Smuggler's Run - business analysis and insight

[Nihilist.]

After the release of Smuggler's Run update, I've decided to purchase a hangar (Fort Zancudo, Hangar 3497, aka the cheapest one), and test the new smuggling business. I already knew it's not nearly as profitable as, let's say, I/E, but after the double export money event week, I was simply tired with them, and wanted to do something different for a change. Export, Sightseer, Import, break, rinse, and repeat, hour after hour. I've earned couple million bucks thanks to my routine, but also begin to feel somewhat bored, in need for a refreshment.

That's how I've gotten myself a hangar, and that's how I began testing sourcing missions - not to see if they're worth my time (I can already tell you they're a waste of it), but to collect some raw data, and compare it to other ways of making money in GTA Online.

Disclaimers:
1. This is raw data I've gained from my personal supply runs - all done solo for the purpose of this analysis, with no external distractions and threats, meaning there was nothing during my tests that could slow me down. Why didn't I ask any friends to help me out? Because they would be variables I can't keep an eye on all the time.
2. I'm not an expert pilot and do not claim to be one. Results of my tests may not be impressive, and many more experienced pilots can probably beat them effortlessly. Could I improve? Yeah, and I feel I did after repeating some missions multiple times, but why would I waste more time than necessary doing these pointless supply runs? I'm not a masochist.
3. In some cases, I've been using my own aircrafts for convenience, which of course had impact on times I've measured. In some, my plane or helicopter got destroyed and I had to call for a new one, which takes time. All these average times include human error and bad luck, the more prominent the lesser the scale of an experiment is. And let's be honest - from statistical point of view, amount of my runs is nothing. However, as I stated, I'm not a masochist, and I will never, ever do these missions again. As Einstein said, insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results.

Test results:

Time spent, in total: 523 minutes, 6 seconds
Average time of 1 mission: ~8 minutes, 52 seconds

Frequency of missions:

 

 

 

Personal mission insight:

 

 

Cargo Planes (Molotok)

Surprisingly this mission is fun. It may not be as action packed as "Who Killed Captain Alex?", but you shouldn't feel bored doing it, especially if you like the EMP mission (with Hydra) from Humane Labs raid. Try to collect the cargo mid-air, so you don't waste too much time after the dogfighting stage is over. In my opinion the best sourcing mission. Possibly the only good.

 

Carpet bombing (Seabreeze)

Unless you're an experienced pilot who doesn't have a problem navigating a high top speed plane through the city, take Buzzard, Hydra or anything weaponized that can hover instead. While carpet bombing shouldn't be difficult on the open sea, it can become insanely frustrating in Los Santos, where you have to blow up moving trash trucks, while avoiding buildings, trees, pretty much anything. Be careful - cargo may be stored on a Tug boat, so don't drown your aircraft.

 

Humane Labs infiltration (Cargobob)

I've got only one opportunity to play this mission and killed all guards without alerting anyone, so I have no clue if it's as unforgiving as EMP delivery mission from Humane Labs raid. I would recommend you not to take Cargobob - it's slow and very sluggish, you're going to waste a minute or two compared to faster aircrafts.

The shooting stage is pretty self explanatory - use silenced weapon, don't rush, kill with one bullet.

 

Destroy Base (Starling)

Pretty self explanatory - take your plane, destroy everything in sight, and wait for you supply's location to be revealed. If you don't feel comfortable piloting Starling, Buzzard will do. Or anything that can hover for that matter.

 

Dogfight (Nokota)

Simple dogfight with few waves of respawning enemies, not worth blasting Aces High or Bomber while doing it, it's too bland to serve as good background for these songs.

Try to catch the cargo while it's falling down, otherwise you may have to find a place to land your plane, which may be somewhat difficult, and will cost you some time. Also, keep your enemies away from water - good luck swimming for your cargo, while being attacked by constantly respawning choppers with sniper AI shooters. Been there, done that, you may as well shut down the game, because you're screwed.

 

Offshore (Tula)

To a degree this mission reminds me one of the I/E sourcing missions, involving Cargobob. This one is almost equally frustrating. Fly to your destination, kill enemies any way you like, whether using Tula's weapons or sniping them out one by one. Aircraft equipped with auto aiming rockets - like Buzzard have huge advantage over Tula, with only manual machine guns. Beware, as any NPC in this game, your enemies have sniper aim even Deadshot would envy. When you reach your aircraft, kill enemy shooters before you enter it.

The good thing is, finally, for once, there's something to do underwater in GTA Online. Collect your cargo and go back to the hangar.

 

Shootouts (Buzzard, Pyro, Rogue)

Very simple missions, not worth being analyzed separately. Go from your hangar to your destination, kill all enemies, pick up cargo and head home. Don't rush it, even though the objective is simple. Kill anyone in sight before entering your aircraft of choice, otherwise they may kill you, destroying your cargo in the process.

I wouldn't recommend taking provided (non weaponized) Buzzard. Take something you could use to clear the spot before landing.

 

Signal Jammers (Hunter)

Boring, tedious, extra repetitive. Your goal is to destroy signal jammers spawned in multiple locations all around the map. If you've expected some action, too bad. If you want combat, play a contact mission, if you want to overthrow a democratically elected government and kill innocent civilians, become a US politician. Bottomline, this source mission is too long and boring to enjoy it. Avoid, unless you want to try out Hunter.

If you have problems with aiming, get some distance from a jammer and switch to 1st person view. If that doesn't help, use an RPG.

 

Stunts (Howard)

Insanely tedious mission, despite involving a high speed plane. Also it's overly responsive, so unless you're an experienced pilot, I'd recommend you using something more forgiving to handle. Pretty much anything will do - even a helicopter, although you won't be able to do any knife flights with it. Los Santos flood channels are the best places to score multiple points one after another. When the cargo location is sent to you (to me, it always spawned in Paleto), fly there and destroy the truck, so you don't have to drive it to your hangar, which takes forever. Beware, your cargo can get stuck after you blow up the truck! If it's under the wreck, just drive/fly away and return - burning metal carcass should disappear. If the cargo gets stuck under the map, well, the mission's over and you've just wasted 10 minutes of your life for nothing.

 

Titan Drop (Mogul)

Another tedious, boring beyond belief mission. I would recommend you to take a Buzzard , if you have one - it's more maneuverable than Mogul. Auto aiming rockets are disabled, so your only way of dealing with enemy Buzzards (constantly respawning) is your machine gun. Try to think positive so you don't get crazy while doing this mission - it's a shooting practice... Yeah, I'm lying to myself, this mission is a sad joke.

 

Crashed helicopter (Maverick)

Extra easy - fly to marked zone and locate smoke. From there on, pick up your cargo (in some scenarios landing is necessary) and head home. Possibly the quickest mission of all.

 

 

 

Unlockable discounts:

 

 

 

 

 

Money aspect:

 

 

As I stated at the very beginning of this post, smuggling business is a waste of time. Here's all you need to know. Compared to other money making methods, it provides very little profit for time spent. At average, filling up your warehouse will take aprroximately 7.5 hours, and that excluding countdown after every delivery (~2 minutes every time).

 

If you play solo, don't even bother - you're better off doing anything, be it contact missions, I/E or VIP/CEO jobs.

Let's assume you've collected all 50 crates and sold them successfully. In the very best case scenario, you'd earn about 850 thousand dollars (every crate delivered, and product has +70% value bonus), which translates to about 100k$ for every hour of playing. Note that doing a sale of 26-50 crates solo is physically impossible! You NEED at least one friend if you want to sell everything. So yeah, I'm really giving smuggling a huge credit of trust here.

 

To show you how miserable this payout is, one top tier car can be sourced and exported in about 10-15 minutes, depending on the scenario, your experience, method of transportation and luck, getting you ~80k$. Multiply it by 3, because that's how many times you can export a car every hour, and you end with 240k$, and some room to do extra tasks, for example Sightseer (3x22,5k$=67.5k$). In total, you'd earn more or less 300k$.

 

Things change if you play with friends, and that's nothing new - look at original special cargo warehouses, biker businesses and gunrunning bunkers. Neither of them is lone-wolf friendly. If you want money, I/E and heists (with Criminal Mastermind challenge) are still your best way to go. Definitely more beneficial, engaging and simply fun. Smuggling is neither.

 

Furthermore, being an owner of Buzzard and/or Hydra helps a lot, but that of course requires huge investments beforehand. While I was able to grind I/E and CEO jobs without any personal aircraft in the past (although having a quick heli helps a lot and allows you to finish them faster), they are practically mandatory here, if you want to finish source missions with decent times. Ability to spawn a free Buzzard as a CEO right next to you has never been more important to me than while doing all these smuggling missions.

 

Now, what's worth noting, hangars serve additional purpose, which is storing your personal aircrafts, and are necessary to purchase and modify aircrafts introduced in this update. Completing particular number of supply runs will also grant you 25% discounts on these vehicles, which is the only logical reason to play them. In that respect, supply runs are more beneficial the more aircrafts you'd like to purchase.

 

That being said, these are good enough reasons to invest into a hangar, unless you completely don't care about the new content. To each their own.

If you decide to use a hangar for anything else than displaying your flying machines and getting discounts for some new ones, just be sure you have someone to help you out, and have access to personal Buzzard and/or Hydra that can be used instead of aircrafts provided to you in every mission.

 

 

Edited September 3, 2017 by Nihilist.

[J1M]

Nice write-up!

 

I did the stunts mission today in a Mallard, which went well.

Called in a Hydra after picking up the package at McKenzie and left the Buzzards in the rear-view.

 

 

Also, alerting the guards at Humane gives you a 3 star wanted level.

Edited September 2, 2017 by J1M

[The Wandering Hunter]

summary

 

sh*t payout

[rlk232]

See above post for my thoughts...

[Jasmyn]

My addition for the source mission "Titan Drop (Mogul)" in the "Personal mission insight"-part of the OP:

 

Instead of the provided Mogul I also use my Buzzard to rendevouz with the Titan, like you stated.

 

But instead of gunning the enemy npc buzzards down with the machinegun (which is impossible - at least for me), I'm flying directly above them and then I hit the down/lower-altitude button (on ps4 it's L2) and hit the enemy helicopter's rotors with my landing gear...

 

Doing this gets them smoking and losing altitude and losing speed and, most important, not threatening the Titans health any further.

 

And my experience so far is that there will not be any new waves of enemy buzzards, most likely because the first two are still flying (far behind and smoking but not destroyed)

Edited September 2, 2017 by jamsroob

[please stop me]

As soon as you unlock the discounts you can forget these missions!

[Chunkey_Monkey]

As soon as you unlock the discounts you can forget these missions!

 

 

Noooo I rather like some of the missions so will carry on, Selling is sh*te though