It's Hard to Be a Smuggler

[MTKnife]

I've been playing for a few days (always on Challenging), and, after a few attempts, finally created a captain who wasn't offed within a few years. The trouble is, while I created a Smuggler, I almost never do any smuggling: the way buy and sell prices are set, it's almost impossible to make a profit on anything unless there's a shortage or surplus, and I rarely encounter shortages or surpluses, and most of those aren't smuggler goods (Artifacts, Weapons, and Electronics). In fact, right now I'm at 74.47 AE, and I've only seen two or three of them--so what am I supposed to be doing the rest of the time? After struggling for a while, I've been relatively successful by running missions, but I wanted to do smuggling....

[HateSolstice]

Smugglers do the underhanded missions from the Spice Halls, like "sneak this person to this location and look out for those guys who will try to stop you!" contracts. Also, the 3 main smuggler items - Artifacts, Weapons, and Electronics - are what you should be smuggling.

Keep an eye out for those rumors where items are in surplus, buy as much as you can, place them into caches on planets you can easily get to again. Eventually, rumors for those items you bought will suddenly be in high demand somewhere, so you return to your caches, pray to the gods they haven't been found by other smugglers, pirates, or explorers, pick them up and go sell.

As far as I can tell, you don't really need trade permits unless you intend to have decent faction standings(and as a smuggler, the law and loyalty don't mean much to you). One thing I think this game could use is more class-specific contract types. Hmm.....

[MTKnife]

OK, the current game really got very silly. I only had one shortage (and no surpluses, other than the military kind) until after I had managed to reach level 10 (as well as the Hardcore II and Thousand Suns awards), and it didn't last long enough for me actually to get to the planet in question. After that, I've seen one more shortage (of Luxury Rations--I finally made a modest profit) and a surplus, and the surplus didn't last long.

Maybe it would make more sense to have more shortages/surpluses, but, for game balance, to make them less extreme--say, double the normal price instead of 5 times.

[Cory Trese]

"Maybe it would make more sense to have more shortages/surpluses"

You are right. I'm taking this on as an issue for the next release.

MTKnife I think the main proble was that we had a fixed number of rumors and an increasing number of types ... essentially diluting the pool for merchants / smugglers.

For me -- the Smugger does something like this:

- Works for Javat
- Has Javat Trade Permit
- Spots Shortage of Artifacts on Kelfange Nomads
- Runs Artifacts through De Valtos and Cadar Space to sell them for 10K each @ Nomads
- Javat Positive Rep
- Ignore Everyone Else (No Searchin!)

[MTKnife]

Yeah, that's exactly what I thought it would be, but right now I run around like a chicken with my head cut off trying to complete missions I've taken on too many of (my last game ended when my crew killed me for trying to go 20 AU without water-fuel).

It occurs to me that a "smuggler" could actually get trade permits with all 6 factions, and just waltz through space, but that actually takes some work and some money to do (it involves a lot Pardons and taking advantage of Trade Alliances).

You might also want to look at the idea I had in the merchant thread about making a black market, maybe in Wild Zones, but I realize that would be a lot more coding.

[reckoner]

Are smugglers supposed to get their loot from Exploring or from killing off merchants?

I know we're supposed to stash it, and wait for shortages. But what do we do in the meantime, how do we make ends meet when waiting for the shortages?

[reckoner]

By the way what ships are you guys using for smuggler? I'm rocking a

Titan Cruiser

Hull: 43
Armor: 20
Engines: 35
Solar Sails: 36
Crew: 315
Cargo Hold: 123
Guns: 24
Torpedoes: 32

^upgrades included^

Upgrades:

Structural: +7 Cargo
Combat: +7 Cargo
Interior: +15 Crew
Propulsion System: +10 Cargo
Armament: None

[MTKnife]

Mar 19, 2011 0:34:32 GMT -5 reckoner said:

By the way what ships are you guys using for smuggler?

That doesn't look very good for running away....

I was starting with a "Netaquam Erro", and now with "Tempus Fugit", but whenever I can get my hands on one, I move to a "Spear".

[reckoner]

I haven't had any problems at all running away in it. Just hit 2 mil money.

[sly]

Raise your explorer skill to at least 25 for magma worlds. Find a place like Depdeth for exploring,cache. Smuggle goods to cache, and ALWAYS sell to Independant worlds for records that you can sell. Also, smuggle goods out of factions and cache. Remember to get some guns to defend yourself an example would be the heavy liner. It also helps to get +100 cargo, use 25 water for short distances 45 for long.

If you need any more help please ask.

[Casey]

It would be awesome if the smuggler could deal in illegal merch as to any port but if you dont have a trade permit you get no rep bonus and run the risk of neg rep based on your stealth skill/negotiate skill and a wanted flag. Also it would be awesome if there were indi only illegal merch for every faction thus you would be able to make a fortune running truly illegal merch into factions.

[slayernz]

I have always thought smugglers should be able to sell goods without a trade permit. After all, they wouldn't be smugglers if they were legit now would they

[Cory Trese]

The Smuggler gets profitable Records when selling Banned, Taxed or selling to Indy worlds.