Smuggling Missions

[Cosian]

I am playing a standard race pre-warp in the Age of Shadows. In the early going there will be many resources you do not have and eventually you will get a suggestion from an advisor that we can obtain some of these materials via smugglers??

Now why they would have to smuggle them in instead of just trading is unknown to me. That said, once you accept this, what actually happens?? I see no way to monitor or manage smuggling on my end. Is this something you can turn off and on?? If so, how?

I imagine pirates are running smuggler missions to me, but what is that costing me?

Anyway, I never played with the Age of Shadow mod so it is unclear to me how smuggling works in general.

[Cosian]

I think I figured some of this out .... I found that 1) The smuggling mission will expire after a time and 2) If I right click on my home planet I can cancel or initiate the smuggling mission. Still a bit unclear on how much it cost me

[Tehlongone]

Well I once set it to smuggle everything, I hadn't figured out how to cancel it again however and after a few years my screen was literally flooded with merchants in for a bit of profit. On the bright side I got decent supplies of most resources, on the flip side my private sector was deep, deep into the red.

Took a while though, smuggling has few serious effects as far as I know, it can be cancelled whenever and the private sector usually has cash to spare. It gives the pirates some free influence on you, but nothing you can't handle.

[Cosian]

Thanks ... that helps!