spoiler:some tips and observations for using nerve gas

[quarague]

Nerve gas is the best offensive hand-to-hand weapon so you want it for capturing ships but it is illegal. I will collect here some tips and observations if you want to use it. Maybe this will grow into a guide at some point. By definition this will contain a lot of spoilers.

If you get scanned by a republic ship while carrying nerve gas you will get a fine of 1 million credits.
Different factions of humans and aliens also dislike nerve gas, so they will all fine you. The only exceptions are the pirates that sell you the stuff in the first place and the korath that are hostile anyway.
The fine is always 1 million credits, no matter whether you 1 canister or enough to supply the entire crew of a bacterian.
The fine will be imposed as a loan from the bank, so it doesn't matter whether you have 1 million credits in you account right now.
If you are fined, the nerve gas will NOT be confiscated, you get to keep it. This is important and very helpful, nerve gas for the entire crew of a bacterian is worth almost 20 million, much more than the fine. It also means that if you are rich enough, you can just keep it and pay the fines.
If you are fined while in orbit you can land without new fines. You can sell the nerve gas at any outfitter (with the same pricing rules as any legal good) or reequip it to a different ship the same way as any legal equipment.
You can store nerve gas in parked ship on any planet. It won't go bad or disappear but you will be fined every time you land on the planet. So it is probably still better to store it on a pirate planet and pay the bribe every time you want to access it.
Inference plating can reduce the chance that the nerve gas will be spotted if you are scanned. I seem to recall the chance to get caught is something like 1/(1+ number of inference plates). So more plates help but they have diminishing returns and the chance is never zero.

Open questions:
Does getting fined affect your reputation negatively?
Can you get fined more than once per game day if scanned by different ships?
Does inference plating also work at space ports?

I hope this is helpful. If people have more questions or answers to my questions this would be very welcome.

[jafdy]

As far as I know the answers are no, no (at least not by the same faction), yes.