Historically speaking, “contraband” doesn’t necessarily mean strictly illegal items (e.g., drugs). In times of war or embargo, it can also mean “goods from restricted territories.” Or in the case of oppressive tax regimes, “bootleg, untaxed goods.”
The movie “Smokey and the Bandit” (1977) was all about two truckers moving beer across state lines from Texarkana to Atlanta. The beer itself was legal in both places, yet they were still smuggling contraband by moving it illegally.
Great picture. Gotta watch that again.
My point still stands – there are no such items in EVE.
I think you missed some of the tone of those messages.
As an onlooker, your interaction went like this:
I agree with you that it doesn’t make sense for you to be angry for losing your Leopard. I just also don’t see why your post was angry in point 3, which is what I think is what caused your interaction with James to go that direction.
Hope this helps a bit?
My point is, if the empires were HS islands, then there’d be a sort of de facto embargo between empires. Hence, I think the “smuggler” label would apply to those individuals moving goods across the LS boundaries from one empire to another.
Lowsec isn’t embargoed space or anything like that, it’s just not actively patrolled by CONCORD. It’s Empire space through and through. Villore, the official Gallente capitol system, was lowsec for a while due to corruption before they raised its status.
Did you skip over the phrase “de facto” in my previous statement?
First, thank you for the 3rd person perspective @Gerard_Amatin . I appreciate it.
That’s possible. I have an in-person communication style primarily. I don’t understand ‘‘tone’’ in a written text. That ‘‘tone’’ to me is nonexistent (unless someone uses CAPS). Maybe for some people the tone is there, but I am tone-deaf when it comes to written text.
I am also quite outspoken and dominant, as you can probably tell. It’s not intentional, it’s just who I am. In real life, I am much more charming and considerate than I come across on the forums.
That ‘‘surprise’’ was taken to the extreme. I didn’t need a lecture. I was mildly surprised that there isn’t a greater price differential between Amarr and jita, but it’s not that surprising that I can’t understand it. I can wrap my head around most information I came across, and it’s insulting to be lectured like I was a 5-year-old.
Like I said, I already knew that. Pointless post.
Now this is where you misread my tone. It wasn’t angry. What I said was something along the lines ‘‘if you continue to take everything literally, you’ll keep writing these walls of text that nobody needs’’. Nothing angry there, unless you are oversensitive. I literally didn’t need that explanation. He should have saved it for somebody else.
Was it humor though? Because I didn’t see it. It was a completely nonsensical post that used disconnected arguments to get at what exactly? As I said, I’m tone-deaf. I take everything literally in text, because i cannot understand the ‘‘tone’’ from textual communication.
Thank you. It would be completely ridiculous to get mad about something like that.
I enjoyed your feedback. It is interesting how forum internet arguments come to be, and for most of the part I don’t get myself dragged in to them. I also will end up blocking the parties if it gets dragged out at length because it serves no purpose and ends up taking up my time that I have better uses for.
I guess I’m also one of those guys who comes across as aggressive or ‘‘angry’’ on the internet when nothing could be further from the truth. I use strong labguage and I am not afraid of conflict. I assume that contributes to it.
If we’re ever in the same geographical location I welcome you to meet up in first person, so you can be convinced I am not an angry guy at all. That’s the only way I could ever prove it. But until then, take my words to be less aggressive than they come across.
Meridan
I wasn’t the only one who misread your tone in that case, because it seemed James too thought it was ‘needlessly hostile’ and I thought he was right in that observation.
Maybe it wasn’t your intention, but you did come across as aggressive in that post:
If you continue to take every word so literally you’re gonna be posting many more walls of text that nobody reads. I wasn’t talking to you in the first place.
Just so you know!
Yeah. And that type of circumstance might actually help creating something that is ‘contraband’ also in reality and not just in name. I personally would welcome HS trade hubs islands concept, as I said somewhere above. It would not disturb the HS citizens’ game play to such an extent that it would be impossible for them to play the game and it would certainly create new dynamics between different regions of space. Dynamics which, on a conceptual level, look promising.
To be honest, Meridan, up until about 20 minutes ago when I unblocked you, I had you blocked for quite some time after our last lengthy discussion. Whether intentional or not, you do come across a little angry and argumentative, frustratingly so at times. That can be difficult to interact with. Note, however, that this is not me telling you to change or anything of the sort. I’m just giving you the perspective from the other side of the glass. What you do with it is entirely up to you.
And FYI, I think I sometimes can come across the same way. In fact with a name like “Nasty” I think people sometimes read tone in my comments that is not intended at all. I’ve started trying to be extra cordial to compensate.
Thanks for the explanation. The angry impression isn’t intentional. If I come across like that then it’s entirely unknown to myself.
I remember you and I were arguing about something at some point on these forums, but it’s long forgotten and I don’t even remember what it was about. It certainly wasn’t anything that made me think less of you or worse of you. I can still talk to you and I have no bone with you (pun intended).
As I said to Gerard – if we’re ever somewhere close by, I welcome an in-person exchange. I think you’d be surprised. And the ‘‘tone’’ in my written text should be assumed to be several notches less ‘‘angry’’ as it comes across.
Good.
Now we’re only missing the animal noises.
With prophetic regards
-James Fuchs
Because it had no consequences. You’d create a spare char, move the drugs to Jita, let Customs negative your wallet and after a few runs, you biomassed the character and repeated the process. As there is no way around Customs cargo scans (not even with Blockade Runners, otherwise Customs would be pointless), this gameplay mechanic was not in any way engaging or fruitful.
It has striking similarities to ganking in that regard. You simply do not care about the consequences as these do not matter to you.
You can put on the newer Planet of the Apes movies for that. 
Thanks for that information. It was before my time and I am surprised that even a Blockade Runner with unscannable cargo hold could be scanned. If there was no counterplay by outsmarting customs, it seems like the mechanic was indeed in need of a change.
I do not know why you made that underhand remark about ganking, I do care about the consequences of getting ganked as it would mean I lose all my cargo the rare cases I’m in HS to haul my stuff to a trade hub …if I would get caught.
I also care about the consequences of the existence of ganking. Not that I gank, I rarely am in HS at all and if I do it is as hauler. I think it’s good the game supports criminal gameplay in a game about space piracy, and also think it is good for the game if players in all parts of space can optimize their strategy to deal with dangers they find. Without the existence of ganking people could simply put cargo-expanded freighters with 60 billion ISK on auto-pilot between trade hubs, or fleets of 30 multiboxed miners fit for full yield and zero defences without paying attention to the game at all. I think it’s healthy that counters exist to such strategies, as these can be disruptive for the game economy. So yes, I do care about the consequences of ganking.
The ganking remark was about the consequences for the criminal. There are no tangible consequences for ganking, just like there were no tangible consequences for drug smuggling. That you cannot counter Customs agents is good gameplay design, to be honest. If you could counter their scans with a ship, especially one that can warp cloaked and warp fast, every smuggler would use it and make Customs NPC pointless.
Iirc there were some routes around high sec without Customs agents where wouldn’t get scanned. However, this is just from second-hand knowledge from memory from back then and I could not find such a route myself as far as memory serves.
You were talking about illegal activities, which is why I made this point. The consequences for the lawful citizens are not important to me in this instance. I agree with you, however, that they are without a shred of a doubt important and MUCH, MUCH more relevant and tangible for the gank target.
Ganking has three very tangible consequences:
While these consequences can be dealt with as career criminal by having a supply line for new ships, by learning to navigate high security space with negative security status and by avoiding any regular non-criminal activities in high sec space on that character, that doesn’t mean that these consequences are not tangible.
In fact, these consequences are large enough that almost nobody does suicide ganks on purpose in high sec besides career criminals. Almost no player would shoot another person in HS if they ‘steal their kill’ in a site. Almost no player would attack and destroy another miner who takes the asteroid they mine. This is very different than in other parts of space, where people would happily kill any non-allied player who enters their site or starts mining besides them.
Do you know why this behaviour is so much different in high sec space that people mostly get along even with strangers who steal their loot, without people shooting others all the time?
Because high security space has very tangible consequences to criminal attacks. Almost no one besides career criminals wants to deal with those consequences.
In fact, if you don’t believe me that these consequences are tangible, imagine how HS would look like if these consequences did not exist.
Nah, not really. For most people it’s simply too boring and too repetitive to have any kind of fun with that activity. Despite it being very profitable. It’s just not fun for most players sitting on a gate for hours and then blowing something up within like 10 seconds, sit out your criminal timer and then begin the waiting game again.
I mean, “losing a ship” isn’t really a “consequence” that anyone cares for if the loot from the kill offsets all costs for ship+fit+security status fixing by a huge margin. For gankers those costs are just like “ammo costs” for missionrunners. For their gameplay it has absolutely zero consequences, because they can re-set their status at will and all costs for that are covered by the profits multiple times over.
Real ‘consequences’ would be all kind of restrictions for pirates and losses in status you cannot offset with ISK but have to slowly regain with doing lawful activities over a long period of time if you want to get back the convenience other players have. But that isn’t the case. You just snip and everything is reset. Thats an incredibly stupid design.
How would high sec look like if people did not lose their ship and security status for illegally attacking another player?
I would see very little difference between HS space and LS space if that were the case.
Losing ships and security status are very tangible consequences to illegal attacks that define HS engagement mechanics.
-_- In theory. Not in practice. Sorry. But I already get the feeling you will keep insisting and not listening to arguments. A “consequence” that you can undo with the payment of sum X isn’t a “consequence” any more if doing the activity has already brought you much more than X. It’s just cost.
The only real reasons why not much more ganking is done isn’t the harcoded “ship loss” and “security status loss” mechanic. They are completely irrelevant. For ganking most targets you simply need to be able to bring a massive number of omega accounts online, you have to learn a lot about mechanics and data and you have to have the will to play a pretty passive game that consists of 90% waiting and maybe 10% action that is over in less than a minute. It’s simply unattractive for the overwhelming majority.