I would have made pirates target successful traders, but I'm not Alex.
Same. I'm still hoping to add that to ruthless sector some day, or make a new mod for it. I'm also a big fan of how Jaghaimo made black markets only accessible when transponders are turned off in Starpocalypse.
FWIW, I've got some notes in this general direction, especially vis a vis smuggling and the risks (or lack of risks) inherent in it.
One thing that could work is to have a more stringent black market activity limit.
That is, if you buy/sell things on the black market you have a hard limit in proportion to your transactions when your transponder is on. Say… 10% of total. So if you buy/sell 900k credits of goods in the regular market you can buy/sell 100k credits of goods on the black market.
This gives two methods of smuggling.
1) come in without your transponder off (no one ever knew you were there!)
2) come in with enough regular goods to make it look like you’re an honest trader.
This way it would be more reasonable to smuggle to some of the larger planets(especially missions if this transponder limitation were carried over). If you fail the suspicion trigger you get a rep loss and the goods are confiscated and you pay a fine. With no way to avoid this since your fleet gets locked in the hangar until you comply. (Edit: rather than having a “suspicion meter” that updates after you perform a trade have a “probability of being discovered” popup when you make a trade on the black market (option to cancel)
Other solutions involve
1) specific customs fleets such that other fleets do not scan cargo/hunt down ships that have transponders off unless an act of piracy has occurred (and will ignore you if you can be positively identified as not the pirate)
2) customs interactions upon entering a system/planet that allow you to declare your goods (illegal or otherwise) and have those goods be dealt with or sealed/tracked.
That is, suppose you land on a planet and you have food and illegal drugs. You go through customs and say “I took the illegal drugs from a pirate and am turning them in” (lose drugs gain rep) or “yea I have these illegal drugs but am not importing them” (keep drugs but unable to access black market due to guards stationed at your ship to make sure you leave with them and will check manifests of everything you do)
This could do well with a third class of good (regulated[or military] rather than illegal. Which would be rep limited and double tariff traded or some such, which would also make it harder for places to shortage themselves by being too effective policing their own illegal goods)
Customs interactions on planets could also allow you to bribe your way onto a planet and so develop a more… more proper interaction between pirate and the independents.