They scan you for illegal cargo (cardamine and artifacts), if they find any they'll ask you to drop it (from what I can tell they'll leave you alone if you do). I don't worry about it tho, I arrive at a planet from the poles and then head towards the docking ring so that I'm not even near the police till the last minute. If they do catch you, i would try and dock before they open fire. If they do open fire as you go in, either buy a new ship on the planet to escape or (if you want to be boring) save the game and reload, they'll cease to be there waiting for you.
That saved my butt once, I was in a dromedary near Tripoli shipyard when a corsair in a Titan told me to drop my loot of 275 gold ("hell no", so I docked with Tripoli just as i came under fire. I saved, sold my goods and went out to face the music.
1 badly-equipped dromedary vs. 20 titans and Tripoli shipyard doesn't last long
But when I reloaded everything was hunky-dory!!

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Eat a third and drink a third and leave the remaining third of your stomach empty. Then, when you get angry, there will be sufficient room for your rage.

In my experience it doesn't matter if they catch you or not. Unless you are in a really weak ship, you can simply cancel the drop and keep going. Often they don't react quick enough to even start anything, just dock with Trade Lane or Base/Planet, Sell your stuff.

I was part of a group the other night and we all were smuggling Artifacts from Omicron-->Manhattan. Everyone but myself used Jumpholes and smuggling routes, I used Tradelanes. I reached Manhattan first. On the way the Police/Navy "caught" me 3 times, I just ignored them and nothing happened. Kinda takes the adventure out of it.

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Bar patron: "You some kind of Nooby?"
Trent: "Uuuh, Huuuh"

Just run...who cares?

By the time they respond you should had already dock to a station or trade lane.

Besides, if they shoot you.....shoot them back..

One thing about freelancer is that they never learned not to attack a high killl rating pilot. I must have killed a few hundreds Bounty Hunter and they still kept coming..

just dont hit the drop cargo or cancel button until your 30k away...that always works for me....and i made 2mil...

Sure i look funny....and please dont play leapfrog with my unicorn. It hurts!

i just make a short run from Yanagi Depot (sigma 13) to planet New Berlin ( New Berlin) thru New Berlin jump hole and got 600+ kredit per cargo..

without detected..

hehehehe..

I dont think being caught smuggling has any effect on your rep. Tho it would make sense if it did. I'm basing this on the fact that when i was exploring (and thus neutral with most of the edgeworld factions) i kept getting told to drop my cargo (surely the same as the police telling you to drop) and running away as the above posts suggest and it never affected my rep with any of them.

I tried selling Cardamine today. Here's what I did. I bought cardamine at Cali Base and set a course for Planet Manhattan (the game told me they were buying it at the best price). I had 39 waypoints to go through and two encounters or so with the Police. Police in Kusari hunted me but I managed to escape by docking with a Trade Lane (they were hostile to me according to my rep stats). On the other hand, Police in New York just scanned me and asked me to drop my cargo or else they would open fire but did nothing. They did not fire at me (I am friendly to neutral with them, according to the rep stat). I will try selling cardamine again and see if Police in New York starts hating me and then come to post back tomorrow.

On the other hand, I know that when you are neutral to friendly with some faction, they usually ask you to drop whatever cargo you have but don't open fire if you don't. Again, I will post back and tell you if Police became hostile to me just because I happened to make a living out of selling drugs

I was scanned at LD-14 (or what) with Cardamine on board and indeed I did not drop it, but after a slight skirmish went to tradelane to nearest station. It was BMM and local police who fought me and my rep went down a bit due to this incident (but still stayed in high green). What was worse, when I entered the LD-14 restricted space again I was immediately under heavy fire and could not dock. I did not want to give up on LD-14 so I reloaded .

Whenever I smuggle cardamine ,i take the 'back route' using only jumpholes and not using tradelanes. It may be easier to just take the trdelanes (and jumpholes) but it just doesn't feel right to do so. After all, when you smuggle cardamine, you're supposed to smuggle cardamine.

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that yanagi depot to new berlin is easily the best trade route in single play... the jump hole is disabled multi (for good reason) but like you can see the jump hole to yanagi from a trade lane, and the new berlin jumphole is 5k from yanagi... so ya, its pretty much the only run i do after i beat the single campaign, 3 million in like an hour tops...

OK, here's the skinny:

Selling cardamine will not affect your rep, even if you DO get caught with it. The cops will attack you, but leave them alone. What DOES affect your rep is if you FIRE at the cops once they start shooting. JUST RUN AWAY. If you attack the cops, docking rings have a tendency to go hostile. Along with the rest of the systems. Once you get 3 or 4 traderings away, AND you didn't attack cops, all is forgiven, and no rep damage.

Just say: "NO"


AKA: