I'd prefer the sidequest not to have opium.
Replacing the opium smuggling quest with a rum smuggling quest definitely sounds good! You'd need to decide whether the smuggled rum is items or cargo, though - it can't be both. If it's items, it's bottles which you could store in your cabin. If it's cargo then it's barrels which would go in the hold.
Perhaps tier 1 is somewhere near the bottom of the chain, so there are several of them behind some of those unused doors in towns. You'd only get bottles from them, and then only a few at a time. Tier 2 could be tier 1's suppliers, so there are fewer of them and you could buy larger quantities of bottles at lower price per bottle because you're skipping tier 1 and not having to pay their profits. And tier 3 could be the producer, there's only one, you can buy even larger quantities of bottles - or perhaps this is where you get the barrels to go into your hold. Bottles could be smuggled to users, the same as the opium quest. Barrels would have to be delivered to smugglers on a beach.
I'd already been doing a bit of thinking about this, though I was considering using whiskey instead of rum. And so I was thinking about an illicit still. There's a building item "distillery" which uses model "B_distillery.gm" and which could perhaps be added into a house interior to create the illicit still. This would be out of town, partly to avoid prying government eyes and partly because this may be where they grow the crops which are processed and distilled to create the alcohol. I haven't implemented any of this, though. But I have done a bit of scouting for places to put the still, and came up with three possibilities:
So how do you prevent the player from finding the illicit still before having earned the right to do so? Simple. You can go there, but the distillery isn't placed until you're allowed to see it. The occupant has some generic dialog, perhaps copied from "Enc_resident_dialog", then add in some extra dialog, triggered only when you've done what is necessary, which handles the illicit rum stuff. So initially he behaves just like a normal, law-abiding home-owner. Only when you've done what is necessary to access tier 3 will you see the distillery and get the rum dialog.
Replacing the opium smuggling quest with a rum smuggling quest definitely sounds good! You'd need to decide whether the smuggled rum is items or cargo, though - it can't be both. If it's items, it's bottles which you could store in your cabin. If it's cargo then it's barrels which would go in the hold.
Perhaps tier 1 is somewhere near the bottom of the chain, so there are several of them behind some of those unused doors in towns. You'd only get bottles from them, and then only a few at a time. Tier 2 could be tier 1's suppliers, so there are fewer of them and you could buy larger quantities of bottles at lower price per bottle because you're skipping tier 1 and not having to pay their profits. And tier 3 could be the producer, there's only one, you can buy even larger quantities of bottles - or perhaps this is where you get the barrels to go into your hold. Bottles could be smuggled to users, the same as the opium quest. Barrels would have to be delivered to smugglers on a beach.
I'd already been doing a bit of thinking about this, though I was considering using whiskey instead of rum. And so I was thinking about an illicit still. There's a building item "distillery" which uses model "B_distillery.gm" and which could perhaps be added into a house interior to create the illicit still. This would be out of town, partly to avoid prying government eyes and partly because this may be where they grow the crops which are processed and distilled to create the alcohol. I haven't implemented any of this, though. But I have done a bit of scouting for places to put the still, and came up with three possibilities:
- "Tortuga_Jungle_01" - this is a house similar to Rheims' house on Bonaire, you get there by going through the Tortuga town exit.
- "Tortuga_town_exit" - not the exit location itself, but this location is similar to Speightstown exit, with three paths. One goes back to town, one goes to "Tortuga_Jungle_01", and one doesn't go anywhere - it's reload isn't defined. So you could create a whole new location and link it to "Reload1".
- "Cayman_Jungle_09" - another clone of Rheims' house. If you fall into the dungeon on Cayman and find the exit, it leads here; or you can walk here through the jungle.
So how do you prevent the player from finding the illicit still before having earned the right to do so? Simple. You can go there, but the distillery isn't placed until you're allowed to see it. The occupant has some generic dialog, perhaps copied from "Enc_resident_dialog", then add in some extra dialog, triggered only when you've done what is necessary, which handles the illicit rum stuff. So initially he behaves just like a normal, law-abiding home-owner. Only when you've done what is necessary to access tier 3 will you see the distillery and get the rum dialog.
) I would be glad to test the changes! Incidentally, I love smuggling, so I could test that too.
It's always the goal to make the game as realistic as possible. Oh and please do include any references where you have based those changes as well if you can. 
