Oolite Bulletins

i admit it: im a pirate. i kill traders and scoop their cargo.

but how clean and honest are these traders? sure they fly machinery and
food from worlds that got it to worlds that need it. and i always used to
scop up the odd crate of weed. but lately more and more of their cargo
turns out to contain dope, fugitives, strange life forms, explosives, guns,
and stuff thats so weird i cant categorize it. even around rich and well
organized worlds.
it seems to be a trend: smuggling is hot among clean traders.

not that i mind of course, as long as i get a good price for it..
(amazing how theres always someone willing to pay 30 or 40 cr. for a
barrel of 'weird stuff'..)

I've also noticed the habit of otherwise honest traders to dabble in say, lucrative niche market items... which really annoys me. Seeing a Hamadryad sitting in my sights with a clean legal rating while I immediately pick up a fugitve rating the moment I leave the station with something suss doesn't seem fair... what's their secret?

It's a sad state of affairs when out and out piracy is safer than smuggling.

Secret = know a good fence.

a rockhermit will do as a start.
Only amateur smugglers dock at a coriolis
...unless they have 'secret compartments' fitted into the cargobaywalls.

edit: that is if a rating of offender does no agree with you, I can never resist the enormously bigger reward for shipping a load full of 'exotics' to a amphibian planet.

p.s. Having a resident Trumble(tm) saves you from a lot of those 'unfortunate scoopings', as the evidence will be eaten before you get a chance to investigete for yourself. (exept for firearms)

(I still have nightmares from the horrible sounds I had to endure when shipping slaves to Ineni 4b, at the time I had one solitary trumble, it was a very sweet green one with the cutest bulging eyes....but the horror.
I never had the nerve to check in the hold, but the cleaning guys told me they had to use flamers to contain the trumbles and apperently my hold of 'second hand textiles' was ruined. I did not correct them thaqt my cargo manifest stated 'humanoid labour'.)

ONe word for ya, A_H... Eeww.

Some ships have licences to carry proscribed goods like firearms or narcotics.

Perhaps I should, include such a licence (EQ_NARCOTICS_LICENCE) when you are hauling such a load from the carrier market. It could come in handy until it expires (at the end of the contract).

Generally, a good improvement would be to make the right sort of cargo appear when a trader is destroyed. I often find traders going towards an Agricultural planet are carrying food and liquors, which would seem unprofitable.

winston wrote:

Generally, a good improvement would be to make the right sort of cargo appear when a trader is destroyed. I often find traders going towards an Agricultural planet are carrying food and liquors, which would seem unprofitable.

Generally speaking they do:-

Outgoing traders generated by the game carry goods that are plentiful in the originating system.

Incoming traders generated by the game carry goods that are scarce in the destination system.

The trick here is that cargos are often not generated until the trader needs to shed them (by dying or 'bleeding'), to keep the object count down (possibly hundreds of containers on an Anaconda - it would be a problem!).

One thing I should be doing but aren't is switch the flag that determines the cargo generated from 'plentiful' to 'scarce' when a trader goes through a wormhole. **goes to fix** ... ** FIXED **

Arexack_Heretic wrote:

p.s. Having a resident Trumble(tm) saves you from a lot of those
'unfortunate scoopings', as the evidence will be eaten before you get a
chance to investigete for yourself. (exept for firearms)

they are not unfortunate scoopings. scooping up illegal stuff and then
selling it at a station doesnt seem to hurt your status. only leaving a
station with illegal stuff on board does. (and killing vipers in the S zone
of course...)

i buy the explanation that some traders have a license to move medicine,
prisoners and weapons tho. they might then even be escorted by vipers.

Yes, you are right about that....is that true to the original?

Why is this?
It would make much more sense to have vipers in close proximity scan your cargo, then adjust your rating accordingly.
Being able to buy a cargo from the official port implies to me, that locally the goods are not illegal. Why bust me for buying it? would it not make more sense to controll the import of goods rather than the export?

Also a thing that nags me: When you are an offender Vipers randomly deposit fines on your ass(and attack), even when not doing anything illegal at the time.

Arexack_Heretic wrote:

Also a thing that nags me: When you are an offender Vipers randomly deposit fines on your ass(and attack), even when not doing anything illegal at the time.

True to life?

Arexack_Heretic wrote:

Yes, you are right about that....is that true to the original?

It is.

Arexack_Heretic wrote:

Why is this?

Flying around with illegal stuff on board can just happen to you, by scooping.
Leaving a station with it is always your own choice.

Arexack_Heretic wrote:

Also a thing that nags me: When you are an offender Vipers randomly deposit fines on your ass(and attack), even when not doing anything illegal at the time.

Piracy is so lucrative. Understandably the police want a cut.

scooping up illegal stuff... doesnt seem to hurt your status. only leaving a station with illegal stuff on board does.

Is it a proportion thing? I seem to recall from my Python trading days that buying 57 tons of narcs and 58 tons of legal stuff didn't seem to have any effect but if I went over 50% I turned Fugitive right away.

Dilbert wrote:

Is it a proportion thing? I seem to recall from my Python trading days that buying 57 tons of narcs and 58 tons of legal stuff didn't seem to have any effect but if I went over 50% I turned Fugitive right away.

Hmm, I've never tried that. Usually if I find Narcs at a ridiculously cheap price (say under 10C/ton) I buy the lot, which ends up taking up 90% of my Josher's cargo capacity. I don't bother with slaves or guns, the markup isn't sufficient to justify the grief.

35 tonnes is sufficient to become fugitive in one go in a Cobra mk3.

if I find Narcs at a ridiculously cheap price (say under 10C/ton) I buy the lot

Hey I wasn't being coy! It was all the station had.

Which makes me wonder, if you were to ever get into big-time trading, what would be the point of an Anaconda with a 750 ton cargo capacity? The most you can usually get of anything is 50-70 tons...