Business Knowledge Base - Smugglers Run

[whywontyoulisten]

Are there unique sourcing missions for the different stock types? It's been so long since I've done hangar cargo that I can't remember, and "unique" doesn't bring up any results in this thread.

[StormerBoy]

As far as I remember, no. The only difference I recall is that the higher the value of the crate bonus, the tougher the npcs are.

[Rafae S]

51 minutes ago, StormerBoy said:

As far as I remember, no. The only difference I recall is that the higher the value of the crate bonus, the tougher the npcs are.

 

yep, this.

 

also, seeing this thread bumped almost gave me an aneurysm

[IceDree]

16 hours ago, whywontyoulisten said:

Are there unique sourcing missions for the different stock types? It's been so long since I've done hangar cargo that I can't remember, and "unique" doesn't bring up any results in this thread.

Nope, just the "difficulty" of the mission.

 

- Narcotics, Chemicals & Medical Supplies are the Hard ones.

- Animal Materials, Art & Antiques, Jewelry & Gemstones are the Medium ones.

 

- Tobacco & Alcohol, & Counterfeit Goods are the easy ones.

[Taterman]

Thanks for that IceDree.

[whywontyoulisten]

2 hours ago, IceDree said:

Nope, just the "difficulty" of the mission.

 

- Narcotics, Chemicals & Medical Supplies are the Hard ones.

- Animal Materials, Art & Antiques, Jewelry & Gemstones are the Medium ones.

 

- Tobacco & Alcohol, & Counterfeit Goods are the easy ones.

Ah ok, a parachuting mission at Humane Labs made me wonder, as it's not one I've seen often, and made sense for Chemicals. I'm guessing Rockstar's "difficulty" levels just involve piling on more aimbot NPC enemies.

[IceDree]

6 hours ago, Taterman said:

Thanks for that IceDree.

My pleasure.

 

5 hours ago, whywontyoulisten said:

Ah ok, a parachuting mission at Humane Labs made me wonder, as it's not one I've seen often, and made sense for Chemicals. I'm guessing Rockstar's "difficulty" levels just involve piling on more aimbot NPC enemies.

And Tanks. You get caught during the Fort Zancudo mission during the hard difficulty, you will be come target practice for the Tanks.

[Jamwes]

Per the Newswire today, "payouts on Smuggler’s Sell Missions will be permanently tripled." What exactly does this mean for us?

 

Updated payouts for full hangar:

	Animal Materials	Art & Antiques	Chemicals	Counterfeit Goods	Jewelry & Gemstones	Medical Supplies	Narcotics	Tobacco & Alcohol
Original:	$800,000	$800,000	$850,000	$750,000	$800,000	$850,000	$850,000	$750,000
New:	$2,400,000	$2,400,000	$2,550,000	$2,250,000	$2,400,000	$2,550,000	$2,550,000	$2,250,000

 

How long do missions take on average? Maybe 5 minutes? Some missions are longer, like the dreaded Titan one. Cooldown between runs is what, 3 minutes? To run 50 source missions at 8 minutes each, the top earner would earn ($2,550k / (8 * 50) = ) $6,375 per minute. How does this compare to other businesses?

 

Are there issues with too many sell vehicles for solo players? Are there good breaking points for solo players to be able to sell all of their cargo?

[ambi3nt]

1 minute ago, Jamwes said:

Per the Newswire today, "payouts on Smuggler’s Sell Missions will be permanently tripled." What exactly does this mean for us?

 

Updated payouts for full hangar:

	Animal Materials	Art & Antiques	Chemicals	Counterfeit Goods	Jewelry & Gemstones	Medical Supplies	Narcotics	Tobacco & Alcohol
Original:	$800,000	$800,000	$850,000	$750,000	$800,000	$850,000	$850,000	$750,000
New:	$2,400,000	$2,400,000	$2,550,000	$2,250,000	$2,400,000	$2,550,000	$2,550,000	$2,250,000

 

How long do missions take on average? Maybe 5 minutes? Some missions are longer, like the dreaded Titan one. Cooldown between runs is what, 3 minutes? To run 50 source missions at 8 minutes each, the top earner would earn ($2,550k / (8 * 50) = ) $6,375 per minute. How does this compare to other businesses?

 

Are there issues with too many sell vehicles for solo players? Are there good breaking points for solo players to be able to sell all of their cargo?

You can get 4 havoks when you sell a single crate. Even with this 3x bonus air freight will still suck.

[Rotorhead359]

TL;DR Don't do Air Freight. Unless you just want to get more flying experience or unlock the trade prices.

12 hours ago, Jamwes said:

Per the Newswire today, "payouts on Smuggler’s Sell Missions will be permanently tripled." What exactly does this mean for us?

 

Updated payouts for full hangar:

	Animal Materials	Art & Antiques	Chemicals	Counterfeit Goods	Jewelry & Gemstones	Medical Supplies	Narcotics	Tobacco & Alcohol
Original:	$800,000	$800,000	$850,000	$750,000	$800,000	$850,000	$850,000	$750,000
New:	$2,400,000	$2,400,000	$2,550,000	$2,250,000	$2,400,000	$2,550,000	$2,550,000	$2,250,000

 

How long do missions take on average? Maybe 5 minutes? Some missions are longer, like the dreaded Titan one. Cooldown between runs is what, 3 minutes? To run 50 source missions at 8 minutes each, the top earner would earn ($2,550k / (8 * 50) = ) $6,375 per minute. How does this compare to other businesses?

 

Are there issues with too many sell vehicles for solo players? Are there good breaking points for solo players to be able to sell all of their cargo?

Yes, there are definitely issues with the sell vehicles. Unlike the bunker which has the Phantoms and dark Insurgents, you never sell a full hangar solo. Maximum I'm comfortable with is 10.

I can sell 3 Havoks solo without too much trouble, maybe 4, but that's my maximum.

And then there's the Mogul, which probably gets shot down by the police after only a few drops. I always skip that one.

 

The rest of the plane and helicopter sell missions aren't too difficult, except if you try to sell more than 10 crates solo. Get one associate for 11-25, and 2 for 26-50.

 

The Bombushka and Ultralights are my favourite, but require you to have at least one associate.

 

As for breaking points, if you can get associates to help you sell, go for Narcotics, Chemical, or Medical Supplies.

For players who want to sell solo, max is 10 crates, and I'd recommend only stealing Animal Materials, Art & Antiques, and Jewelry & Gemstones, for a bonus of 12%.

 

As for sourcing, this is the part that ruins Air Freight as a business for me. It is even more tedious than the CEO crate warehouses, because it's always one crate per player, no matter which mission/vehicle. (at least with Bunker, you can steal vehicles solo for double supplies value, and some CEO crate missions have 3 in one van)

 

There are cooldowns on stealing cargo of the same type, so I used to steal Animal Materials, Art & Antiques, and Jewelry & Gemstones, one crate at a time.

Since I did it all solo, I used to get 10 of each type (30 crates in hangar), then sell them by type (3 solo sales of 10 crates)

 

 

12 hours ago, ambi3nt said:

You can get 4 havoks when you sell a single crate. Even with this 3x bonus air freight will still suck.

Last time I checked, Havoks should be 3 for up to 10 crates, 6 for up to 25 crates, and 8 for up to 50 crates. Page 7, this topic.

https://gtaforums.com/topic/895264-business-knowledge-base-smugglers-run/?do=findComment&comment=1069813170

 

Anyway, I still don't recommend to anyone to run Air Freight as a business. And that's from someone who did it a lot, I always just did it for the flying.

The moment you decide to use an Oppressor, or Oppressor mk2, you are not flying anymore, you're just trying to run a business, and you should go do CEO crates instead, at least those come 3 at a time.

 

High Demand bonus on Import/Export is nice though.

Edited December 7, 2022 by Rotorhead359

[Jamwes]

5 hours ago, Rotorhead359 said:

Yes, there are definitely issues with the sell vehicles. Unlike the bunker which has the Phantoms and dark Insurgents, you never sell a full hangar solo. Maximum I'm comfortable with is 10.

I can sell 3 Havoks solo without too much trouble, maybe 4, but that's my maximum.

And then there's the Mogul, which probably gets shot down by the police after only a few drops. I always skip that one.

 

The rest of the plane and helicopter sell missions aren't too difficult, except if you try to sell more than 10 crates solo. Get one associate for 11-25, and 2 for 26-50.

 

Thanks for the info. How much do you lose if you quit out of the mission? Can you just change sessions or do you have to close the app?

 

5 hours ago, Rotorhead359 said:

For players who want to sell solo, max is 10 crates, and I'd recommend only stealing Animal Materials, Art & Antiques, and Jewelry & Gemstones, for a bonus of 12%.

 

At this breakpoint the sale will be ($112k * 3 = ) $336k profit before Ron's 2.5% cut. With my 8 minute turnaround assumption that would be ($336k / (8 * 10) = ) $4,200 per minute. Adding in Ron's cut and depending on how long the sales take to complete (10 minutes?) the true profit per minute is probably closer to ( ($336k * 97.5%) / ((8 * 10) + 10) = ) $3,640 per minute profit. This is $218,400 per hour profit.

 

If a full hangar of the top earners were able to be sold solo (30 min sell time?) they would earn ( ($2,550k * 97.5%) / ((8 * 50) + 30) = ) about $5,781 per minute. This is $346,918 per hour profit.

 

This is still nowhere near enough to be competitive for solo grinders. Auto Shop contracts and the Dre VIP Contract both earn about $1m in 2 hours, or $500k per hour. Cayo earns more than that. 

 

With three helpers the hangar could be filled in 17 source missions. Profit would increase to ( ($2,550k * 97.5%) / ((8 * 17) + 30) = ) about $14,977 per minute. This is $898,644 per hour profit and is competitive. Too bad your three friends will be making very little during this time. They will receive 11 Securo payments for $110k during this time. Are they paid anything each time a source is completed? Could run a VIP mission like HeadHunter between each source so they would earn (16 * $22k = ) $352k. Combined they would earn about $462k, about a fifth of the $2,486,250 the host made in the same time. Could do rotations where everyone takes a turn being a host for a fill and sale, but even with the extra VIP missions each player would only earn about $350k per hour. Which is about the same as if a full hangar could be sold solo.

 

6 hours ago, Rotorhead359 said:

Anyway, I still don't recommend to anyone to run Air Freight as a business. And that's from someone who did it a lot, I always just did it for the flying.

 

Unless they make other improvements with Air Freight, my conclusion is to agree with you. Even with the new tripling of payouts. The only things Air Freight is good for is owning a hangar for personal aircraft, no wanted level over the army base, and trade price discounts. Maybe it's good for three friends to help a new player make some money, but it would be better for them to just take the new player on back-to-back Cayo finales.

[DrEeveell]

7 hours ago, Rotorhead359 said:

Anyway, I still don't recommend to anyone to run Air Freight as a business. And that's from someone who did it a lot, I always just did it for the flying.

 

Yeah, I did enough to unlock all the trade prices and now I only do it when there's a daily objective. I usually keep 1 crate laying around in case I get a sell w/o a previous source.

[DeathNyx]

Smuggler's Run sells are hard solo but not impossible. I managed to sell Havoks albeit near time limit. Unless they decide to put an auto source option like special cargo the most tedious part is still sourching those 50 crates solo.

[Rotorhead359]

31 minutes ago, Jamwes said:

 

Thanks for the info. How much do you lose if you quit out of the mission? Can you just change sessions or do you have to close the app?

 

I believe it's 10% of what you were selling, but not entirely sure.

 

31 minutes ago, Jamwes said:

 

At this breakpoint the sale will be ($112k * 3 = ) $336k profit before Ron's 2.5% cut. With my 8 minute turnaround assumption that would be ($336k / (8 * 10) = ) $4,200 per minute. Adding in Ron's cut and depending on how long the sales take to complete (10 minutes?) the true profit per minute is probably closer to ( ($336k * 97.5%) / ((8 * 10) + 10) = ) $3,640 per minute profit. This is $218,400 per hour profit.

 

If a full hangar of the top earners were able to be sold solo (30 min sell time?) they would earn ( ($2,550k * 97.5%) / ((8 * 50) + 30) = ) about $5,781 per minute. This is $346,918 per hour profit.

 

This is still nowhere near enough to be competitive for solo grinders. Auto Shop contracts and the Dre VIP Contract both earn about $1m in 2 hours, or $500k per hour. Cayo earns more than that. 

I didn't run the numbers myself, but I figured this much. That's why I put in the TL;DR on my last post. Also, not all my sourcing missions are succesful.

Sometimes the cargo gets destroyed, or lands someplace I can't land, or my plane gets shot, and I need to call in my Oppressor mk1** (be sure to run as MC not CEO)

**edit: this was before the Oppressor mk2 was in the game. Pick whichever one you like more.

 

31 minutes ago, Jamwes said:

With three helpers the hangar could be filled in 17 source missions. Profit would increase to ( ($2,550k * 97.5%) / ((8 * 17) + 30) = ) about $14,977 per minute. This is $898,644 per hour profit and is competitive. Too bad your three friends will be making very little during this time. They will receive 11 Securo payments for $110k during this time. Are they paid anything each time a source is completed? Could run a VIP mission like HeadHunter between each source so they would earn (16 * $22k = ) $352k. Combined they would earn about $462k, about a fifth of the $2,486,250 the host made in the same time. Could do rotations where everyone takes a turn being a host for a fill and sale, but even with the extra VIP missions each player would only earn about $350k per hour. Which is about the same as if a full hangar could be sold solo.

 

 

Unless they make other improvements with Air Freight, my conclusion is to agree with you. Even with the new tripling of payouts. The only things Air Freight is good for is owning a hangar for personal aircraft, no wanted level over the army base, and trade price discounts. Maybe it's good for three friends to help a new player make some money, but it would be better for them to just take the new player on back-to-back Cayo finales.

 

As for paying your associates for their efforts in sourcing missions, I see 2 options: either help them back with theirs, or host a Casino/Cayo Perico heist and give them a more than fair share.

[Tez2]

My fear is that Rockstar simply bumped up the Product values. Which is nice, but more changes are needed for this business to even be worth the effort.

 

Like adjusting the vehicles count for Sell Missions. Decrease the chance rates of the most slow-paced source missions and increase the easier ones.

[Mexicola9302]

Not even 6x money and RP would make Smugglers Run worth it, the way it is now.

[CaliMeatWagon]

2 hours ago, Tez2 said:

My fear is that Rockstar simply bumped up the Product values. Which is nice, but more changes are needed for this business to even be worth the effort.

 

Like adjusting the vehicles count for Sell Missions. Decrease the chance rates of the most slow-paced source missions and increase the easier ones.

 

Agreed. Solo you have to keep it under 10 crates to prevent multiple sales vehicles, some of which cannot be done solo (the Hunters). Making it triple payout is a good start thought. 

For 10 crates it's now ~$300,000, versus $100K

And for 50 it's ~$2.4, versus ~$800,000

That is a LOT better. And almost worth doing, in my opinion, especially if you enjoy the missiosn. 

22 hours ago, Jamwes said:

Per the Newswire today, "payouts on Smuggler’s Sell Missions will be permanently tripled." What exactly does this mean for us?

 

Updated payouts for full hangar:

	Animal Materials	Art & Antiques	Chemicals	Counterfeit Goods	Jewelry & Gemstones	Medical Supplies	Narcotics	Tobacco & Alcohol
Original:	$800,000	$800,000	$850,000	$750,000	$800,000	$850,000	$850,000	$750,000
New:	$2,400,000	$2,400,000	$2,550,000	$2,250,000	$2,400,000	$2,550,000	$2,550,000	$2,250,000

 

How long do missions take on average? Maybe 5 minutes? Some missions are longer, like the dreaded Titan one. Cooldown between runs is what, 3 minutes? To run 50 source missions at 8 minutes each, the top earner would earn ($2,550k / (8 * 50) = ) $6,375 per minute. How does this compare to other businesses?

 

Are there issues with too many sell vehicles for solo players? Are there good breaking points for solo players to be able to sell all of their cargo?

 

I'll be updating this when the update drops. 

[Mexicola9302]

Thanks for doing the maths, yeah it's still not worth the trouble.

 

I would maybe play these horrible tedious missions again, if it was a permanent 8x money, permanent 3x is still not worth it nope.

[Non Funkable Token]

Like some said, put an npc like Lupe in the hangar sourcing crates for a price, and I'll do hangar sales again. 

 

Not sourcing them myself, not even in Zelnick's dreams.

[GTA Hurricane]

Even with the increased payout, there's NO way I'll ever do any more of those tedious and annoying source missions. Unless of course, new aircraft is added with unlockable trade prices. I still have 20 something crates left, if and when we get a 2x week on top of the base 3x increase ($60,000 per crate) then I'll sell what I've already got. Otherwise, f*ck that.

[Dock]

Probably in the minority here, but Smuggler stuff had been the most fun out of all the business bs this game introduced in my friend group, so its nice to see increased payouts for it. It needs a lot of QoL fixes for lone wolves sure, but as a squad its dope; one of the few trade-price grinds I enjoyed back in the day for sure. Anything beats driving slow ass trucks and vans across the map.

 

Now let us store vehicles in the hangars pls R*, I need some retro supercars next to my aircraft (also fix the Ardent's front plate already, damn)