The way in which we need to raise trade/pirate interaction is by concentrating trade along the same routes that can actually be "camped" by pirates without dying of boredom or frustration. And to do that you need to:
This also drain the irp remote/unexplored/fringe/isolated systems and gives them another feel than "another system with 4-5 jump hole exits to all sides, yawn"
2. Additionally focus trade along "highways" by adding more alternative sell points for commodities/ores right on those highways.
3. Add alternative activities right on (within radar range) those highways:
- Immersive PvE zones that fit in well in the lore, which reflect the most important conflicts in a logical place for it to take place, not just random points where X small fringe faction fights house Y and for some reason faction Z also shows up
- low profit npc piracy
- Mining fields also on highways and not just at the ends of them, within radar range of a lane so pirates can make a surprise attack from them
- things like quasi-lawful casinos with associated race tracks or irp dueling zones
When a trader sees pirate activity in a system, there must be a chance that the pirate is busy doing those things instead of camping at lanes, so there is a chance to slip through in his mind.
About leading trade route through enemy territory, that would be smuggling. But for god sakes make it realistic. Pirates can camp 1-2 systems out of their home systems, you dont need to lead a lawful trader route right through omicron gamma to help corsairs with activity. Make actually taking the "dangerous" route realistic and immersive, dont make oorp behavior (lawful factions trying to slip through gamma or Virginia without permission) high profit, for christ's sake. A perfect example of a botched attempt of creating activity with unimmersive stuff that barely misses the mark but still misses it is the pristine ice route from cortez to delta:
- commodity of "pristine ice" ice unclear what its even supposed to be or what its used for
- shipping ice over several systems, almost all of them containing ice themselves.
- routes bait lawfuls into either breaking liberty law (virginia way) or waltzing right through an alleged fierce pirate strong hold (gamma). The only thing that keeps that constellation from creating stupid situations every day is that both virginia and gamma are oorply dead empty systems when they shouldnt be irp.
- pve and mining zones in cortez so far from the lanes they may as well be even farther from the "highway", since the large distance keeps them from generating any interactions with random travelers.
But I'm writing this fully knowing that once again, it's totally pointless. We have 20 small problems, all of which can be addressed, but one giant problem that keeps all of them from being solved: It's that those who have the power to solve them don't engage in any kind of rational discussion, especially outside their echo chamber channels. If you're lucky one of them will read far enough to post a roughly related meme that does nothing but show that he didnt even understand what was being said, and act offended when you mention his behavior later on. If you very lucky you'll get a "yeah I thought about doing that some time ago" about one of your 7 suggestions, and nothing more will happen. And don't forget the "I'm ignoring it because you're angry that I've been it ignoring it for years".
