Smuggler Guide

Intro
This is a guide aimed at understanding the black market for Star Traders: Frontiers. This will also dive into the Rare Trade Goods market (as it is the most efficient use of your time and money) and Spying. Smuggling Rare Trade Goods is a difficult thing to set up correctly, but monumentally profitable. Notably, this is not a guide for playing a Captain starting with a single point in Smuggler purely for its amazing defensive trait in Ship Combat.

The Map

 * This guide assumes/requires that your starting quadrant has Rare Trade Goods. (abbreviated RTG from now on) If you want to use the Default Map v2, you will have to start De Valtos Syndicate or Clan Moklumnue. De Valtos is recommended of the two factions.

Attributes A

 * 30 Charisma/Wisdom/Resilience
 * 18 Fortitude
 * 14 Other (minimum allowed when attributes are at priority A)

Group A the RTG Sellers
Select Group A contacts first to ensure they are in your home quadrant.


 * Spice Trader
 * Merchant
 * Smuggler -- Black Market contact and RTG contact

Group B the Black Market Buyers

 * Fixer
 * Blackheart -- Place Smuggler here if you lack the weapon smuggler or blackheart unlocks
 * Weapon Smuggler

Ship C

 * Juror 160/260k - Gives you an extra 20k to start with

Skills D

 * 4 Negotiate

Experience E

 * Smuggler - 10% Bonus at Black Markets

Selecting Attributes at priority A is important because character creation time is the only chance you ever get to change them outside of gear and lucky trait mutations. The Juror is a lousy ship with a small cargo hold, but with the funds you start with, and the high price the RTG goods demand, you are unlikely to fill even its limited hold. That being said, the extra 20k credits gained by choosing a ship below the priority selected will give a quick head start into the learning process. Consider swapping Ship and Skills on future playthroughs to allow you to bring your all-important negotiate skill from 4 to 8.

Contacts
This is the meat and potatoes of the smuggler's world. Without contacts you cannot have a steady source of RTG nor a way into the black market. A trickle of RTG will come your way through exploration, scavenging, and piracy but the Smuggler's clients need a more steady supply than this! If you are brand new and have not unlocked some of the starting contacts (via unlocks) you may need to move the smuggler contact around to make sure you have 2 Sellers and 2 buyers. All of the 6 selected contacts also buy intel; the type of contact that valued most here typically buys intel. It is important to place group A in your home territory by making sure they are in slots 1,2 and 3. The black market dealers should be placed in the back half of the list to have them start in systems outside the home. If the planet your BM dealers land on do not typically buy the goods you are selling, or worse fall inside your home system but with an enemy fraction, do not feel obliged to continue that playthrough. Reroll (restart captain creation) until there is a clear pipeline of seller A to buyer B.

A note about RTG and Contacts
The king of Rare Trade goods is Iridlaentine. Always legal, only requiring a quick two step hop up the permit ladder, and second only to Travor Spice Wax. Sadly, not every map will have it. Default map v2 has it one system over from the De Valtos start (another point in the faction's favor.) Every map is guaranteed to start with Bexian Spice Tea, but you are also guaranteed to never start in that system as well. If you are the type to reroll until you are satisfied, get a map with a start of Cadavost Plating, Kloxian Medical Bays, Travor Spice Wax or the aforementioned Iridlaentine.

Unlike when you buy from the market the price will not vary from planet to planet or even from contact to contact; the goods will always be the same price. After stuffing your ship with what you can carry (or afford) the contact's access to RTGs will go on cooldown; you will always have to wait to buy more from them. Make sure you are finished with activities that raise influence and reputation with the contact before you purchase RTGs from them (i.e. you have sold intel and/or finished any missions before you buy). The more the contact likes you, the faster he/she will come off cooldown. This also has the effect of buying all that you can buy. There is no limit to how much the contact can sell to you at one time, save the limitations of your cargo hold and wallet. Midgame, spending 500k in one swoop and selling for over 1m is just how you handle your business.

The Black Market
Succeeding with the Black Market doesn't take much. Stealth and Intimidate are the two Skill Pools you will need (albeit not much of either.) Charisma is the relevant attribute and you have 30 with your Captain. You can generally avoid focusing too much on the skill pools just by having really high reputation with the contact. The card you are after is the +3 Market Access card. Your actual permit access level is determined by the client, however. You have a smuggler talent for that. Illicit Notoriety gives you one level higher access. Remember how Iridlaentine is the king of RTG? Illicit Notoriety means if you can reach the market in any way, shape, or form, you can sell Iridlaentine.

As for the game itself, Electronic Techs and Smugglers have level 1 talents that let you eliminate bad cards or replace bad cards with market access; both jobs are guaranteed on your starting ship. Saboteur oddly enough has a level 5 talent that removes a bad card, and Wing Commando can duplicate the smugglers in replacing bad draws with good ones. But what you need a smuggler for, in fact the entire reason we are doing  ALL  of this setup is to get the maximum value out of the smuggler talent Bootleg Profits. And yes, it stacks with the Exploiter trait and the naturally better prices on the black market. It is for this reason that you do NOT want to take any of the other talents that might activate such as Criminal Connections or Insider Trading. You could be missing out on a quarter million or more if you fail to get your Bootleg Profits talent on the right sale.

As far as the risks, BM has a card that represents more danger then any other card. [ - 2 ] Illegal Goods Confiscated, also known as profit-be-gone.

All other cards are welcome compared to this, and it comes in two flavors. Take one Illegal good or take ALL illegal goods, but for you this will likely amount to the same thing. The law of the planet (very often 9 or 10) will deem all goods of legality lower then this to be illegal and they will take it right out of your hold. Of note: Iridlaentine is never illegal. (It is a shame that Hideout does nothing to prevent this, however, Ritualized Retreat from your blade dancer does. It will also stop a fight which carries damage to your rep and the influence of the contact even if you win and profit-be-gone if you lose or surrender.)

Intel Generation
Spies are vital here, even if you don't do very much spying itself. Scouring Search and Unauthorized Access both come quickly and are good active tools to gather Intel. Far better is Secrets Unbound, a talent that will help you passively gather Intel while you go about your normal activities. It is for this reason I recommend having 3 spies among your crew once you move up to a larger ship. Their electronics and stealth skill pool will always be useful to you -- electronics helping in ship combat AND the spying card game. High Stealth pools helps with the black market.

A single level dip in Zealot on one of your officers can get you a reliable source of intel made from winning ship combat. If you excel in boarding enemies and having your spys milk the hostile ship's data memory for all the intel you can glean with the above mentioned Unauthorized Access, absolutely double dip with the zealot's Rough Interrogation for even more. The enemy ship must be captured intact for there to be a crew alive enough to talk, however. Another downside is the reputation hit, which segues nicely into the next topic.

Everybody's Second Best Friend
Star traders is a hell of a lot easier if you have few to no factions out for your blood. By the design of this guide you will be visiting your home system often and the starting storyline of Calagan Faen vs Aetaan Char will net you a faction that will happily seize your cargo or blow up your ship. For this reason a smuggler might want to keep his hands out of family politics and instead move directly to Arbiter Brokstrom's storyline. (It will give you something to do while your cooldowns come back online.)

A diplomat is a must on your ship and because diplomat dovetails so nicely with smuggler on the negotiation synergy; this is why it is suggested to make Diplomat your captain's second job choice. Magnanimous Victory is vital to keeping ship combat from damaging your reputation after you take all the intel you can from the enemy captain. Winning Compromise\Upstaged Success is bread-and-butter mission running, and if you ignored earlier advice and got the Char Fraction really steamed at you Vindication Pact is your way out.