I don't think there's really a way to incentivize people to patrol that way. They would just camp where the rewards are the best, no?
However you might be onto something, but it would probably be painful to pull off, considering the backwardness of the old engine and might get some people upset.
Basically, replace the current trade lane disrupting NPCs with a bit more dangerous ones, generic Pirates with bombers that are after ores and will target and destroy any ore carrying transport. These could bring a hefty reward (and since they are "random" instead of countinously spawning people would be incentivised to escort traders instead of hunting the NPCs exclusively).
You could give them big shield DPS but low hull DPS so they drain transports health slowly and arm them with CDs. That way we could "replay" vanilla Mission 1 every time a friendly silent ore trader gets jumped by them
Plus it would make nanos/batteries/hull damage a small credit sink the traders need to occasionally pay for.
