Smuggler Archive
Thread: Depending On Smugglers
Vampirerobot wrote:Well, us "actually smuggling" is a matter of perspective.Like I've said before, I think of "smuggling" as acquiring and delivering illicit goods to the end-user. A drug-user in RL doesn't ask a drug smuggler to carry their stash for them when they move. The drug smuggler is just how the drugs get into the country. Likewise we Smugglers bring illicit goods into the game (in this case by creating them). Yes, there are penalties for having those illicit items, but the penalties are not what ought to give us our purpose. It's the actual acquisition of the items themselves. Which is why I think it is FAR more important that Smugglers have a monopoly on the illegal goods market than that Players need to use us as pack-mules to truck their junk around.What we need is stuff that Players want that only we can get, at risk to OURSELVES. That's what is going to get us "actually smuggling".
This is what I am trying to say (poorly, it appears) as well. As a smuggler, I am interested in obtaining things that other people want, but cannot directly get themselves. This is where I take my cut (cha-ching). I see myself as the method of delivery, and I'm not so sure that I want to continue to be a part of the action after the goods have been delivered. This makes sense for the non-smuggler as well. After I've delivered the spice (or guns, or what-have-you), they've got plans for it that don't include me--and that's just fine. The drug user just wants to go home and get loaded, he doesn't need the dealer to do that.
Where this runs into problems is within the current framework in the game, where the contraband must be moved repeatedly past the same scan points. However much it makes sense in the name of realism, it does not make sense practically (or from a standpoint of fun, I think) to have to rely on a smuggler to keep moving the goods around the galaxy. For example, if I acquire some illegal Mexican guns from a real-life gun-runner, he's not going to continue to help me run back and forth to and from Mexico so I can hunt coyotes with them.
I'm all for consequences, and risk-reward, and there is some merit to the idea that only smugglers could/would use sliced items, as we would be only ones that could cart them around safely, but I'm not sure it's a good game mechanic to lobby for.
Oh, and I miss being licked while in the cantina too.
It is not and shouldn't be a matter of perspective. If you wanna get REAL smugglers don't deliver the goods to the end users. That's what drug DEALERS do. We're the drug MULES. We get the drugs from the suppliers to the dealers. Not to the USERS. And that's what we SHOULD be doing.
Hey, I don't mind dealing drugs and slicing. But it doesn't make me a smuggler.
In short, don't piss on my shoes and tell me it's raining.
Back in orange:
Bohdi-Tzu wrote: This is what I am trying to say (poorly, it appears) as well. As a smuggler, I am interested in obtaining things that other people want, but cannot directly get themselves. This is where I take my cut (cha-ching). I see myself as the method of delivery, and I'm not so sure that I want to continue to be a part of the action after the goods have been delivered. This makes sense for the non-smuggler as well.
But we can have both. Tariffs should make the bulk of REAL smuggling. And a minigame could be easily done using the Cries of Alderaan "steal Alderaan flora" as a prototype - go recover the special components and use it to make worthwhile spice to sell to others.
If we had 75% of all contraband scans at starports, 20% at shuttleports and city gates, and 5% randomly, I'd probably be very happy. It would mean that the transportation routes would be a Smuggler's domain, but that most people wouldn't get beat down every time they set foot into a city with contraband. Nobody wants contraband to get you instantly killed all the time. There have to be ways for users to have them relatively safely. But that's AFTER you manage to get it onto a planet. Trying to move contraband from one planet to another should be VERY risky.
Consider the risk of taking drugs through the Istanbul airport. Then consider the risk of walking down the street in Istanbul with drugs in your pocket. The former is about as risky as it gets. The latter is a risk, but a minor one, all things considered.
And that's fine. As long as they lay low with their contraband, there's no problem. Once they get their resources onto the world they intend to make their product, they're home free. Once they get their drugs delivered, they just need to stay out of crowded areas and they're golden (barring a random wilderness scan team's intervention). Contraband just takes a lit of special care, and tariffs especially are cut and dry - once they get past customs, nobody's asking any more questions.
After I've delivered the spice (or guns, or what-have-you), they've got plans for it that don't include me--and that's just fine. The drug user just wants to go home and get loaded, he doesn't need the dealer to do that.
Where this runs into problems is within the current framework in the game, where the contraband must be moved repeatedly past the same scan points. However much it makes sense in the name of realism, it does not make sense practically (or from a standpoint of fun, I think) to have to rely on a smuggler to keep moving the goods around the galaxy. For example, if I acquire some illegal Mexican guns from a real-life gun-runner, he's not going to continue to help me run back and forth to and from Mexico so I can hunt coyotes with them.
He's not going to need to run along with you to hunt with those guns. UNLESS you try to cross another border, or UNLESS you take an airplane across the country, or UNLESS you just randomly get pulled over by a cop and get searched. But you're more or less free to use that contraband every day, so long as you don't take it to high security areas and so long as you don't try to cross a border.
I see what you're saying, Vamp, and by that definition, yeah, option 3 would work.
But to me, smuggling is not acquiring illegal items and delivering them to the player base. Those are the things that necessitate smuggling in the first place. I want EVERY player to be able to do THAT stuff, not just us. Smuggling is purely moving illegal cargo from A to B undetected (or detected, and running like hell).
Let's look at the following example in the world of illicit drugs.
You've got three players. We'll call them Al, Bill, and Charlie.
Al is the guy who harvests the coca leaves in Colombia and processes and refines them into pure 100% knock-your-socks-off blow.
Bill is the guy who owns a plane, a car, a boat, or just knows the back routes in and out of the U.S.
Charlie is the guy who sells the stuff on the street (once he cuts it with baking soda) to any joker who'll pay him (long as he's not five-o).
In this situation, Al is not the smuggler. He's the guy who harvests, processes, and hands the drugs over to Bill to get them to Charlie. Charlie is likewise not the smuggler, because all he's doing is selling the stuff when he gets it from Bill. Bill is the only one smuggling and that's ALL that he does. He's not a dealer. He's not a drug lord. He's just a smuggler. He knows his way around the local yokels, he knows how to sneak stuff through customs, he's come up with ingenous ways to load a boat FULL of coke and drive it right into a dock on Miami, and the harbor master never even knows its there. Remember that. Bill is the smuggler.
Now, from what you're suggesting, we should be taking Al, Bill, and Charlie, and merging them ALL into one great big "smuggler" job title. And I will grant you, many many smugglers are ALSO drug lords and/or dealers. But FUNDAMENTALLY, a smuggler is ONLY in the business of MOVING illegal cargo. That's all. It's certainly PART of the chain of getting the drugs to the consumer, but it is only a PART. Smuggling is not making, moving, AND selling the stuff. It's just the moving part.
Personally the way I'd do it is have doctors and medics able to MAKE the spice themselves. At that point ANYONE could sell it to anyone else (really, nothing stops people right now from buying a crate of muon from a smuggler, then selling it down the line to someone else). But ONLY the smuggler would be able to move it through customs or contraband scans with any degree of certainty. Pretty much everyone else would get busted moving stuff in any meaningful quantity (say, five units or more).
THAT is smuggling to me. Anyone should be able to sell the stuff. People with pharmaceutical or similar abilities should know how to MAKE the stuff, but ONLY a smuggler can MOVE the stuff reliably. That's our job, and that's ALL that our job should be. The sliced gear, the dirty fighting, those should only be things that make our job EASIER. But our fundamental job should be this and ONLY this: moving illegal or taxed goods from A to B while trying (and succeeding to some degree) to avoid detection.
Responding to ElectricNomad: These are good ideas, I like the "smuggler quest", and I made a post suggesting some similar content in TH's smuggler concept thread. As far as the scan points, again I think the problem here is inherent to the existing game framework. The reality is that people move from planet to planet on a constant basis, and that's as it should be. Taxing that movement and letting us provide a way around the tax is a good solution, but anything that restricts player movement is not going to fly, I think. I suspect that players would just stop using contraband if it becomes too much of a hassle, and right or wrong, that's where we mostly make our money. Oh. and thanks for the good discussion. This is the best thread I've seen on this board for a while!
Good points, EN. I also think that tariff-focused smuggling should be the bulk of our work. I'm not 100% sure which is the best system for this, but at the very least, tariffs focusing on transportation of CERTAIN resources to CERTAIN planets would be good. I'd also suggest that certain low numbers of items should be let through customs on "personal use" grounds, but that the game should scan for multiple stacks of items (IE: you couldn't carry ten stacks of two items and expect to make it through -- the game would still calculate you as carrying twenty items). But if you're carrying, say, 100 units of a taxed resource, you don't have to pay. I'm also not sure if I'd have the players get taxed AGAIN on items MADE with taxed goods, or if it'd just be the resources in question. I'm inclined to suggest ONLY resources and not the items, but the items too could prove interesting.
I'd also suggest that the resources rotate every so often and that you have to go to cantina owners to find out what's rumored to be next on the tariff list for your planet. Just another layer of immersion, I'd say.
Anyway, the contraband stuff would be REALLY risky, taxed goods would just require you to pay taxes if you get caught, no illegal activities involved (unless you attack the cops to get away without paying). Smugglers, if caught, could choose to shoot it out or pay the tax, or pay a bribe once you get high enough.
As long as we're doing revamp stuff, I also think that we need to give serious consideration to novices and make the smuggler profession interdependent in and of itself. IE: a master smuggler would WANT to work with novices and other smugglers. How this is to be accomplished, I'm not 100% surem but I personally HATE how the game gets so focused on grinding. I'd honestly rather be encouraged to take on apprentices, or even be REQUIRED >gasp< or FORCED!!! >shock!< >horror!< to do so. I just really get tired of people saying "Are you a master? No? Then never mind. I only want a master."
I want novices to be protected in any revamp we do. They should NOT be stuck out in the cold with no way to gain experience or get work.
Just so people get an idea of the sort of tariff/contraband system I'm talking about, here are a few lists of resources needed to make a few new items.
In YELLOW are items I'd want to see put on a tariff list. These would be taxed at ports, and if you tried to smuggle them and failed, you'd lose a percentage of your resources. Non-Smugglers would lose a LOT of the resources and have a poor chance of bypassing a search. Smugglers would lose increasingly less resources as they advanced in Underworld and finally Master, and would have increasingly good odds of successfully bypassing a search.
In RED are items I'd want to see put on a contraband list. These items would open you to stiff financial penalties, FP penalties, confiscation if you lacked FP or enough money, and perhaps attack and future bountiesif you refused to submit to any other penalty.
One full suit of Wookiee armor will take:
110 wood
110 leathery hide
110 wooly hide
55 copper
40 polymer
5 padding segments
11 sim Kashyyykian segments
4 synth. cloths
40 units of Fiberplast
the Padding Segments will take:
15 hide
10 wooly hide
5 fiberplast
the regular Kash. segments take:
20 wood
5 leathery hide
1 armor attachment (optional)
the Advanced Kash. segments take:
25 endorian decidious wood
8 yavinian leathery hides
1 armor attachment (optional)
Geonosian Sonic Blaster (Experimentation: 50% Conductivity/50% OQ)
170 Chromium Aluminum
60 Mythra Copper
4x Identical Blaster Power Handlers
1x Blaster Pistol Barrel
1 Power Cube
Optional Weapon Scope
And imagine that all resources from Dathomir were summarily subject to tariff, including Metal, Wood, Hide, Fiberplast, and other items listed as possible components above.
Furthermore, if you wanted to add something like Acklay Bones or Krayt Tissues to anything listed above, they would be subject to contraband scans.
So, why those resources?
Why would Plumbum Iron and Duralumin Aluminum be subject to a tariff and not Axidite Iron or Phrik Aluminum? No real reason, but I'm sure there could be a nice backstory. The important reason it would be subject to tariffs would be that it's somehow useful, but its absence wouldn't destroy a business. A weaponsmith could ALWAYS still craft most other weapons.
As for the Wookiee armor, why Yavinian Leather and Endor Decidious Wood? You COULD say simply "because they're from adventure planets," and that might actually be good enough for me. Those planets are supposed to be under tight control. But another reason they're perfectly okay is because they're used for the advanced components of the armor - you don't need them to make the armor at all. Nobody is gated in the least from making Wookiee armor. Now the BEST Wookiee armor, that's another story. You'd need very specific resources to make the best components, and you'd have to either go through aSmuggler or pay a high tax on the resources.
By the way, Holocron appeared and said this earlier tonight:
Holocron wrote:
. . .
SWG is, probably, too easy overall. But the better way to address the problem would not be to make advancement slower, but to add more challenging activities.
. . .
Thoughts on that?
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=general_any_topic&message.id=149918#M149918
I told him whatI thought about this game being too easy, and used the Smuggler revamp as an example of how to make the game more of a challenge. Maybe it's a good idea to add your own input on why a tougher, more challenging game is better for the long-term viability of SWG. A lot of Smugglers believe, as I do, that risk creates adventure and is as Star Warsy as . . . well, smuggling.
Beautiful. Can't say anything else. If this isn't the most creative-minded forum then there isn't one. The bad part is that we've had to be creative by default. No one else is doing it for us.
Seeing good ideas like we've repeatedly seen on this forum be ignored is like watching other people eat when you're starving.
Wes, that's also exactly what the rest of the smugglers have been saying. Make carrying illegal items have consequences. This would in fact give four options. Become a smuggler to do it yourself, pay a smuggler to smuggle for you, don't use illegal items, or use illegal items and deal with the consequences.
This entire thread has been smugglers fighting for a sytem that wouldn't hinder gameplay or eat up valuable player time but give more choices thereby more immersion and more fun. Gabriel and the other dissenters just want to have their cake, eat it, and not worry about cavities or getting fat.
Caylin, please don't sticky this thread. I really want it to just disappear and nothing like it ever appear again. I'm actually ashamed of myself for perpetuating its survival but like Wes said, "I've wasted timewriting this now so might aswell press submit."
One interesting point brought up was about what kind of service Smugglers are meant to provide. There are three types that I can identify:
1) Crafted products, like Weaponsmiths and Tailors. This service is a one time created item that the customer buys and keeps. This generally requires no face to face contact, and can be provided via a vendor. Slicing is currently kind of like this, since once you slice an item, it never needs it again, and sliced items can be sold on vendors without ever meeting the Smuggler face to face.
2) Inconvenience-avoiding service, like Medics and Entertainers. This service is to counter some kind of game-imposed inconvenience like Battle Fatigue or Wounds. We don't currently do anything like this, with the exception of grouping with players to help them avoid scans. But we don't really do that oftenas it isn't practical or necessary.
3) Buff/Bonus services, like Doctor/Musician Buffs and Chef food. These are services that you don't NEED, but most players WANT. The interesting example that I'd like to look into is the Doctor. A Doctor cannot sell their buffs on a vendor, and so players seek out Doctors in order to gain their services. A Chef doesn't get many tells asking for service, they just sell it all on their vendor. But the Doctor is a partial-crafting profession (like Smuggler) that does all their work face to face.
I think the 'style' of Smugglers lends itself more towards option 3, particularly the Doctor example. I'd like to see us as a profession that other players seek out in order to get their hands on the illegal stuff, the contraband. And I'd like to see that kind of interaction happen face to face. Slicing works like this currently, at least insofar as slicing personal weapons is concerned. I think vendors selling pre-sliced weapons and armor cut into the special quality of this service though, and I'd like to see vendors taken out of the equation. Spice is pretty much exclusively sold on vendors, and with the revamp I think it would be very cool if Spice had to be bought personally from a Smuggler. It would be fantastic if Spice couldn't be traded unless a Smuggler was one of the traders (I would add sliced weapons and armor in there too, but that would make repairs a hassle).
While Inconvenience avoidind services are part of the game, I don't think we need to add another one (and thereby create another inconvenience). The rest of the players would likely resist that. But I don't think they can justly complain if we simply made our own products and services more our own.