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[camelopard]

When smuggling, the chance that they'll find "suspicious cargo" in your holds is based on the amount of goods you have relative to your max capacity, iirc. But they'll never seize dropped goods as long as they're legal. So, right before a search, you'll want to drop all of it, and pick it up again right after.

So, in my experience this has been an almost risk-free way of smuggling huge quantities of goods. Come in with the transponder on and a couple Mules(P) in your fleet. Buy whatever the hell you want. Right before they search you, dump everything except for the illegal goods. Since you have a low quantity of goods relative to your max cargo capacity (just a few drugs/illegal things), they won't find the quantity suspicious and dock rep points. Since you have shielded cargo holds, they won't find your handful of drugs. Once you pass inspection, you can pick everything up and be on your way. Since you can drop it the instant before the inspection, there's virtually no chance of pirates/scavengers picking it up.

The problem is how easy it is to bypass the suspicious cargo quantity mechanism, which is supposed to make smuggling even legal goods challenging.

There's another smuggling tactic exploiting the contraband search cooldown, useful for when you need to smuggle 2000 drugs at once. First, do any random black market trading in order to raise your suspicion. Buy a bunch of Ores and sell it right back, it doesn't matter. Let the fast picket search you, and then, because of the cooldown, you can stuff your fleet full of drugs and waltz right past them on the way out.

These two exploits in combination seem to make smuggling virtually risk-free, even with a giant fleet. It makes going dark and sneaking past patrols absolutely unnecessary unless you're trying to access a hostile market.

I'd suggest that patrols start seizing even legal goods, if they've noticed you've dropped them right before a search. And maybe additional black market activity should reset the cooldown on contraband searches.

[Kpop]

Iirc the cargo in shielded holds has priority given to it for illegal goods. As in if you're carrying 3k worth of goods with 300 shielded cargo capacity with 200 illegal goods, they will all be in the shielded cargo holds.

[bobucles]

The local patrols aren't going to take kindly to cargo being dumped all over the place. That crap needs to be strapped down properly.

[camelopard]

Iirc the cargo in shielded holds has priority given to it for illegal goods. As in if you're carrying 3k worth of goods with 300 shielded cargo capacity with 200 illegal goods, they will all be in the shielded cargo holds.

Yeah, I think you're right about that. So with those 3k legal goods and 200 illegal goods, they won't find the illegal goods -- but they might find the quantity of cargo suspicious, especially if your max cargo capacity is only around 4k. Then you get docked 5 reputation points, although they can't confiscate anything.

My main concern is that the legal goods-dumping trick circumvents that suspicious cargo balancing, and I don't think it should.

I'm playing with Nex btw, but as far as I know, Nex doesn't change the contraband search & "suspicious cargo" mechanics.

[Locklave]

A guy used to cross the Canadian border every day with an empty backpack and bike back across every night with a backpack full of sand, border patrol always checked the sand and never found anything. Moving sand across the border is legal of course.

One day many years later a member of the border guard ran into the guy moving the sand every day and asked him "Will you please finally tell me what the hell was in the sand, what were you moving across the border?" The smuggler responded "A bike.".

The patrol would be so focused on what you dumped there search would likely fail thinking something was hidden in the legal goods lol.

[sector_terror]

Iirc the cargo in shielded holds has priority given to it for illegal goods. As in if you're carrying 3k worth of goods with 300 shielded cargo capacity with 200 illegal goods, they will all be in the shielded cargo holds.

Yeah, I think you're right about that. So with those 3k legal goods and 200 illegal goods, they won't find the illegal goods -- but they might find the quantity of cargo suspicious, especially if your max cargo capacity is only around 4k. Then you get docked 5 reputation points, although they can't confiscate anything.

My main concern is that the legal goods-dumping trick circumvents that suspicious cargo balancing, and I don't think it should.

I'm playing with Nex btw, but as far as I know, Nex doesn't change the contraband search & "suspicious cargo" mechanics.

I can confirm it's not 100%. I had 2/3rds of my shielded filled(800 illegal goods out of 1500) and got 300 or so of them caught just now, got caught again later. At high levels of cargo it seems to get harder to hide. I had no issues iding when I capped at 1500 cargo, now that I have 5400, it isn't that reliable.