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

[E X O D I T E]

Smuggling, as it is now, is too centered on avoiding interaction. Which makes sense when you see exactly how lawful players act. Note: all of the below was done by HCs of Official Factions.

When @Praxor23 took up "show-off smuggling", people like @GrnRaptor actually started to hate him for bothering to RP and has informed me, in Shoutbox, no less, that he will lean towards simply shooting him when he sees the guy. Dude really dislikes people who "bloviate".

Then LPI dishes out fines for things like "recidivism", based on a single BHG| screen because the rest of the gank fleet that was waiting for him (they had cut a lane in his path) was being occupied by me, who had specifically logged to run cover for him.

Which is why if you are a smart smuggler, you log an unlawful pvp ship and kill or otherwise distract all lawfuls in NY before you or your buddies enter.

tl;dr part of Freelancer is shooting, log unlawfuls and kill everything in NY before you enter with your illegal cargo, and completely circumvent the entire above discussion because all the police/navy players are pvp dead and can't touch you.

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[SnakThree]

@"Exo the Plier Guy" Holy crap dude. Maybe your lot enjoys smuggling openly, which is okay. Acting like douchebags while doing that to officers of the law is not okay from those officers' POV. You do stupid crap, you get disliked pretty fast. Maybe it's fun for you but some people get tired of dealing with over-the-top nasty and silly semi/lol-roleplay that is there to annoy others instead of enhance environment or further character's background.

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When it comes to smuggling profits, risks, fines and consequences, I believe that fines should not go higher than piracy demands could. Smuggler already loses his cargo (base price+expected profit from time spent) and get additionally fined a huge sum. Which sucks a lot, as losing more than 100% is rather demotivating and only encourages avoidance.

It would also be so much more enjoyable if there were more police characters instead of miltary/navy. And at the same time, those cops would be more willing to accept bribes. It is a shame how player roles are distributed right now, as Navy/military should not be able to demand fines, it's not their role and it only encourages this distribution.

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[GrnRaptor]

Smuggling, as it is now, is too centered on avoiding interaction. Which makes sense when you see exactly how lawful players act. Note: all of the below was done by HCs of Official Factions.

When @Praxor23 took up "show-off smuggling", people like @GrnRaptor actually started to hate him for bothering to RP and has informed me, in Shoutbox, no less, that he will lean towards simply shooting him when he sees the guy. Dude really dislikes people who "bloviate".

Smuggling has always been about avoiding interaction. Or at least, not getting caught. Unfortunately most people tend to see this as a way to earn credits above what lawful trading can provide while wanting to take none of the risks that would usually be involved. That's why most "smuggling" takes place in one of two ways.

1. Making the long haul late at night when the server population is basically dead and there are no lawfuls around anyway.
   
2. Jump trading (often late at night) to avoid running into anyone period. I've noted that this method is a personal favorite of the Junker's Congress and The Hyperspace People.
   

It's simply unlawful power trading. You wanna see how much I know about these silent power traders and their RP aspirations? Go look up posts by me in the Communications Channel that have a thread subject that starts with "ATTN". You'll find a few dozen. You'll see how much RP they offer there.

On the other hand I have done smuggling during the daytime when the server population and limit was quite a bit higher. Several times in a large group such as with the Lane Hackers back in the days of the Contari Lance. I wish I could find the relevant post, but it was quite the event, and there was plenty of internal and external RP involved. I'll update this post with a link if I do find it. Easily one of the best unlawful related sessions I've had on this server, though.

As for @Praxor23, he just wants to bury you under bloviation that's entirely one sided. Not interested in the patently absurd notion that he'll buy the government a battlecruiser if you look the other way, then he'll just flee to a Rogue base. Documented here. Caught by four lawfuls and ordered to pay a fine and dump the cargo? Sure, pay the fine and then waltz off stage left ala Snagglepuss while still holding the contraband. Documented here (with updated images soon, I hope). That's not roleplay, that's being obnoxious to the other player(s). You/he gets away with it because enforcing consequence is a PITA in this game. None of the lawful players enjoyed any of it, though. If that's what qualifies as "ar-pee" then you can keep it.

In summary, RP is fine, and should be relevant to the situation. Going off on a tangent about your family for 30 minutes is not smuggling RP. Silently thrusting away is not RP. Declaring compliance or a wish to flee is what one would expect in the situation, and what I would consider appropriate.

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[E X O D I T E]

Caught by four lawfuls and ordered to pay a fine and dump the cargo? Sure, pay the fine and then waltz off stage left ala Snagglepuss while still holding the contraband. Documented here (with updated images soon, I hope). That's not roleplay, that's being obnoxious to the other player(s). You/he gets away with it because enforcing consequence is a PITA in this game. None of the lawful players enjoyed any of it, though. If that's what qualifies as "ar-pee" then you can keep it.

Going off on a tangent about your family for 30 minutes is not smuggling RP. Silently thrusting away is not RP.

All I see from the one I looked at is salt over him keeping his cargo by doing exactly what any other smuggler would have done by a quickdock point. He pulls a slight of hand on a grand scale in-RP and then you complain about it later. Props to him for bamboozling the people who got complacent.

I've done that and gotten away with it. Hell, it's a common practice for solo smugglers to pay the fine and drop a portion of their cargo and hope the lawfuls don't check.

In short, your attitude is literally communicating to me that you want to restrict smuggler RP to either "quickdock", "cooperate and lose everything", or "not smuggle at all". It may not be your intent, but that is the vibe you are giving off.

Edit: Praxor lives in Australia, so what is late for you is perfectly normal time to him. We don't all live in the same time zone, so it's not fair to paint him with the same brush as the late-night powertraders.

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[Laura C.]

The reality of the smuggler vs. lawful situation is that lawfuls have killed their own quality smuggler interaction through use of FR5. Especially with official factions. Nobody wants to smuggle when it means their faction will just get FR5'd.

see: junker hate

Painful truth there.

For the love of god, not those almost mythical FR5s for smuggling again! Where is that smiley which is banging his head against the wall when you need him...

Alright, just shortly. Tell me more how "lawfuls have killed their own quality smuggler interaction through use of FR5" when RFP (as well as other Rheinland lawfuls as far as I know) did not issue a single one for several years. Same goes for Bretonia, Kusari and Gallia as far as I noticed (feel free to correct me on these though, I don´t follow their activity that much as Rheinland). But no, people still live in their "bad bad lawful official factions are killing smuggling through FR5s" bubble which is based on experience from one single house (which I think even started to use them less as well). But let´s drag all lawfuls in the same bag, why not, right?

Let me show you how "killing smuggling" looks like in Rheinland, where In the last several years I tried from my position to promote and lobby for very smuggling friendly attitude. Yet obviously no one cares, we are still the bad ones killing smuggling... Anyway, the tools we use for killing smuggling: the fines were lowered to the point where if cooperating, maximum fine for 5ker is 5 million what is minor part of profit so every smuggler´s succesful delivery is enough to cover fines for several unsuccesful ones. The RFP is even that evil to smugglers that we do not act upon cargo scans received from non-law enforcement. FR5s, as already mentioned, are not a thing for years. And on top of that, exception was added so very small amount of contraband does not even have to be fined at all, so those who carry like one unit of artifacts or cardamine for RP purpose have better chance to talk their way out of punishment through roleplay. But even if they fail, they do not pay millions for it. Such evil lawfuls we are... I really do not know what even more reasonable things should we do to "promote" smuggling.

Yes, I realize I sound quite bitter, but at this moment I seriously ask myself why I even bothered all these years when people still live in their bubble of bad lawfuls killing smuggling which is totally unfair to most of them. I could have been issuing FR5s right and left and it seems no one would notice a difference. And all of that just because "risk assesment" is unknown term to most of the players, so they rather keep going for the highest profit in Liberty despite risking the highest fines there and especially in the past facing real threat of being FR5, instead of smuggling into some other house like Rheinland where profits are lower, but risks are significantly less threatening as well.

Rant of disillusioned lawful over.

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On a ragebreak. Or ragequit. Time will tell.

[SnakThree]

FR5 against smugglers are only used when they get caught and refuse to comply with lawfuls. Or it gets reputation adjusted via rule breach report when docking under fire by same base/player IFF. So please stop throwing these baseless accusations that governments are evil FR5ers. We want your activity in our house as long as it is within rules and fun for all sides.

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[Liberty Police Inc.]

Which is silly.
We have members logging to interact with smugglers. Why would we FR5 them? If they refuse to pay the fine, we will just capture them again. It is a good sport.

[E X O D I T E]

FR5 against smugglers are only used when they get caught and refuse to comply with lawfuls.

"Them RP consequences sure has my dislike of lawfuls up in a dander."

What's funny is that the after-action forum fines levied are... reasonable, compared to the profits made by the smugglers, if you look at the numbers.

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