Introducing cargo smuggling

What’s a smuggler without the ability to smuggle? This new skill will allow amateurs and professionals alike to get ahead in the credit game by illegally transporting goods. It functions similarly to the current cargo commands, but it certainly does a whole lot more.

“Look, I ain’t in this for your revolution, and I’m not in it for you, princess. I expect to be well paid. I’m in it for the money”

Where would the fun in smuggling be if you didn’t pull in the credits? Obviously smugglers don’t pay taxes, or respect trade embargos. The reward – and the risk – from smuggling will be substantially higher than ordinary cargo running.

“Never tell me the odds!”
No smuggler is perfect. Failing the contraband commands (buying or selling) runs the risk of alerting the authorities of your smuggling attempt. What determines a successful smuggle attempt? A better skill percentage will make your day easier. High planetary police budgets, customs agents and platform security will not.

“She may not look like much, but she’s got it where it counts”

This is the first step in introducing cargo smuggling to LOTJ. What would you like to see added to the system? Done differently?

* These commands only work if the planet is under embargo.
* You cannot use them if you belong to the governing clan.
* The planet receives no revenue when cargo is sold this way.
* The planet does not need to have sufficient funds.
* The governing clan receives no tax revenue (obviously).
* Watch out for cops and customs agents…

There needs to be an option under leadplanet to flag a type of cargo as contraband, meaning things like spice or weapons could only be traded with the trafficking skill. This would give people things to smuggle in eras when most places aren’t embargoed.

I love the idea and its great to see some new stuff being added, especially concepts that people have been asking for. My only concern is that, like most things, once people have figured out how to counter it, it’ll just get tossed in the useless pile once more. I’m not very informed on all the leadplanet options, just getting that out there, but iirc there really isn’t much of a negative side affect to having more police and more military. I know there’s a nice balance somewhere in there, but what happens when the governing clans find the right balance to basically tag every smuggler who tries to sell, but they have no negative against them for putting forth the resources to get this accomplished? Again, I could be totally wrong here with setting military/police forces and if so, someone just point that out. It just seems its going to fall into the same category as security on landing pads. As long as someone is monitoring and can send someone there to stop it, its going to be seen every time.

On the flip side to that, if the skill level has the same lack of lag that sellcargo has, a good smuggler could sell all their stuff and be in the sky before anyone really could figure out what’s going on. The drawback being if it has lag on it like stealship. And another drawback being that there’s only so many planets to do this on, so then the governing clan goes into high alert for the next couple of hours, basically stopping you from continuing to run cargo.

some potential ideas :

-the ability to bribe npc’s that are always on certain landing pads. this would have the mob despawn or ‘look away’ for a short period of time. Now the amount of credits should vary depending on a few factors like planet support, planet crime rating, smuggling level or charisma.

-the ability to obscure your cargo hold levels (shown via stat) so it is not immediately obvious that there is cargo in a ship. perhaps make this part of ship sensors or comms or perhaps if a ship has a certain security level you cannot pull up as much info about a ship via the stat command without the appropriate checks. it always bugged me that stat has so much information in it so readily available.

– the ability to unload cargo (at a SIGNIFICANT penalty) at places like the shadowport or those flagged as potential blackmarket. almost every planet has some sort of off the grid landing pad perhaps integrate those?

Eject that cargo, kids!

Since this doesn’t draw from planetary funds, someone could sell all their smuggle cargo in one go, yes?

I would also suggest a rule disallowing clan members to resign from a clan for the sole purpose of smuggling cargo for the clan they just “quit”. Maybe this isn’t a big deal to everyone else, it just seems like a technical way of getting around the “governing clan members can’t do this”.

This is, like, the coolest new thing I’ve seen in forever. No suggestions, just praise.

@Corey: Having high police/military settings with leadplanet, last I knew, caused a slow decline in pop support even if it would help lower statistical crime. Could be wrong, though!

I think smuggling should also work when there’s no embargo.

There is widespread agreement here (myself included) that this skill should work on worlds not under embargo as well.

I like the idea of certain goods always being ‘contraband’ (maybe add a special kind of mermit as well?). Would that be the focus? Would you always be able to smuggle any kind of cargo to avoid the taxes but not able to buy / sell the contraband cargo without smuggling them?

Yeah, avoiding taxes should be the thing, when there’s no embargo, too, etc.

Yeah, spice, weapons, etc, for example, are usually contraband (especially in Empire era, too), so yeah, planet leaders could set those as well.

Sounds great 🙂

I’m pretty sure Bax is right with regard to planetary support starting to tank if you have too many police/military. Been a bit since I’ve actually led a planet. I like the idea of spice, weapons, etc being contraband. Maybe only certain ports would sell them too? Like the blackmarket ports where you can strip ships would also be where you purchase contraband cargo.

I like the idea of obscured cargo holds, I would like to see that. Right now if someone is smuggling between Corellia-Coruscant for example all and ISD has to do is scan the ship to see if the hold is full. Check to see if they have or don’t have a permit on file, then arrest.

Suggestion for a tweak to trafficking. Now we all know that there will likely never be a clan leader who will put up embargos on their own planets outside of the Imperial Era or very special circumstances (Hapans) mainly because not many people are popular enough to get away with such a thing, and anyone, and I do mean ANYONE, in the Old Republic or New Republic who did that would get shouted out of office pretty quickly. So why make the skill something that is only useable when major clans feel like being dickheads? If I remember correctly, any resource that is set to 0 in leadplanet is removed from the resource list. To me, this is akin to something like banning that kind of good from being traded on that planet. Why not allow trafficking the ability to sell this “banned” cargo for a flat rate? At least then you wouldn’t have to wait a whole timeline (most likely much more than that) to be able to use this skill.

Some fantastic feedback here – particularly agree on the need for use outside of embargoes, and rolek and veric’s ideas are excellent (and add another use to the ‘blackmarket’ flag, always a good thing.)