Security, Smuggling & Augs

What draws Security’s attention

Each product line has its own way of ruining you, per the store page: weapons bring inspections, chemicals bring addiction, water brings liability, contraband brings raids Official. Customers aren’t always who they seem. “Today’s customer could be a security fisher for evidence” Official. Every choice you make (approve, refuse, report or look away) is noted by someone.

Inspections and smuggler bays

• Smuggler bays hide contraband during inspections. The Mini Smuggler Bay can sit behind the poster. Hotfix 1.0.0.1 fixed items being confiscated when the bay sat in the trash can or behind the poster Official.
• Don’t put a Hypertech Storage Bay inside a smuggler bay. That’s blocked since 1.0.0.1 Official.
• No reputation farming: since playtest patch 48.3.12, passing an inspection after showing contraband in the display case no longer gives Security reputation Official.
• The underground exchange for the smuggler bay takes priority over temporary exchange deals Official.

Fines, arrests and evidence

From the patch notes Official:

• Your criminal record sets the outcome. The officer decides the sentence when they arrive. If a fixer or nightly decay has lowered your record to fine territory by then, you get a fine, not an arrest.
• The officer visits the morning after the investigation completes.
• Security can’t arrest you over a fine you can afford.
• You can hire Wild to remove evidence.
• The Intimidating perk cuts evidence generation by 33% and costs 2 perk points.

Store-page options when caught: hide it, or bribe your way out Official. Mob justice is also a risk.

Reporting criminals and the wanted list

• Wanted criminals show up on the wanted list. In 1.0 they have expanded backstories, including the Butcher Official.
• The Model Citizen perk raises the credit bonus for reporting criminal customers to +50% Official.
• Report 10 criminals for Snitches Get Riches. Only 0.5% of players had it a day after launch Steam data.
• Arresting Odin after calling him for a delivery crosses him off the wanted poster Official.
• Lou, the criminal mastermind with a full storyline in 1.0 Official, can’t be shot during any visit (1.0.0.2) Official. Reporting her doesn’t cost Black Market reputation (1.0.0.1) Official.

Factions and reputation

Reputation tracks you with the station’s factions. The ones confirmed in game data are Security, Black Market, Upper Levels, Revolution and the Lower Levels CommunityCommunity. Reputation “buys access and protection, but it also paints a target on your back” Official. Some known effects:

• Black Market: the Thief’s stock scales with it Official. At −40, the janitorial service costs double but stays available Official.
• Lower Levels: at +20 or more you get one extra random customer a day. Below +20 you get one fewer Community.
• A security alarm with the alarm transmitter module gives +1 reputation per night to a faction you pick Community.
• Max out any faction for Diplomatic (2.7%) Steam data.

Augs

The official setup: “A sentient AI chip went rogue and took its hosts with it. Augs look like everyone else … until they don’t. Stay alert, pick up on the signs.” Every faction agrees on the policy, and “you have the gun to enforce it”, but missing or misreading the signs “carries its own price” Official.

What’s confirmed: