Dodging Customs

[GrandpaTrout]

The easier we make wingmen control and handling the easier it is to get them to fly past pirates and customs without paying tolls. This post is to capture a discussion of the topic.

There are a few easy methods to avoid tolls. One is to just race past them. Racing past is very easy when leaving an lpoint. NPC’s cannot chase past our new routes. It is also easy to just leave the wingmen outside the cost calculation distance and call them in after the toll has finished the dialog.

I can think of a whole slew of solutions that don’t involve making the control of wingmen harder.

Have customs and pirates patrolling stations. While a player can dodge an lpoint, they must load/unload at a station.

Change the toll code to trigger on the arrival of a ship with pods, not the arrival of the player.

Give the player a minus reputation penalty for blowing past a toll. This would work well for pirates, because they tend to break bones for messing with them.

For customs, we could add a “customs paid” marker to each cargo pod. If a cargo pod does not have the marker, it cannot be sold as legal cargo. Each government charges customs on each pod. Once paid, you can sell a pod anywhere in that governments area. If you move to another governments area, you must pay customs again (just like real life). Systems without governments would not charge customs.

A smuggler is a trader running goods around customs to fences. Getting caught by a police patrol with smuggled cargo (or stolen cargo) would start a fight.

Another option is to have the pirates/customs shake down the wingmen directly. They give a halt order to the wingmen, not the player. Legal wingmen will follow police halt orders (making fleeing impossible). Hired criminals will run for it,if the player orders them to flee. This would be coded as the wingman halting near the toll and prompting the player with a request of what they should do “Pay? Run?”

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