Austria. Every time I drive back to Bulgaria I pass through Serbia. In Serbia I buy contraband cigarettes and sell them in Bulgaria with a 50% profit, I am buying cigarettes which are contraband and not bubble gums or toilet paper that are legal, because I have a profit from it.

Edit: I will be deleting this post in some time so read it faster.

[Highland Laddie]

I agree with many of you, in that I have thought ALL ALONG that smuggling should logically be the most profitable enterprise on the server, much more so than legal trading and mining. But it should ALSO much more so be the MOST risky. Right now...it is simply neither of those. The OP's suggestion I believe wanted to reflect on the last part of that, since altering the profit would require much more balance & overhaul of the whole trading vs smuggling system, while just raising prices uniformly doesn't change any of the math, just the stakes.

With this proposal you want to kill what remains of the activity called smuggling. I love RPing, but I dont want to do so if I have nothing else to be backed with. That would be profit.

Not necessarily. As you already pointed out...smuggling now isn't much more profitable than lawful trading...so all raising the Cost/risk of smuggling would do is ensure that only those who LIKE to smuggle and aren't doing it just for the money will continue to do so.

Again, there is another option as Highland stated, to do the same to all trading commodities instead of just contraband. This would not change the situation now that much, apart from again alienating smuggling more (risk factors of losing cargo is more). But this might open up another issue of a larger money sink, which might in turn not sound quite appealing to the ones that join here fresh from Vanilla. They will find it tougher and tougher to set a solid foot here, while the already established players won't have much of a problem from the odd one or two cargo losses suffered.

As for the other legal commodities. Do not increase their universal prices, just don't. It will make starting out so much harder.

Addressing these two points: You wouldn't necessarily have to increase pricing across the board on ALL commodities. There could still be low-cost, medium-payout runs for the newbies (or maybe one in each House to spread out the newb activity a bit), but a larger portion of commodities, especially high-tech and high-value ones, should be much higher cost/risk. And the ones who will take those risks will be the RPing crowd...not the new players starting out, nor the power-trading crowd. So you've essentially lost nothing there.

[Sath]

...so all raising the Cost/risk of smuggling would do is ensure that only those who LIKE to smuggle and aren't doing it just for the money will continue to do so.

Well, that is the problem here. There won't be many who like smuggling and do it for the fun, given that there are far more fun activities in the server, compared to smuggling.

Consider this: The said change comes through (higher buy price, higher sell price, same profit). It makes the ones who smuggle be even more cautious about that, leads to various incidents like above the plane flying/avoiding interactions as much as possible. People who continue to smuggle, would find this not a fun aspect of the game in the long run, and certainly move on to other fun aspects.

Result will be that, smuggling would become as dead as bounty hunting in it's current state.

Well, what I propose is that, increase the sell prices and buy prices, increase the profit on par with ore trading (most of the factions that are eligible to smuggle don't have access to 5k'ers). Atleast, comparitively more profitable than it is now. So, it becomes like High Risk->Huge Profit/Huge Loss.

Not saying that this would put an end to the "Avoiding interaction" part, but would definitely increase the smuggling activity, which will surely stir up lawful activity around the sell points.

[The.Wizard]

Original idea from before was to pay,let say 20-30 mil per cargo of contraband
and sell it for 50-60 mil,so the profit would be about 30 mil per cargo.Something like that.High risk and high profit.
Witch is quite logical,smuggling drugs,guns etc is most profitable economy in RL so...
Smuggling with low risk maybe make sense when 150+ players are online...now
it's just damn boring.That's why nobody's smuggling any more.
But again,this is a waste of time,it won't be done no matter what we say.

---

[Stoner_Steve]

I liked some of the points Moriarty made, I've adjusted my example to suit however I am unfamiliar with all ore routes so I generalized ore profits in my calculations

• Current Cardi Route Profits
  
• Buy
  Omicron Alpha
  549 Credits per unit of Cardi
  or
  1,976,400 Credits for 3600 units
  
• Sell
  Texas
  5255 Credits per unit of Cardi
  or
  18,918,000 Credits for 3600 units
  
• Profit: 16,941,600
  

Including Moriarty's suggestion

• Buy
  Omicron Alpha
  5525 Credits per unit of Cardi
  or
  19,890,000 Credits for 3600 units
  
• Sell
  Texas
  12,000 Credits per unit of Cardi
  or
  45,000,000 Credits for 3600 units
  
• Profit: 25,110,000
  

---

SLRC Faction Document | SLRC Recruitment | SLRC Feedback | SLRC Message Dump

[Vredes]

Works for me.

[sindroms]

Cardamine from Malta.


Buy for 4 000 per unit. (3400 cargo is 13,6mil)


Sell on Houston for 10 000 - 20 mil (clean) profit.

---

--------------
PSA: If you have been having stutter/FPS lag on Disco where it does not run as smoothly as other games, please look at the fix here: https://discoverygc.com/forums/showthrea...pid2306502
----------