Shaalira D'arc
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Posted - 2010.04.11 23:44:00 -
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Smuggling
What would entice a pod pilot to leave her ship? Why would a station-dweller hire an expensive ship captain over the local help? One answer: the interstellar black market.
Capsuleers can easily manipulate their cargo using ship-board interfaces. However, this requires being in their pod and being connected onto the net, giving rise to the possibility of onboard cargo being detected by Customs agents. To circumvent this, some capsuleers modify their ships with hidden compartments, and use the 'offline' time in a station to physically go down into those compartments and move goods to shady buyers and sellers deep in the alleyways of heavily populated stations.
Some elements of this plan can include:
Unsanctioned Hackshop
These uncertified specialists can make subtle and virtually undetectable modifications to a standard ship layout, creating null spaces and hidden chambers shielded from scanners. For a price, they will make smuggling compartments to your ship. Some drawbacks may include slight performance reductions, reduced normal cargo space, or increased costs to repair.
There may be other, performance-enhancing modifications they can make on your ship that carry technical and legal risks that most sane pilots would find unacceptable...
Unsanctioned hackshops would do their best to stay hidden, and the pod pilot may have to do certain jobs or bribe the right people to find their location.
Hot Goods Dealer
These are the middlemen that move the illegal goods on and off station to the planets below. Pod pilots can come to them to place orders or pawn off illegal goods. Pod pilots may even be interested in some of those goods for personal use.
To reflect the diverse nature of the Eve universe, the local black market goods will differ depending on the station. Illicit trade routes pass through borders, picking up what is legal in one empire and selling the locally-proscribed goods in another. Or vice versa. Some general ideas for black market goods:
Gallente ----> Holoreels, Audio Chips, VR Programs, and other 'Immoral' artifacts of Federation Culture ----> Amarr
Amarr -----> Vitoc Drug and Antidote, an addiction even former slaves harbor but the Republic abhors ----> Minmatar
Minmatar -----> Pirated Goods mimicking expensive Megacorp products -----> Caldari
Caldari -----> Hi-Tech Megacorp Products banned in the Federation due to Wartime Relations -----> Gallente
Nullsec / Lowsec -----> Drugs and Boosters -----> Empire Space
Empire Space -----> Military-Grade Personal Weaponry ----> Nullsec / Lowsec
Tyrranis Tie-in
Unscrupulus planetary warlords may be able to manufacture some of these illegal trade goods on planet. They then smuggle them to the right station and place 'sell orders' physically with the middlemen.
Cops and Robbers
Other pod pilots may pick up specialized ship scanners and/or new skills that will let them scan smuggler compartments on modified ships and salvage smugged goods from a modified ship's wreck.
In Empire space, scanning a ship and detecting smuggled goods that are illegal in that system grants the scanning ship kill rights against the scanned ship.
FW Militia members can get a minor loyalty point and/or isk reward if they destroy a ship carrying smuggled goods that their empire disapproves of. This reward should be balanced (dynamically?) against the cost of production or purchase of the smuggled good.
NPC Customs ships will of course react if the smuggler is careless enough to get within scanning distance of one, to the point of activating gate guns and denying the smuggler warp rights with the gate. This may make it worthwhile to warp to a safe distance from the gate and chart a smart course in. Of course, such behavior might attract the attention of nearby, alert pod pilots.
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