So in the end, Barge / Corvo changes - useful or no?

[Stone Bros Ltd/GmbH]

The only reason someone would choose to fly such a thing would be as a hardcore powertrader, and a non-RPing one at that considering the time waste involved. I don't think we want to accommodate that type of player, even if it does provide a fat juicy target for pirates.

I really don´t think so. For powertrading, 5ker wins in all aspects over barge, because it has better time/credit ration in almost all situations, especially due to mentioned bumping and docking problem barge has. So no, I don´t think that any sane power which can do maths properly would choose barge.

There are other ships which people call "crap" from practical point of view and yet they fly them because they for example like how they look or because they want to be special and thus fly ship almost nobody fly.

And same goes for barge. Some people just want to feel special and be attention seekers partially.

Anyway, if you are afraid people would not RP with the barge, you can prevent that by making it SRP only (like it was back in the past), or even SRP with extended check-in time period to make sure people want it for RP and won´t stop with it once standard check-in period is over.