Smuggler Archive

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WesBelden wrote:

Create NPC dealers and place them in NPC cities, allowing Smugglers to sell contraband through them.

This, while initially appealing, seems to have several flaws. First, I imagine this would require a great deal of development compared to other ideas suggested and is likely unfeasible.

Second, merchants get a bum deal out of this, their skill set taken from them and placed in an NPC.

Third, while it gives Smugglers a good way to sell their spice, it still restricts people being able to sell their looted slicing tools that many Smugglers wish to pick up and many Bounty Hunters wish to rid themselves of.

Conversely, this last point could be viewed as good thing, as it means that contraband is no-longer obtainable by anything less than personal contact (although people with this view are likely for the complete removal of contraband sales on vendors in the first place).

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I like this idea. It could work similliar to the BH SpyNet. Place an operative in cantinas or back alleys. They could either act as a separate vendor system, or like some kind of junk/starship chassis dealers, offering set prices for contraband themselves.

Now to give it an underworld feeling, even talking to such an NPC should give you a very small amount of visability. Visability could either lead to the BH terminals, or add a chance that the character is being fined by a crackdown patrol - which is practically useless right now.

Now, the very same NPC could either be used to obtain contraband like every vendor, or they could be offering Smuggling missions, which would include contraband as a reward.

As for the merchants, they could get a single "underworld" vendor at master level. Dealing with this vendor would generate visablity, and vendor searches could only be performed at aforementioned NPCs.

Just a few suggestions...

Of all activities that I believe should require player interaction, it's that which involved illegal goods. Any vendor we work with or could potentially place is just going to piss off merchants and take away from what makes them unique to the galaxy.

Then again, just delivering my cargo of a certain spice I obtained, delivering it to an npc fence or npc merchant that would be 'restocked' for a time and amount then get paid for completion of the delivery would appeal to me personally. Not exactly on your list but it's just stuff I throw out there for no good reason at all. Getting people to ask us to deliver cargo to said npc and 'wetting our beak' would be interesting.

/rambles on

The option of the NPC dealer I think plays better. Smugglers move illicit goods and are not necessarily dealers. To ease possible coding issues you could use the "junk dealers" as the contraband NPCs buying and selling the stuff. They are already in place in many NPC cities and shouldn't be a large task to adjust to buying and selling.

I'm all for "no Contraband on any vendor". I like the idea of Smuggler being a ATK profession with meeting in cantinas for slicing jobs and faction as well as spices.

Underground Black Market Bazaars. My opinions:

• NPC cronies scattered throughout the galaxy. Kinda like junk dealers. They specialize. One might be more into spice dealing. Another a gun reseller. "Listing fees" would vary depending on the dealer.


• These dealers would also sell (non-player sold) loot. The stats and prices are all random. You might get an uber piece of loot, or noob junk. Their "loot inventory" would vary NPC to NPC, and would reset, say, every hour.


• These guys would only be accessable by doing quests for some underworld figure; thereby, you gain the "trust" of, let's say, Jabba, and he'll give you the "password" to enable you to shop on the black market.


• Allow Merchants to sell contraband on their vendors. Their vendor (selling the contraband) will now gain "visibility". Keep the drug dealer in the hidden room! Once a vendor hits the "visibility limit", the owner is contacted: He has a few options: Pay up, or pay with his life.

I really like your last two options. I don't think spice should be on vendors at all, and if it is then there needs to be a penalty. I think your 3rd option of bounties fits well with an Underground scheme I wrote out here.

Perhaps as a compliment to the 3rd idea, any merchant seeking to place spice on their vendors would need to be flagged with a quest from one of the major Crime Families in the galaxy. This provides a bit more content to folks. A Bounty Hunter from the same Crime Family wouldn't go after this merchant, but someone else might. Another idea is to link Smugglers with Merchants the way people want Knights and Padawans linked. The Smuggler being the point person for the Underworld and the one the BHs hunt. The more spice provided to the more merchants, the larger the chance of being hunted.

Placing spice in a backpack and putting the pack up for sale is a definite work around. It would have to be thought about. Something quick and easy but detrimental would be to disallow spice to be placed inside containers. But that's one of the major problems with taking them off vendors.

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WesBelden wrote:
The poll on contraband being sold on vendors and the bazaar dealt with two extremes. The vast majority, both when it was originally posted and during its recent resurgence, opted for contraband to not be available on vendors and the bazaar.

Many, however, also stated that they would prefer to see an alternative, some form of compromise. I have no idea if such a compromise could be developed in addition to what is In Concept, but on the assumption there is still room for some change and given the proviso that as limited development as possible should be required for the compromise to be created, I’d like to discuss ideas on what exactly such a compromise could entail.

Again, I’ll state that I do not know if this is possible, indeed this could all lead to nothing, but in case it is possible, let us together attempt to come to a general consensus on what compromise would suffice.


Ideas that come to mind from those suggested include;

Allow contraband to be sold on merchants, but not the bazaar.

For me, this does nothing towards making contraband special / appear illegal; it is less a compromise and more a cop-out, allowing illegal items to be sold willy-nilly across the galaxy, albeit not on the Star Wars equivalent of EBay.

Give Smugglers the ability to alter/support vendors so that they can sell contraband items.

This could possibly work well, although some restrictions would be needed. If vendors simply require something akin to a slice in order to sell contraband, as with nearly every weapon prior to the new slicing system, every vendor will be sliced and everyone who currently does will continue to sell contraband.

Therefore, either some requirement of having Smuggler in a merchant’s template, or alternatively restricting Smugglers to ‘supporting’ one vendor at a time might be prudent.

Allow small amounts of contraband to be placed on vendors, with each amount, or each amount exceeding the limit, contributing to a merchant ending up on BH terminals.

Personally, I think a combination of this and requiring Smuggler support would be ideal, although development time available (should there be any) could very well prohibit either, let alone both together.

Restricting the amount of items on sale and/or placing merchants on the BH terminals if they’re not careful and/or if they sell too much contraband over time seems very appealing in the risk vs. reward champion in the back of my mind, although I’m not sure how merchants would take to this.

Create NPC dealers and place them in NPC cities, allowing Smugglers to sell contraband through them.

This, while initially appealing, seems to have several flaws. First, I imagine this would require a great deal of development compared to other ideas suggested and is likely unfeasible.

Second, merchants get a bum deal out of this, their skill set taken from them and placed in an NPC.

Third, while it gives Smugglers a good way to sell their spice, it still restricts people being able to sell their looted slicing tools that many Smugglers wish to pick up and many Bounty Hunters wish to rid themselves of.

Conversely, this last point could be viewed as good thing, as it means that contraband is no-longer obtainable by anything less than personal contact (although people with this view are likely for the complete removal of contraband sales on vendors in the first place).

These are just four that came to mind; in addition to these, there are many other ideas to be discussed (including no doubt the extreme end of the scale of simply removing contraband sales entirely). I look forward to seeing your comments .

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Personally, Im all for theNPC dealers, and have been for a while. My thoughts on that would detail:

• Smugglers would be able to sell single[1x+1x+1x etc], or bundled[10x, 20x, 30x etc] to specified 'Spice Dealers'


• Each spice is given X base value to the dealer, and each slicing componant is given X base value to the dealer


• The base price for each spice and slicing component is adjusted(+X% or -X%) based on how much of each type is on the dealer(or they are part of an organization which pools their supplies togeather)(ie if there is 1 ICB in the whole stock, it is worth base value+rarity % value)


• Upon selling the spice to the dealer, Smugglers could chose to recieve payment or slicing components.


• Other players could buy spice from the vendors or sell slicing components to them.

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HOTDOG wrote:

I'm going to type this once more as I have typed this till I am blue in the face.

There should be no contraband on vendors-

However- a person who has Smuggler 4xxx and Artisan xx3x (whatever the business line is) should be allowed to place an NPC vendor that CAN sell contraband.

This person should held responsible for things they sell on this "vendor" as well- For example they could earn visibility each time someone used their spice.

Ugh.

I can't believe I actually gave an idea...I feel like a battered spouse who doesn't know how to leave their abuser...I think I'm going to be sick.

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Same here, cept I've got the "sliding glass door syndrome". I'll keep doing something until it hurts, a lot.

And right now, I'm feeling "Comfortably Numb"

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WillburWright wrote:

Same here, cept I've got the "sliding glass door syndrome". I'll keep doing something until it hurts, a lot.

And right now, I'm feeling "Comfortably Numb"

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Good stuff...hehe

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HOTDOG wrote:

I'm going to type this once more as I have typed this till I am blue in the face.

There should be no contraband on vendors-

However- a person who has Smuggler 4xxx and Artisan xx3x (whatever the business line is) should be allowed to place an NPC vendor that CAN sell contraband.

This person should held responsible for things they sell on this "vendor" as well- For example they could earn visibility each time someone used their spice.

Ugh.

I can't believe I actually gave an idea...I feel like a battered spouse who doesn't know how to leave their abuser...I think I'm going to be sick.

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I actually brought something like this up in some other thread, origionally as a joke, but the more I think about it the more I like it. I want to take it even a little bit farther, though. Let people put whatever they want on vendors, but toons with illegal goods on vendors (sliced weapons, slices) should run a chance of having the vendor and all items on it confiscated (arrested for selling illegal goods and siezed as evidence) and incur huge fines (I'm talking like 10% of total worth). The percentage chance should be fairly low, but it should exist. Add visibility, eventually (after a couple of infractions) leading to posting on BH terminals. Oh, and maybe they could pay a "tax" (protection money) to one of the existing criminal factions (Jabba, etc.) to lower chance of being caught. And, while I'm fantasizing, how about that chance also being lowered by increased distance from starports, and by the criminal faction rank of the player city. (Of course, then you would have to add a criminal faction rank and have it applied to player cities-but thinkof the fun this could be...a new mayor could literally "clean up" his city...or make it a safe haven for theiv...*ahem*...ahhh...less reputable types.)

Now, that would convince ME, at least, to set up a vendor and start selling illegal stuff off of it.

Okay first off, contraband don't mean butt if it cn't be confiscated.

That being out of the way, here's the best possible system.

A vendor window, accessible by all smuggler with Underworld 4. Works like the vendor search.
No prices. You simply get the item description, and the name of the seller.
You can either charge the prospective buyer a finder's fee for giving them the name, or get the item yourself and mark it up.
Really invokes both "Fixer" and "Fence."

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talansen wrote:
I actually brought something like this up in some other thread, origionally as a joke, but the more I think about it the more I like it. I want to take it even a little bit farther, though. Let people put whatever they want on vendors, but toons with illegal goods on vendors (sliced weapons, slices) should run a chance of having the vendor and all items on it confiscated (arrested for selling illegal goods and siezed as evidence) and incur huge fines (I'm talking like 10% of total worth). The percentage chance should be fairly low, but it should exist. Add visibility, eventually (after a couple of infractions) leading to posting on BH terminals. Oh, and maybe they could pay a "tax" (protection money) to one of the existing criminal factions (Jabba, etc.) to lower chance of being caught. And, while I'm fantasizing, how about that chance also being lowered by increased distance from starports, and by the criminal faction rank of the player city. (Of course, then you would have to add a criminal faction rank and have it applied to player cities-but thinkof the fun this could be...a new mayor could literally "clean up" his city...or make it a safe haven for theiv...*ahem*...ahhh...less reputable types.)

Now, that would convince ME, at least, to set up a vendor and start selling illegal stuff off of it.

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Having a fine might work ok, but confiscating everthing on a vendor would never happen.
The merchant boards and bug reports would be flooded with messages from the newbie merchants who 'had their stuff stolen/hacked'.
It wouldn't matter how many times they were warned, you could pop up a warning before and after each contraband item was listed and people would just ignore it.

I don't think 10% of total value of items on a vendor wouldn't work as a fine though.
So many people put up bags of stuff for 9999999999999999999 it would never work.
People would end up with negative credits.
You know it would be a bug and it would slip to live anyway, despite numerous reports. Probably wouldn't be fixed for 3 months either.
If you wanted to confiscate only contraband, then that could work, maybe add the fine of 10% of the contraband, but I still see any penalty system like this as so highly unlikely as to be impossible.

As long as we have a way to get the tools/spice/etc we need without having to wait for a live ATK player to contact us and flog off merch at hugely inflated fees, then I'm fine with removing all contraband from vendors and bazaar.
I support ATK play, but I think that tools will be in even shorter supply if there is not some kind of contraband vendor (that's not in BFE) that BH (or whomever) can list things for us to buy.

Think about it, you loot something that you don't need, and you drop it on the bazaar.
If it doesn't sell right away, you may lower the price, and if it doesn't sell, then you destroy it.
That's generally what I do, and I think many others do too.
If people are forced to go to Jabba's or somewhere else far away from their normal travel patterns, they won't see it as worth their time.
Tools will get deleted and prices will increase, meaning even more complaining about how much it costs to slice items.

I'm sure it's been brought up before, but I'm still amazed at the irony that people used to call you noob, curse you, spit on you, yell that you were ripping people off, etc when I used to charge 10k for a slice, yet now, most don't even blink when you tell them it'll cost 'em 300k.
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot!?!