The other day I was flying my newest character on the extended Niobium/Diamonds run and had just unloaded my Humpback at Kyushu. Prior to docking on the planet, my level was at 29 and jumped up to 31 when I had unloaded the cargo. On the way in I had noticed a certain gunboat sitting just outside the planet's range. I figured he'd give me a little leeway as he probably had noticed I'd just barely gotten to 31, and was in a ship that had no chance against his. No such luck. As soon as I approached the tradelane, he disrupted it. Naturally, I'm in no hurry to stick around, so a thruster-speed chase ensued. As I'm getting close to dead, he finally demands two million from me (which, even if I had that much, would have dropped me back back to 29, but that's another thing to consider.) Before I could fully explain this to him, I'm watching my hold full of consumer goods scatter across space. (I also had a PROMETHEUS, but that's not the focus here.) Afterward, he explained that he would have demanded less, but I had made him work for it.
My biggest problem with the situation is the fact that I had just broken level 30, and he had used this as an excuse to attack. I didn't even get a chance to really roleplay the situation, what with the whole dodging blazing death coming at me thing.
Sorry if this turned into a rant, but I just felt I needed to get a bit of frustration out of the way, and this seemed like a situation somewhat related to the original issue. I have a few ideas floating around in my head, but those are for another time and thread.
