This is not a proper guide per se, just a collection of information, thought, and opinion related to smuggling with regards to the current version (0.65.1a). You may have seen some of these in my other posts. Some information are also collected from other players.
- Definition of smuggling: trading in the black market, trading with pirate.
- The "smuggler" choice pretty much give you all you need to success: a Hound, fast, decent cargo space with protection from scan.
- Strangely this is a very good choice if you want to do a "pacifist run". Trading in black market (anywhere, not just pirate base) improve your reputation with pirates. Once the rep reach "inhospitable" level, pirate fleets become neutral and won't attack you. There's no reason to go above that, so don't hurt other factions too much - just let it happen naturally.
- No factions like smuggling (
sometimes not even the pirate themselves) so you don't want attention. Keeping a low profile means keeping trade volume small. Doing a "smuggling run" with a fleet of 200+ cargo is pretty much wrong.
- Another thing that makes Hound the best smuggling ship: a trio of Hound give you enough cargo space for a decent smuggling run without too much negative reps (should be within single digit), ensure you have maximum burn speed, and keep your fleet toll low (around 1-3k range).
- If you prefer larger ships, search for a variant of Mule-D (there's two variants of Mule-D! you want the one with a Shielded cargo hold hullmod).
- Smuggling activity may trigger a drop in market stability, and factions may look into that, with possibly
very bad result. The smuggling volume require seems relative to market size, so be very gentle on tiny worlds like Maxios.
- Initial funding. The Jangala -> Barad hand weapon run was pretty decent even without event IIRC (viable since you don't pay tariff). If that's not the case, Pirate bases in Barad often get hit with trade disruption (their fleets keep getting killed), asking for supplies and fuel at very high price.
- If the rep with those "legal factions" are bad (close to -20), consider "go legit" for a bit and do some food runs from Eos. The lower the reputation level goes, the harder it is to repair it.
- Getting factions to become "inhospitable" to you means they shut off the port from you. You can still "sneak in" if your fleet is small (3 frigate, or 1 destroyer + 2 frigate - so you see why Hound trio is so good), however since you have no access to open market, further trade is only going to make the situation worse.
- If you go into "inhospitable" range, the only way to improve is to kill some pirates
in systems where the faction has a base/planet. It's easier if the faction is posting a bounty, so if you're clueless, just follow the bounty board.
- At the same time, you don't want reputation with Pirates to drop to vengeful - hostile is fine, that's where you start anyway, they will still trade with you. However, vengeful means you are totally off-limit to their base, and there's currently no ways to repair relationship when it goes that bad - and you will be shut off from some of the most profitable routes. So when you're bounty hunting,
never pursuit, that way the reputation level should not drop below hostile (information courtesy of
Megas)
- However profitable it may be,
never trade in Umbra. That place is a trap. Among all pirate bases, this is the only non-free port. You either trade in the open market, which mean tariff cut off a portion of your profit, and you may catch the ire of Sindrian Diktat (Volturn is a good place to obtain recreational drug), or you trade in black market, and then wreck Umbra's stability... And the pirate is going to "investigate" you a few times, destroying your reps with them. Not to mention its remote location.... if you want to profit from pirate's trade disruption, there's somewhere else to do it.
- On the other hand, in all other pirate bases, always trade in black market. Besides the bigger profit, it's actually beneficial in terms of reps hit since it's less noticeable to other legal factions.
- There's a particularly evil trade route in Magec. Kanta's Den, the system's pirate base, will occasional get hit by trade disruption that ask ore for ~100 credits a piece. You can buy ore from New Maxios or Port Tse for $7 or $8 each (Or $1 from Barad, but the distance mean supply/fuel consumption is something to consider), and you get pretty ridiculous profit margin. The gross profit isn't that impressive (remember, you need to stay small, so you transport ~60 ore each run, easily doable with a single Hound), however for the duration of the event, you are essentially printing money. Even better, Independent or Tri-Tachyon (depends on where you buy your ore) may actually *like* you more!
- My Iron mode character reached lv 20, amassed ~$800k credit before I get bored, without entering a single combat. Pirates is inhospitable to me, the rest are neutral. This play style has extremely low entry cost, highly sustainable due to the low operation cost (3 Hound, 30 crew). Of course it isn't going to net you anything fancy - you need faction military market for that. But this amount of credit should allow you to do pretty much anything afterwards.
- If you want more risk, consider always carrying a few crates of recreational drugs (which you obtain somewhere cheap). You can then sell them when their price reach ~1100, or just keep them there and see how many cargo scan you can get through.
