Originally Posted by
warty goblin
I mean to do smuggling right, you need at least some version of supply and demand; not necessarily a dynamic economy, just stuff that is cheap but legal at A, and expensive and illegal at B. And some sort of meaningful system for getting it from A to B without getting caught. These are totally normal features in space games, but ain't really part of the Bethesda Package. And boy does Starfield not stray from the package.
It probably would also help to not have the standard singleplayer RPG economy, where the question isn't if you end up wealthy beyond all practical application, but whether you get there at hour 6 or are all slow and don't go Scrooge McDuck until hour 7. You know, might make doing illegal stuff and running risks for money mean something in game.