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[Andy H.K.]

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.

[Aeson]

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)

Corvus is about 5.7 lightyears from Magec. It's something to consider if you're thinking about making the run, as it will likely take you about 3 days in hyperspace and cost you at least 240 credits worth of fuel (I don't think I've ever seen fuel costs drop below about 40 credits per unit, and it's only around that cost that the fuel costs are down around 240 credits per Hound) for each leg of the trip if using a single Hound. If you're only carrying 60 cargo units of ore, then buying at Barad for 1 credit per unit and selling at Kanta's Den for 100 credits per unit will only net you 540 credits more per load than buying somewhere in system at 10 credits and selling at Kanta's Den for 100 credits, and that difference becomes smaller if some in-system supplier sells ore more cheaply (which is normal; if one of the in-system markets has ore for 5 credits per unit, the difference is only 240 credits per load of 60 ore, and that would put the Barad-Kanta's Den trade route out of the question, as the difference only covers the fuel costs for a one-way trip and only if the fuel prices are very low). Round-trip fuel costs for the Barad-Kanta's Den route will eat up most of that difference even at 40 credits per unit of fuel, and the supply costs will eat most of the rest.

Overall, I suspect that the Barad-Kanta's Den trade route just isn't worthwhile unless it's on your way. I don't really know how long it takes to get from Kanta's Den to Port Tse, New Maxios, or Tibicena (especially since they are not separated by a constant distance), but I'm sure you can probably make at least two or three runs from any of those worlds in the time it takes you to make a single run from Barad; even if you can only make one and a half runs in the time it takes to make a single run from Barad, it still puts the Barad route way behind, as three in-system runs where you sell 60 ore for 90 credits more than you purchased it for will net you 4320 credits more than two runs where you sell 60 ore for 99 credits more than you bought it for, even before you account for the fuel and supply costs. If the ore prices at Kanta's Den are less than 100 credits per unit, the Barad route gets less attractive; if ore prices are higher than 100 credits per unit, the Barad route might be more attractive, but because the trip takes more time you run a greater risk of losing the event prices, and I don't know that the marginally greater profit before operating costs is really worth it.

[Andy H.K.]

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)

Corvus is about 5.7 lightyears from Magec. It's something to consider if you're thinking about making the run, as it will likely take you about 3 days in hyperspace and cost you at least 240 credits worth of fuel (I don't think I've ever seen fuel costs drop below about 40 credits per unit, and it's only around that cost that the fuel costs are down around 240 credits per Hound) for each leg of the trip if using a single Hound. If you're only carrying 60 cargo units of ore, then buying at Barad for 1 credit per unit and selling at Kanta's Den for 100 credits per unit will only net you 540 credits more per load than buying somewhere in system at 10 credits and selling at Kanta's Den for 100 credits, and that difference becomes smaller if some in-system supplier sells ore more cheaply (which is normal; if one of the in-system markets has ore for 5 credits per unit, the difference is only 240 credits per load of 60 ore, and that would put the Barad-Kanta's Den trade route out of the question, as the difference only covers the fuel costs for a one-way trip and only if the fuel prices are very low). Round-trip fuel costs for the Barad-Kanta's Den route will eat up most of that difference even at 40 credits per unit of fuel, and the supply costs will eat most of the rest.

Overall, I suspect that the Barad-Kanta's Den trade route just isn't worthwhile unless it's on your way. I don't really know how long it takes to get from Kanta's Den to Port Tse, New Maxios, or Tibicena (especially since they are not separated by a constant distance), but I'm sure you can probably make at least two or three runs from any of those worlds in the time it takes you to make a single run from Barad; even if you can only make one and a half runs in the time it takes to make a single run from Barad, it still puts the Barad route way behind, as three in-system runs where you sell 60 ore for 90 credits more than you purchased it for will net you 4320 credits more than two runs where you sell 60 ore for 99 credits more than you bought it for, even before you account for the fuel and supply costs. If the ore prices at Kanta's Den are less than 100 credits per unit, the Barad route gets less attractive; if ore prices are higher than 100 credits per unit, the Barad route might be more attractive, but because the trip takes more time you run a greater risk of losing the event prices, and I don't know that the marginally greater profit before operating costs is really worth it.

In an ideal case scenario, you would be making round trips between Barad (buy ore) and Abandoned Station (deposit ore) when ore price is low - Actually I think you can afford to use a larger fleet to do so since even with 500 ore, it costs only 500 credits, not exactly big enough amount to catch attention (I believe trade volume in credits transacted is more important then the amount of commodity). After you clear out Barad of any ore, you transport everything with big freighters to Magec (legal goods here so you can even use Atlas). When you reach Magec you store your freighters and ore in a rented storage of your choice, and start doing round trips between your storage world and Kanta's Dens when the trade disruption event hit.

Of course, you also need to take the operating cost of the freighter fleet into account (supplies, fuels, possible tolls etc.). Unless you really have a lot of goods, this kind of trade is not worth it. Even then, in this case the in-system trade routes are good enough.

The reason I suggest single Hound round trip is for discretion reason - given 600 ores, it is less noticeable to other factions if you sell it 50 pieces in 12 trips than selling them all at once in 1 trips. Time is an important diluting factor to mitigate the negative impact on reputation - in Magec you have both Independent and Tri-Tachyon to deal with.

Sometimes you get better price in Tibicena IIRC, however since it's located on outer ring I usually just go to New Maxios or Port Tse since they're usually closer to Kanta's Den.

[Steven Shi]

Personally I can't tell the difference between trader and smuggler game mechanic wise. Like the OP said, it's really easy to get bored because, well, there's not much to do but stockpile and wait for X to be on shortage.

It'll be a while before everything else reach the polish of the tactical battles.

[Aeson]

In an ideal case scenario, you would be making round trips between Barad (buy ore) and Abandoned Station (deposit ore) when ore price is low - Actually I think you can afford to use a larger fleet to do so since even with 500 ore, it costs only 500 credits, not exactly big enough amount to catch attention (I believe trade volume in credits transacted is more important then the amount of commodity). After you clear out Barad of any ore, you transport everything with big freighters to Magec (legal goods here so you can even use Atlas). When you reach Magec you store your freighters and ore in a rented storage of your choice, and start doing round trips between your storage world and Kanta's Dens when the trade disruption event hit.

If you can manage the bulk freight and set up a stockpile of ore prior to any events at Kanta's Den, then yes, the Barad-Kanta's Den route can be made more worthwhile. However, even using Atlases, the fuel costs are going to be fairly high, as an Atlas will consume about 57 fuel going in each direction. If the nominal profit for Barad ore at Kanta's Den is 99 credits per unit and the nominal profit for in-system ore is 90 credits per unit, each Atlas load from Barad is worth about 18,000 credits more than an equivalent amount from inside of Magec, but at least 2,300 credits of this has to be put against the one-way fuel costs, and you can double that amount if you require each Atlas to make a round trip, and that's for fuel prices down around 40 credits per unit. Higher fuel costs and higher nominal profit per unit of ore purchased in-system can fairly quickly degrade the advantage the Barad route carries, though.

Of course, you also need to take the operating cost of the freighter fleet into account (supplies, fuels, possible tolls etc.). Unless you really have a lot of goods, this kind of trade is not worth it. Even then, in this case the in-system trade routes are good enough.

Personally, I feel that supply costs are more or less not worth worrying about. Atlases cost no more than 0.5 supplies per day if operating at minimum crew levels, and are not going to take much longer than about 10 days going each way. That's roughly 5 supplies consumed per Atlas each way, as compared to about 60 fuel consumed per Atlas each way, and in my experience supplies are normally cheaper than fuel. It's not likely to add more than about 10% to the operating costs, whereas a toll could easily add more than 100%.

[Megas]

- 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.

Eos has no pirate base.  The only way to raise relations with the Ludds after they become Inhospitable is either kill bounty fleets posted by Luddic Church and/or in Eos, or pay tolls.

When relations go to -31 due to smuggling conviction, the fastest way to raise it to -25 (Suspicious) is to fight one bounty fleet posted by the Luddic Church.  Then, if relation boost is not enough (i.e., at -26), pay a toll once for +1 and you should be at -25.