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[Embercloud]

I'm aware that buying items from the black market could make you the target of a smuggling investigation as well as the market being destabilized, but is there a downside to buying ships from the black market?

There is of course the issue of some of the ships having d-mods but will buying ships from there affect the market or give you a faction rep loss?

[Megas]

Are investigation events still around?

The main penalty for Black Market trade is relatively minor reputation loss.  If you can absorb the hit, no problem.

Smuggling causes patrols to go all customs behavior like in 0.6x and demand scans.  This is not much of a problem if you enemies with that faction, but if they are not hostile, they are a nuisance.

In 0.7x, smuggling in free ports did not sic their custom patrols at you, and all you got from them was reputation loss.  Not sure if that changed in 0.8.

[StarGibbon]

It seems to take a pretty major transaction to even incur the minor rep loss.

[StarSchulz]

The patrols might harass you for a little bit, and if they are suspicious enough you might loose a bit of standing for doing it, but nothing too bad.

[Schwartz]

You occasionally get a small rep loss (low single digits), but it almost always feels like it's worth it. The tax is massive.

Patrols catching you in the act is much worse for standing. I also think patrols can never detect black market ships; they go only by cargo. And whether you actually have contraband or not - you might just get caught carrying too much volume around. I had it happen to me carrying little more than supplies, fuel, machinery and metals.

[CrashToDesktop]

I sold 2 millions credits with of exploration stuff from one run to Sindria (with 9 Stability, so best prices to sell at) and I lost a grand total of 1 reputation.  Of course I'll get scanned when go back, but unless I've got full cargo holds, it won't do anything (funnily enough, if I do empty my cargo holds into Sindria's Black Market, then get scanned, nothing will happen, but if I evade the first scan with Transverse Jump and come back with a full cargo hold of perfectly legal stuff, I'll lose a load of reputation).