There ARE real punishments for that though.
OK so if you go in with your transponder on and you get scanned you can simply let them scan you and since you have no illegal goods (as you just sold them all on the black market) you take a minor rep hit and leave. This is fine, because this rep hit will build up unless you're doing other things in the game that increase your reputation. You cannot just be a full time smuggler smuggling illegal goods and buying on the black market. You must go do other things.
This means that the income you get from said smuggling is not a full time income. In order for it to be full time income you must invest into the smuggling game to avoid rep hits. And this is fine and good. You go and do a pirate base. And then come back and sell the loot. You take a rep hit and come out slightly in the negative (its like +5/mission and -6 per scan*)
If you have an AI core you have three options. One you can allow the scan and hope they don't find it. This is a huge potential loss as AI cores are very valuable. The second option is you can spend a story point to disengage. Which costs a story point which is a significant cost. And the third option is to fight the fleet and go instantly hostile with that faction. Not "-13" but "-whatever it takes to get you to -50." Which has significant downsides in that they will attack you whenever you're around with your transponder on and will refuse your docking requests unless you manage to make it into the planet without having to attack a fleet. Which means you must engage in the actual smuggling game and use the smuggling skills and tactics.
If you don't have your transponder on then you're playing the smuggling game (and its a pretty hefty penalty for getting caught too -3 for the immediate interaction, -3 for refusing to turn your transponder on, -? for the combat) and of course since you were caught and engaged in combat you're no longer able to use that ports in that system for a month or so.
*-3 for the scan and -3 for the black market activity.
Well, obviously if i stated that you lose -13(which i was wrong, if you lose only -3 for being caught and for refusing scan it would be -11) for a combat i was talking about having your transponder off, why on earth would you even have it on while black market trading anyway? I'm guessing theres a benefit for doing so that i'm not aware of? I do play with starpocalypse which bars entrace to the black market unless you have your transponder turned off.
And thats the thing, i play with difficulty mods that make it so you have tarrifs on the black market, you still gain suspicion even if your transponder is turned off, and i also manually lowered the value of drugs and heavy armaments, and STILL i find that i have to play with the ''no trading allowed'' self rule because the downsides for smuggling are non existant, you just get two colossus, put mil systems and either expanded cargo holds/advanced drive field depending on your preference and done, you are never getting caught by a patrol so long as your head is attached to your neck and you know how to press 2, now the gameplay just becomes go from point a to point b until you have enough money to buy the entire sector, which by the way, takes no time at all even with all the bs i added to make it harder to do so.
And the crazy thing is that's not even like a cheesy strat or anything, its just using the game mechanics normally. This stuff exists in other games too but its always some insane cheesy thing like making an ethnostate of villagers in minecraft so you get the enchancements you want or glitching to make your character invincible in terraria while standing above a pool of lava to farm items, and those two cheeses still have more gameplay involved than going from point a to point b over and over with genuinely 0 danger unless you mess up massively.
Of course thats just two examples but i'm sure there's more, i just don't play simulator games much. Or maybe there isn't? I have seen some complaints in here that i just can't wrap my head around at all, but it could be that this whole time i'm the dunce and i'm just expecting something that i shouldn't be. Is rimworld dwarf fortress kenshi and other games in this sort also like this where you can just skip from the early game to what should be the peak of power in your playthrough with very little effort when you know the ins and outs of what to do?