Various criminal organizations throughout the galaxy have found financial success in moving illegal substances and goods from one place to another. The vehicles of these transfers are the smugglers, men and women who store their morality along side coffers full of questionable goods. The smugglers are brave and often brash individuals who risk their lives for monetary gain on a daily basis.

The smuggler revamp will introduce new missions to simulate the smuggling underworld.

Basic System

Smuggling Missions are received from various underworld bosses, called ‘suppliers’. Jabba, Lady Valarian, and other key criminal characters, as well as new characters, will offer smuggling missions. Smuggling missions are only offered to smuggler characters. The difficulty of the mission will scale to the average tier level of the smuggler’s skills.

Combat skills?  Smuggler (i.e. Underworld) skills?  IMO it should be scaled to Underworld skills - the more lucrative missions are only available to smugglers that have wormed their way into the confidence of the big players.

It should be a tiered system, a smuggler with Underworld 1 shouldn't be able to walk up to Jabba and get a mission, they should have to work for the little fish first. 

That brings up the logical conclusion that successful deliveries should award "Smuggler XP" which is used to progress through the Underworld tree.  Limit it to smugglers by having the mission giver speak only in a language that no one but a smuggler can understand (as the Jawas do now) and we've got a winner here.

At its core, a smuggling mission is similar to a delivery mission. The player is given a crate of illegal goods to move to another contact. The player must then return the payment for the goods to the source of the mission.

Ex: Jabba gives the player a crate of 50 to deliver to a cantina in Mos Eisley. After the player delivers the narcostims, she receives a payment of 12,000 credits. The player then returns to Jabba and delivers 8,000 credits, pocketing 4,000 as payment for the job.

There are no skill boxes specific to smuggling missions, but the smuggler’s skills in scan avoidance and slicing will come into play.

Cargo Legality

Smuggling mission cargo is highly illegal. Any non-smuggler caught carrying a crate of any item to be delivered from a smuggling mission will be attacked and have the cargo confiscated.

This includes all spices I presume?  Once again the combat balance must be considered.  If it's expected that spice will be used, and combat is balanced accordingly, spice is then moved from a perk to a necessity. 

Due to the illegality of the cargo, the authorities may occasionally hear about a particular supplier’s intent to move goods. Smugglers on a smuggler mission may encounter attacks from planetary or Imperial authorities, depending on the difficulty of the mission. Killing these enemies is not necessary to complete the mission.

My only thought here is these enemies had best spawn near the end of the mission.  If a bunch of authorities spawn as I'm racing from place to place on a speeder it will be pretty pointless.  I probably won't see them.

The target for a smuggling mission will only wait so long to receive the delivery. If the player does not deliver the goods within a reasonable amount of time (dependent on mission difficulty), the mission will be lost and the player will receive some visibility.

Of course a visible timer here is a must.

Withholding Cargo

The player may choose to withhold part of the delivery. In the above example, the player may choose to only deliver 30 of the narcostims to the contact in Mos Eisley. If the player chooses to withhold cargo, s/he will only be paid a portion of the actual delivery fee. The amount of the payment will be directly proportional to the amount delivered.

In order to split a container of mission supplies, the smuggler must successfully slice the container’s locking mechanism.

The player may also choose to withhold part of the money to be paid to the supplier. For example, the player might deliver all 50 narcostims, but only pay Jabba 6,000 credits.

Withholding cargo or pay will result in the smuggler earning a small bit of visibility. Thus, a smuggler who chooses to defy the crime lords who supply her with jobs faces the possibility of execution at the hands of a hired Bounty Hunter.

The more difficult the smuggling mission, the greater the visibility gained for cheating.

Sounds good   Would there be a penalty for delivering a cargo that had been "tampered" with - i.e. failed to slice the lock but delivered the cargo anyway.

Cargo Contents

Smuggling mission cargo often contains items that are components for smuggler crafting. Narcostims, for example, might be a component used in the creation of the spice, Glitterstim. Thus, a smuggler will need to occasionally withhold some of the cargo from a mission if they wish to enter the spice business.

In the interests of the player economy and current game balance, spices will remain craftable. Now, however, smugglers will "assemble" various components into spice packages, instead of chemically brewing them. Experimentation will be added...more details later in the spices discussion.

This I'm not so sure about.  It's a neat concept, but should perhaps be reserved for the highest level spices.  Once again with the combat balance (I know I sound like a broken record...) - if spices are intended as a perk this is no big deal.  If it's expected that spices will be commonplace it'll be a big problem.  Running mission after mission after mission to supply a spice making business is not fun - nor conducive to a casual play style.  Not to mention having to take and refuse multiple missions to pick up the subcomponent that you are looking for that day would be annoying.

I think a better alternative is to let players make all the subcomponents for spices - but hard-cap them to be inferior to the subcomponents you can get by skimming from a smuggler mission.  The logic here is that the purity of a chemical you make in your basement is not what you'd get if you had a proper lab and refinery.  Jabba makes a business of supplying the high end stuff.

This would create a readily available amount of mid-range spice, but the really high-end stuff would be comparitively rare (and thus would sell for a lot more as there is another product to compare to).

Smuggling cargo may also include crates of low or mid level spices. The player may choose to withhold these spices and resell them to other players if they wish.

Once again - I think giving the spices to the players but reserving the best subcomponents is the better way to go.  It's the same concept as loot drops and weapons / armour now.

Space Integration

There will be elements of smuggler missions involving space zones & space gameplay, but I can't discuss many space details. The player may have to pick up or deliver goods in space. Players without JTL will not be required to go to space. This is an "after space ships" feature.

Once caveat here is risk vs reward.  There needs to be a reason for a smuggler to risk flying in space with his cargo rather than just take the public transport to the destination without risk.  I understand that you don't want to limit players that choose not to buy JtL, but there should be a benefit to taking the time and risk to fly your cargo yourself.

Perhaps it's more clear in the Smuggler transport system.

Since even the Jedi don't know much about visibility, I think we'd need some details here.  Does visibility decay over time?  Do other players gain visibility when associating with a smuggler?  Things like that.

Thanks again for taking this approach with this - I have a really good feeling if this is the direction the design team is taking

One request though - could you avoid using the fancy formatting or Word programs to do these - the tags read as invalid HTML code and makes it tough to quote the post.