still thinking about smugglers

[captain nemo]

Welcome jameskuyper You picked an awesome game to play. I hope you enjoy it as much as the rest of us do. We have a nice & active forum here too.

[celu]

I started to really play smuggler this time and I have to agree with abs.

There is no incentive for a smuggler to be a smuggler if he doesn't make any money. I think a smuggler needs Large Discount when buying contraband so he can make some money.

Any news on when those proposed changes might take place?

Meanwhile. I'll be playing other characters.

[accidic]

Or perhaps rather than instant rep loss:

10% chance of windfall discount on purchasing Random_Trade_Item_01.
Number of purchased items result in 10% chance of Bounty Hunter (level +0.5% per item carried) for first 15 movevement turns and 1% decrease in chance per movement turn after.
+1% chance of goods detected per item until items are liquidated.

Sounds like a programming nightmare though. Plus the discount would have to be low to justify bothering yet high enough so the player couldn't rack up too much coin too quickly. Balance issue nightmare as well ftw.

[daedalus]

I just started playing this game a week or so ago, but I liked it enough to pick up the Elite version almost immediately and I've been playing it quite a bit. What I've seen so far in the game, combined with some of the comments in the discussion, made me think of some suggestions I'd like to offer.

Some of these ideas were proposed by others earlier in this thread - I'd just like to suggest this as a comprehensive concept for "smuggling" in the game. I tried to build this idea primarily from existing game concepts, but I don't know how the code is structured so I can't say whether or not that makes things much easier to implement. Hopefully it will at least be easier to think through the game balance issues.


Overall:
- Everyone should be able to smuggle, but, Smuggler-class Captains should be best suited for it. I really like the way this game allows mixed play-styles rather than making a given class necessary for a given activity.
- Smuggling should involve a mix of shipping and fighting (not just incidental fighting along the way to ports - fighting that's a result of the smuggler's illegal work). A Smuggler's job is mostly to stealthily buy, move, and sell cargo, but he often has to fight his way into or out of a port.
- The risks incumbent in smuggling need to be compensated for with high profits. Legitimate traders should be tempted to smuggle sometimes, not smugglers to switch to full-time legitimate trading.
- I suggest creating two general categories of smuggling - Trading Against Local Law and Trading Against an Embargo.


Trades Against Local Law:
- No longer disable trade in restricted goods for anyone. Let Everyone trade restricted goods at any Exchange with or without a permit. A restricted goods transaction made by a Captain without a permit is always considered an illegal trade.
- Everyone can access any Exchange on any Planet without regard to criminal status or Local Faction reputation. If you can get to the surface alive, you can try to trade. Characters who are considered "criminals" by the local authorities treat all trades (whether or not restricted goods are involved) at the Exchange as illegal trades.
- When an illegal trade occurs, a check is made to see if the trade is noticed by authorities.
-- The check is primarily based on the Captain's Stealth skill. This game seems to use fairly sophisticated calculations for such checks, so I'm sure there will be other things to take into account.
-- If the illegal trade is successfully concealed, there is no reputation effect. Illegal trades in restricted goods do not improve reputation with the Local Faction or its Trading Allies.
--- If the illegal trade is noticed by authorities, various things can happen:
---- If the trade is noticed, the trade may still complete successfully or may be prevented. If prevented, the goods may be lost.
---- If the trade is noticed, any trade permit with the Local Faction will be revoked, just as a trade against an Embargo affects other permits.
---- If the trade is noticed, a reputation loss with the Local Faction occurs. As with the permits revocation, this works a lot like braking a trade Embargo the Local Faction is trying to enforce.
---- If the trade is noticed and the severity of the event is high, a ground "combat encounter" may occur when law enforcers intervene. The Captain may be wounded and crew members may be killed. This works similarly to the potential "bad" results of an Exploration attempt.
---- If the trade is noticed and the severity of the event is high, an encounter with an "enforcer" vessel of the local faction may occur. The Captain is forced to flee the planet and is attacked by a defense ship or bounty hunter of the Local Faction in orbit. This would be similar to the encounters that occur when the player is drawn into an orbital battle while trying to complete a Contract on the surface.
----- Firing on an "enforcer" ship will cause repuation loss with the Local Faction, as usual. Fleeing also causes reputation loss, like fleeing from a legitimate military vessel's inspection surrender demand.
----- Surrendering to an "enforcer" ship in this situation functions similarly to being caught with restricted goods during an inspection.


Trades Against an Embargo:
- Reputation and Permit loss effects for trading against an Embargo are not applied for illegal trades. The smuggler is presumably dodging taxes and causing economic disruption. The Factions placing the Embargoes don't mind trades that are detrimental on net to the Faction they've placed under Embargo, and probably never learn about these undocumented trades anyway.
- When a faction is under an Embargo, all trades (both legal and illegal) by visiting Captains are more lucrative for the Captain. The reduced ability of local dealers to access interstellar traffic means they're willing to sell for less and pay more when buying, as suggested in earlier posts. the degree of the effect is based on the number of Embargoes in place, but is less than a normal specific-item shortage or surplus. This affect stacks (likely multiplicatively) with normal shortages.


Smuggler Abilities:
- A Smuggler Captain has an Enforcement Evasion special ability that reduces the effects of getting caught making illegal trades.
-- Enforcement Evasion affects failed illegal trades in a manner similar to the way an Explorer Captain's ability affects Exploration attempt outcomes.
--- A successful "Evasion" may prevent or reduce the reputation loss that would otherwise occur.
--- A successful "Evasion" may alow the Captain to reach his ship and take off with reduced wounds and/or crew losses.
--- A successful "Evasion" may alow the Captain to avoid an encounter with an "enforcement" vessel in orbit that would otherwise occur.
-- Enforcement Evasion makes a Smuggler Captain's restricted goods less likely to be noticed during inspections.
-- Enforcement Evasion may reduce the reputation loss suffered for fleeing from a legitimate military vessel's inspection surrender demand.

Recruited Officers:
- Rename the current "Smuggler" officer to be a "Scout", as he is described in rumors. He helps with Exploring, not illegal trading.
- Eventually make a true "Smuggler" officer who provides benefits when making illegal trades similar to the ones the "Scout" provides when exploring. This probably isn't needed to make smuggling viable, but would help round out the officer talent pool.
-- The Smuggler can prevent customs inspections by legitimate military vessels from seizing all of the restricted cargo, even if they discover some of it.
-- The Smuggler can prevent loss of some of the cargo in a thwarted illegal transaction.
-- The Smuggler can reduce loss of crew and cargo due to incurred by any survivable defeat or surrender in space.
-- The Smuggler provides small bonuses to Stealth based on the amount of restricted cargo carried.
-- The Smuggler should probably probably be recruited at a Spice Hall, and should be more common on worlds with the "Recent Embargo" and/or "Recent Ban on Item" rumors.

Ship Modification Effects (These are just some suggestions; there seem to be modifications that impact most trade specializations):
- A ship with an Omni-Stealth device is hard to clearly identify and track, providing bonuses in avoiding notice while making illegal trades.
- A ship with Ancient Reactors can blast off quickly, reducing the chance of the Captain and crew being hurt on the ground or having to fight in orbit (Similar to the effect of the Exo-Tank when Exploring, but with a smaller benefit since it's a more generally useful modification).

Customs Inspection Tweak (Another suggestion; this isn't really necessary for the above ideas to work in the game):
- This isn't really necessary for the above ideas to work, but it would be nice to have some options when caught with illegal good, such as starting a fight (at close range, with an immediate boarding action) or paying a bribe.


How the game balance works (So far as I've analyzed it; there could still be issues I don't see):
- When making illegal trades, a Captain can trade in places he otherwise would not be able to, but loses opportunties to improve his reputation through trade of restricted goods.
- When smuggling goes badly, the Captain often loses his valuable cargo, suffers reputation loss, and is likely to be attacked even if he is theoretically on good terms with the Local Faction.
- Trades Against Local Law carry much greater risk of provoking the local Faction, but limited risk of provoking any other Faction (the only way I know of that this could provoke other Factions is if a space battle results and the Local Faction has Allies).
- Legal Trades Against an Embargo provide significantly greater financial gain than normal equivalent trades, especially trades of "shortage" goods that violate more than one Embargo. These trades are very likely to cause widespread reputation loss, however (as is currently the case). This gives everyone a reason to at least consider dabbling in smuggling from time to time.
- Trades that are both Against Local Law and Against and Embargo allow a smuggling Captain to dodge the normal reputation loss, but can only be conducted if the Captain forgoes permits with the relevant Faction. These trades are a smuggler's "big risk/big reward" opportunity. He might make lots of cash in a hurry, or might lose his cargo and have to fight for his life. This can benefit dedicated smugglers and allows smuggling to compete with strategies that attempt to maintain permits and strong reputation with most Factions. Dedicated smugglers can potentially get along enough even if hated by all major factions.

[celu]

I've been playing smuggler for about 1 week on insane level.
Died a few times.
Having lots of fun as smuggler.

I'm at level 25 with positive reps on all clans, with all edicts and ranks.
Definitely a different play style than merchant. Rarely making merchant route, only chasing surplus/shortage rumors, stockpiling banned goods and caching on planets waiting for shortages.

I still need to learn how to exploit record creation. Merchants are better at this.

Making money between shortages by taking high paying contracts.

Flying:
Hyper Freighter
Upgrades: Ancient reactor, cargo pod (+7), fuel tank, advanced sail (+25%), Omni-stealth array.
Hull 24
Armor 6
Engine 32
Sail 60
crew 49
cargo 195
guns 20
torp 4

Uses a spear class on bounty hunter missions (if i feel like it)
Will be hunting for some warships to capture.

195 cargo hold makes so much difference on selling @ shortage. Can even make double stops if I don't fill up cargo space for a single shortage drop.
Easy to run away from Indy pirates.
Seem to bump into so much traffic when chasing shortage (maybe because of insane level)

It's difficult to transition between smuggling and contracts coz I have to switch vessels for bounty.

When I reached positive rep on all clans, smuggler officer is useless. I dismissed him, I only used him on early explorations.
I find it hard to gain extremely high rep (100+) on clans because I rather sell the banned goods for money instead of rep, so trade alliances means little to me. The political officer is more valuable to me now (just need to exploit the negotiation bonus).

That defines a smuggler:
Don't care about political affairs, only care about money and negative rep on trade embargoes. Only loyal to his own greedy ambitions. Will stop at nothing, will turn to piracy to find some cash flow. An independent dressed in polished uniform.

There is a scum smuggler, trying to live 1 day at a time and hoping to not get shot down (I used to be). And there is a high powered smuggler with political connection forcing the authorities to look the other way. I'm too big to fail.

I really feel that the smuggler and scout must be 2 different officer. The smuggler should increase record creation and protect (or less) price drop from taxes, banned goods and local embargo.

Scout should really enhance exploration, wilderness landing bonus.

Smuggler should stick to urban landing bonus. and %protection for cargo against loot and searches. He has extra hiding places fro those rolled up records.

Rumor if smuggler is availlable:
A felon convicted of some outstanding traffic violation and misdemeanor charges from shop lifting was release this morning . Words on the streets has it that he is the infamous El Burro, the smuggler from the south of the border, nobody can verify for sure. They say he has an uncle who runs an olive oil distribution and staying there for the time being. (can be found at the exchange) But he seem to have a fond of the outdoors and travels so I doubt he will be there for long.

[Cory Trese]

daedalus -- just want you to know that I read your post and I am working on a design that includes many of these elements.

[jameskuyper]

Jul 12, 2011 11:59:44 GMT -5 celu said:

That defines a smuggler:
Don't care about political affairs, only care about money and negative rep on trade embargoes. Only loyal to his own greedy ambitions. Will stop at nothing, will turn to piracy to find some cash flow. An independent dressed in polished uniform.

There is a scum smuggler, trying to live 1 day at a time and hoping to not get shot down (I used to be). And there is a high powered smuggler with political connection forcing the authorities to look the other way. I'm too big to fail.

That's two ways to be a smuggler, but there's many others. My preferred take on smugglers is the politically motivated smuggler, who engages in activities that are considered illegal by one side, to advance a cause he believes in. He'll accept pay, because he needs it to cover expenses, and he'll smuggle on behalf of the highest bidder - but he'll only consider bids from bidders he approves of, going against Factions he doesn't approve of. I just saw Casablanca last night, so the example that pops immediately to my mind is Rick Blaine, running guns to Ethiopia against Fascist Italy.

I haven't been able to make this work very well in Startrader yet. I've tried to play a Smuggler who will only accept contracts from a Clan to smuggle messages, packages, passengers against a Syndicate. He'll avoid contracts against Independents, for fear that the true target might be a Clan. He'll smuggle Records to a clan engaged in a Spy War with a syndicate. He'll smuggle ordinary cargo to relieve shortages or surpluses on a Clan world through the blockages that might be in place due to an embargo, trade war, or solar war with a Syndicate. This approach works fairly well on Basic, but when I attempt the same approach at Challenging I find myself running short of funds due to rejecting too many contracts, and unable to find enough usable shortage/surplus rumors to make up the difference..

Far too many of the available contracts target independents, or are for Clan-Clan or Syndicate-Syndicate missions. Too many of the other contracts are for assassination, capture, surveillance, patrol, or blockade duty. My preferred ship is small, for as low a signature as possible to avoid encounters, while also being fast enough to evade encounters it cannot avoid. My favorite so far is a Moon Runner with an advanced sail system - no one has ever successfully chased it fast enough to score a torpedo hit. Such a ship is not really suitable for combat contracts.

Something that bothers me is the reputation loss associated with covert operations. It seems to me that you should only lose reputation with a given faction if that faction actually learns about the operation; the whole point of being covert is to avoid having them find out. Attacking a ship is an overt operation, and so is conducting a a blockade; but most of the other kinds of contracts could be covert. Breaking an embargo or taking part in a Spy war should also be done covertly. While my getting caught is one way for my opponent to discover an operation, it's entirely reasonable for an opponent to occasionally find out about some operations even if they are successful. However, an opponent shouldn't find out about each and every covert operation I successfully complete against them - which seems to be the case in Startraders.
Perhaps loyalties to the different factions are so shaky that it's impossible for them to keep a covert operation secret? Or maybe the problem is on my side - perhaps my crew routinely leaks information on secret operations whenever we visit a Spice Hall?

[phantum]

I am reading this smuggler stuff in a new light now after Cory's post in startradersrpg.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=gotopost&board=rules&thread=242&post=8235

From what I understand, we are not able to trade with the entire planets economy, and simply jump to a black market. We are effectively trading with the prince, hence the requirement for permits, and the fact that reputations always seem to get recorded. Trade records for smugglers also seems to make a bit more sense. A smuggler is still only able to trade with a prince and not on a black market.

[celu]

Should I hire my smuggler officer back?
It seems that I no longer able to create records when buying contrabands, since I fired him. I'm going to concentrate on upping my intimidation and negotiation, maybe that will do the trick.
But I'm too cheap to pay for his signing bonus...but I really need him specially on landing bonus.

@jameskuyper: The Hyper Freighter is a much better choice than the moon runner (IMO), I havn't had a scratch on this baby yet. Also, true what you said about the definition of a smuggler. My style is only one way of doing it. But on higher levels (crazy and above), even having neutral standing on any faction is not the best way to be running around with a ship load of 8-tracks and ataris. Even with positive rep with no permit, they will mistaken you for a quail during open season.

Now I have to search/hunt for a new Hyper Freighter with the cool new upgrades available.

A new strategy has been created by having a pilot officer. Now I have to decide who to boot from these three: blondie, smuggie or pilot. I'm not giving up redhed (the long one), she's almost a permanent fixture for any captain.

[lazaruslong]

Twice now I have completed 8 contracts before 59.1 on crazy and the smuggler hasn't unlocked. Including the starter contract, it's actually 9. They seem perfect to me: i didnt reject any, i completed them all, no fails... and yet, nothing happens! Is this a bug? Am I doing something wrong? Do I need to go into a palace and claim the award before 59.1? Help, please

Laz

[slayernz]

Hey LazarusLong,
Did you by any chance reject any contract during your first 8? Also, yes, you absolutely have to register your award before it is official. I've had situations where I've had 8 perfect contracts with no rejections, and one more remaining in my contracts list that I signed up for. Unfortunately I blew contract #9 before I went to the hall of records, and with that #9 failure, my record no longer showed as a perfect 8 contracts completed.

Same goes if you keep the Vae Victus (or other starting ship) until level 12, but on the way to record your Hardcore Ultra award, you get attacked by a Royal class ship and win. Let's face it, if you have the opportunity to trade up from the Vae to a Royal class ship, you'd be foolish not to. Still, the Omni-Stealth array is definitely a valuable addition to your upgrade options.

[lazaruslong]

That must be why! so I gotta finish that eighth contract and get into a recording hall before the deadline... gonna be close but I think I can do it

[Cory Trese]

slayernz -- that is probably my most common Award fail.

I am cruising along in the VV ALMOST to the Award.

Then I win some battle (boarding a Jango, usually) and I click "take ship"

Then I scream at the phone "You cheated meeeeee!!!!"

That's when I usually switch over and start working on the "Destroy 100 Ships" Award =)

[Tenebrous Pirate]

I think I got up to level 15 with a pirate in his Tempus Fugit before I finally found a ship worth taking once. I should have held out for 5 more levels, I know...

[slayernz]

Yeah - but they're starting ships for a reason - and die-hards would say "you should die in the ship that you started with", but I'm all about not dying for as long as possible .

You did well surviving until level 15 and hanging out for another 5 levels in the Tempus is all very well and good, but it's still a "future unlock" at this stage so save it for when Cory adds a special "Cargo bay upgrade that provides ~100 units of hidden storage" ... that would be worth it <grin>