Money making balance

[McNeo]

Have you thought about possibly making trading actually fun for the trader and not just a grinding exercise?

Fact is, in a trader, once you see a pirate you've already lost, unless you're within 15k of a docking point (maybe half that if the pirate is a gunboat). Your win condition as a trader is escape, nothing more. There's no fighting back, particularly in a 5k, and even battletransports and liners are at a disadvantage even though they've sacrificed cargo space in the hull and even more again to house however many guns they've got. This was purposely made the case a long time ago after a few incidents where a few very successful convoys reverse-pirated a gunboat or two in Omega-7.

The quality of the interaction is predictable and monotonous, as is the act of trading itself. Right now, the only way to trade is the afk variety. I don't decry people who want missions to remain profitable, in fact that's a symptom of just how mind-numbingly boring trading actually is. And I should know how boring and unengaging it is, because I trade for at least 7 hours a day on weekdays while I'm at work getting paid real money.

My ideal changes are:
Mining most profitable.
Then Missions
Then Trading
Then missions in a fighter (yes, I am aware that its not really possible to signpost to the player whether they'll have gunboats dropped on them or not).

And give transports a fair shake in PvP against pirates. I've ideas for that too, but I get the feeling that making transports actually viable in PvP in some way is not a popular idea. As far as I can see, there's a mentality of "since you can earn so much money in a transport, you should be a sitting duck in every player encounter". Right now, the current state of transports means I'll do everything in my power to avoid a player interaction, and I gather from the subject of this thread that that's undesirable behaviour for someone flying a transport. If I felt I had a chance to defend myself or even turn the tables, I'd not be so shy and I might even be a bit excited to meet a pirate, rather than just downright angry.