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[Megas]

Not just you, I dropped a mini-rant about that on another thread less than 12 hours ago about same issue.  That is a huge noob trap since newer players usually don't have a good grasp of flux level maintenance (ie, stamina conservation).

Though it is now, filling all mounts was not "a noob trap" in all releases.  In releases between 0.54a and 0.7.2a, when skills were strong, speed hullmods were stronger, and some exploits were not yet removed (like vent spam and fading shots with hard flux), it was possible to fill every mount and slaughter things like a god of war.  Flux management back then was not a big deal for the player who could vent spam quickly.  Beginning at 0.8, when much weaker skills, more cowardly AI, and exploit removal came, filling every mount became a bad idea (although it took a while before I adapted).

What I would like to see is something like Ordnance Expertise giving bonuses for filling in mounts.  Current Ordnance Expertise gives flux per OP spent on weapons.  Would like to see something similar, but by filling in mounts, not necessarily by spending OP.

[JUDGE! slowpersun]

What I would like to see is something like Ordnance Expertise giving bonuses for filling in mounts.  Current Ordnance Expertise gives flux per OP spent on weapons.  Would like to see something similar, but by filling in mounts, not necessarily by spending OP.

That seems a reasonable suggestion, at least on its face.

[Megas]

Something like original Ordnance Expertise 10 giving OP discounts on weapons (-1/-2/-4), although at least in skill form, that would seem like an utter mess trying to work with skill reassignment.  0 OP single missiles with old Missile Specialization 10 were fun.

[Thaago]

Hmm, I don't really think leaving mounts empty is a new player trap. While some of the optimal loadouts for some of the ships leave weapon mounts empty, there are good loadouts for every ship that use every mount. Its much more of a noob trap to not have good dissipation (*) or have a range booster installed on cruisers and caps, but thats part of learning the game.

* I was going to say maxed vents, except that there are enough ways to boost dissipation now that this is no longer required for a small but non-negligeable number of ships! And then there are others where you want maxed vents and the hullmod

[isara]

Under no circumstance should a game ruin players' sense of progression, it's vital

Ridiculous, any arbitrary player's sense of progression is relative.  What you see as progress I see as boring... and vice versa.

You can stop playing that it's relative/subjective card, since it was me who explicitly asked you to justify how smuggling is balanced in a quantitative case, in the first place.

so instead of subjectively expressing our feelings, how about we get just a little bit more quantitative, can you explain to me how this is balanced:
on average each mercantile voyage takes me about 5 minutes, making approx 250k income, minus 20k base cost that's 230k profit/run, 46k/min, I'm not talking about the best case, I made 500k once, admittedly it's kinda boring if you do it constantly
at the same time, a bounty gives a 50~100k reward while takes on average 10 min to finish, because they tend to scatter in the outer reach of the core world,
since there's combat involved the base cost oftentimes goes beyond 50k, giving me 0~50k profit, 25k/run on average, 2.5k/min, good thing is you do get to play a lot of combat.
now let's talk about surveys, those are normally in the deepest space, more than twice the distance of a bounty run, the reward is generally around 90k, minus the base cost of 80k, you get about 10k profit/run, let's assume it also takes 10min to finish, that's 1k/min

And you couldn't, you bit around the bush, in fact it's you who's been talking about personal feelings lol.
So tell me, how's allowing a player able to fast track to late-game fleet in just 2 hours not exploits? and how is it not ruining progression?

[JUDGE! slowpersun]

Under no circumstance should a game ruin players' sense of progression, it's vital

Ridiculous, any arbitrary player's sense of progression is relative.  What you see as progress I see as boring... and vice versa.

You can stop playing that it's relative/subjective card, since it was me who explicitly asked you to justify how smuggling is balanced in a quantitative case, in the first place.

so instead of subjectively expressing our feelings, how about we get just a little bit more quantitative, can you explain to me how this is balanced:
on average each mercantile voyage takes me about 5 minutes, making approx 250k income, minus 20k base cost that's 230k profit/run, 46k/min, I'm not talking about the best case, I made 500k once, admittedly it's kinda boring if you do it constantly
at the same time, a bounty gives a 50~100k reward while takes on average 10 min to finish, because they tend to scatter in the outer reach of the core world,
since there's combat involved the base cost oftentimes goes beyond 50k, giving me 0~50k profit, 25k/run on average, 2.5k/min, good thing is you do get to play a lot of combat.
now let's talk about surveys, those are normally in the deepest space, more than twice the distance of a bounty run, the reward is generally around 90k, minus the base cost of 80k, you get about 10k profit/run, let's assume it also takes 10min to finish, that's 1k/min

And you couldn't, you bit around the bush, in fact it's you who's been talking about personal feelings lol.
So tell me, how's allowing a player able to fast track to late-game fleet in just 2 hours not exploits? and how is it not ruining progression?

And I told you it was deliberately unbalanced in order to "encourage" player to smuggle.  I dunno, perhaps we will continue to agree/disagree until Alex locks this thread.  But I gotta say, no offense, you kinda appearing to be deliberately obtuse...

As for ruining progression, congrats, you found an edge case and exploited it (for I'm sure a very dull few hours trading back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, BACK AND FORTH).  But tell me, have you found the Galatian Academy yet...?

[isara]

Under no circumstance should a game ruin players' sense of progression, it's vital

Ridiculous, any arbitrary player's sense of progression is relative.  What you see as progress I see as boring... and vice versa.

You can stop playing that it's relative/subjective card, since it was me who explicitly asked you to justify how smuggling is balanced in a quantitative case, in the first place.

so instead of subjectively expressing our feelings, how about we get just a little bit more quantitative, can you explain to me how this is balanced:
on average each mercantile voyage takes me about 5 minutes, making approx 250k income, minus 20k base cost that's 230k profit/run, 46k/min, I'm not talking about the best case, I made 500k once, admittedly it's kinda boring if you do it constantly
at the same time, a bounty gives a 50~100k reward while takes on average 10 min to finish, because they tend to scatter in the outer reach of the core world,
since there's combat involved the base cost oftentimes goes beyond 50k, giving me 0~50k profit, 25k/run on average, 2.5k/min, good thing is you do get to play a lot of combat.
now let's talk about surveys, those are normally in the deepest space, more than twice the distance of a bounty run, the reward is generally around 90k, minus the base cost of 80k, you get about 10k profit/run, let's assume it also takes 10min to finish, that's 1k/min

And you couldn't, you bit around the bush, in fact it's you who's been talking about personal feelings lol.
So tell me, how's allowing a player able to fast track to late-game fleet in just 2 hours not exploits? and how is it not ruining progression?

And I told you it was deliberately unbalanced in order to "encourage" player to smuggle.  I dunno, perhaps we will continue to agree/disagree until Alex locks this thread.  But I gotta say, no offense, you kinda appearing to be deliberately obtuse...

As for ruining progression, congrats, you found an edge case and exploited it (for I'm sure a very dull few hours trading back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, BACK AND FORTH).  But tell me, have you found the Galatian Academy yet...?

I've stated many times before in this thread, it's all about the game, yet there's always someone who gets personal immediately when others disagree.
It doesn't bother me that someone talks as if he's a guru, that's if he can get his logic straight, yet he couldn't explain an obvious counterexample.

[JUDGE! slowpersun]

I've stated many times before in this thread, it's all about the game, yet there's always someone who gets personal immediately when others disagree.
It doesn't bother me if someone acts like a guru if he can get his logic straight, yet he couldn't explain an obvious counterexample.

A simple no would have sufficed.  And Galatian Academy is part of game.  As for why I

bit around the bush

, well, it was in an attempt to not ruin the game further for you.  Same reason why they are generally referred to as [REDACTED] and not Remnant.  Tool.  But since you have consummately avoided actually answering anything, I have come to the conclusions that you are just trolling at this point...

[isara]

I've stated many times before in this thread, it's all about the game, yet there's always someone who gets personal immediately when others disagree.
It doesn't bother me if someone acts like a guru if he can get his logic straight, yet he couldn't explain an obvious counterexample.

A simple no would have sufficed.  And Galatian Academy is part of game.  As for why I

bit around the bush

, well, it was in an attempt to not ruin the game further for you.  Same reason why they are generally referred to as [REDACTED] and not Remnant.  Tool.  But since you have consummately avoided actually answering anything, I have come to the conclusions that you are just trolling at this point...

I'm just glad the thread has brought attention to the smuggling exploits, and many people shared their opinions, I pretty much gathered enough information now.
Oh lawd...I couldn't care less about you...it's about the game

[isara]

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.

definitely, smuggling needs to generate more heat.
I agree with making smuggling very high reward, compared to blue-collar bounty hunting/surveying, but it needs to be balanced by high risk, currently in the game, there's almost no real risk of smuggling to most colonies. I'm not quite sure what's the solution though, I feel like I'm just too early into the game.

[JUDGE! slowpersun]

I'm just glad the thread has brought attention to the smuggling exploits, and many people shared their opinions, I pretty much gathered enough information now.
Oh lawd...I couldn't care less about you...it's about the game

They just an edge case in game you exploited, for which shortages are generally temporary EXCEPT basically Chalcedeon (and Epiphany to a lesser degree, but that's kinda the nature of luddic path).  Since you keep failing to understand that, I have to assume you are being obtuse.  Hence trolling.  After all, if you didn't care about me, why keep prodding me about being the "guru?"  And clearly you care, since you won't shut up about it...

[Thaago]

Well there HAD been some decent discussion going on in this thread, but its devolved into bickering. I'm locking this before it turns nastier.