At first I agree with most what @Karst said. And I say this as a both pirate and trader. Why would a trader even bother interacting when he's lost from the very beginning?
Now a bit of offtopic:
The reason why, in my eyes, piracy has became less and less popular over last *years* / *months* is the gap between piracy/trading profits. I used to fly with a group of 2-3 people on bombers back in 2015. Why? Because we had fun, chatting with each other for 30 mins / a hour or two before a single or two traders finally arrived at the scene. It was back when 2 mil was the most common pirate demand, well good lost and forgiven times, I'd say. We had fun, but yeah, fun, piracy was done when we could just hang around for the fun itself, as monetary benefit was near to none. I can also say that people had quite different way of approaching others back then. There was more respect and less salt and it's the sad truth.
What could make piracy more appealing is NPC trading convoys with credit cards / something really profitable. Pirate would simply shoot them while waiting for players. It would still be less than profit of a pure powertrading 5ker / proper capship missions, but it wouldn't be so influenced by another player. After all, piracy might lead to ruining someone else's day. And don't tell me about negotiations. I've played long enough to see people giving no damn about RP and simply willing to poof you down. Why? As simple as that, statistic trader is an armorless transport which can be shot down in no time by a single bomber. The more friends you get, the faster it goes. An inner, unstoppable starve for blue color floating on screen. And it was the simplest way to actually get a blue.
tl : dr To ones complaing about piracy being ((( :
Make piracy more appealing by adding credit cards to npc convoys, not by making traders pvp dead at the very 10milordai ==> Pirate gets money & trader has some reasons to interact with them as it wouldn't be as harsh.
I fail to see valid points behind this change, apart from reducing the amount of paperwork.
