certain items are considered Contraband, namely alien artifacts, and Cardamine. if you have any of either of these in your cargo hold when you are scanned by the police or navy, they will order you to drop it. if you do so, you will suffer a small drop in reputation with the law forces, but won't have to fight. if you fail to jettison, or jettison and then reclaim or destroy the cargo, then they will turn hostile and fight you.

you can avoid cargo scans by staying away from navy and police patrol routes. Avoid trade lanes and go cross-country. If I'm smuggling contraband, I tend to sneak around the edges of a system, or go "over the top". It takes ages to go anywhere, but you are almost certain not to be caught, and if you are, you can kill the patrol that uncovered you without having the whole system turn hostile. you might also consider using gas clouds and asteroid fields with a scanner damping effect (such as the Badlands in New York)

the alternative is to power straight through and damn the pigs. use the trade lanes to your advantage. you have a pretty huge grace period between the cops scanning you, and them turning hostile, so use that time to get to the nearest trade lane and get the hell out of range before they attack you. its risky, but faster.

at the start of the game, the only smuggling you can perform is to carry Cardamine from the various outlaw bases in liberty to Manhattan. seeing as the only sourec of Cardamine in Liberty is the Rogues, you need to be friendly, or at least neutral with the Liberty Rogues in order to get to Buffalo Base, in the Badlands.

later on, you can pick up Artifacts and Cardamine from further afield in the border worlds for cheaper, but of course, the distance you have to travel to make any kind of a respectable profit will make it harder to carry your wares undetected.

hope that helps, dude.

I just ran like aitch when challenged by the navy or cops. Didn't notice that it had any effect on my reputation. Did you?

Another way to possibly get in trouble fairly early in the game is wreck hunting. Some of those wrecks have illegal cargoes. Only a fool would abandon the cargo when challenged, when they can possibly be enough to buy you a better ship.









Jose Chavez: "Trent! It's good to see my kind of scum."

There is a full guide to piracy on the mercenary navy website. www.mercenarynavy.tk

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here's a tip:
go ahead and use regular travel routes, go where you're going. when anyone announces a scan, dump the contraband before the guy finishes talking. if you're only hauling one kind of item, this works perfectly with a little practice.
anyway, he'll find nothing, and you'll be free to beam the stuff back once he's done.
i do this all the time, mostly on mp, and it works great.

"You are what you do when it counts."
-The Masao

I do Cardamine Malta to New Tokyo. Bit hard but I can do it. Do Artifacts form Crete to Rochester. second higest paying place in Sirius for Artifacts. Or Trade Lane Parts Pueblo ro Trenton to Tau-32 Gate Contruction.

If I remember right, Artifacts aren't contraband in Kusari. If you are caught, it's easy enough to just hit the cruise engines and never look back .

I use all regular routes, just use your Cruise between Tradelanes, have the next Tradelane targeted, if you get caught just ignore the Drop window until you reach the next Tradelane, Dock and you're homefree. Smuggling is too easy.

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

Actually in NY Sys. can also get Card at Junkers base if friendly w/them.
If you will hit Lane or Cruise w/o removing the scrren that pops up you will be out of range by the time it goes away automatically. This has not failed me as I do have a nice short Artifact run that turns a fair profit.

It is hard to soar with eagles when you fly with turkeys.