Suggestion: trading

[Horizon./MDVII]

TL;DR
But how to make piracy fun?

It's not that hard. It’s enough just to remember that you are in a role-playing game, and you are free to do anything that is not prohibited by the rules.

Illegal or "gray" activities have not been properly disclosed to my memory by anyone. All I remember is role-playing on the level: we are pirates, rob and kill everyone! Or the groups turn into some kind of ultra mega far anarcho-separatist communists who are trying to defeat left-wing radical capitalism (insert more political terms that are understandable to 1.5 human being). It is clear that with this game format, not a single sane player who controls a merchant ship would even want to meet a pirate. And it’s not even that Trader doesn’t want to pay tribute to the pirate or anything else. Come on, everyone has so much money that you just don’t know what to do with it. The problem is that a meeting with a pirate most often does not bring any interesting activity to the other player, because most players play PvP + money grind.

Hijack a merchant ship.
Fill it with cardamine and counterfeit, and force the merchant to sell it to the lawful's base.
This does not necessarily involve destroying trader initial cargo or forcing to pay money for yours "black" cargo.

Hijack a tagged trading ship
And demand money from Corporation for release of a ship and crew, like real pirates do.

Black Market & Smuggling
Black Market Augments, Munitions, Pharmaceuticals, Counterfeit Computerware
Cardamine & Nox, Artifacts & Xeno Relics, Criminals & Prisoners,
Diamonds\Gold\Silver else.

Hogosha's casino
Jammi made a system for throwing dice,
which could be the basis of "slot machines" or whatever you want.

"Protection"
We have a huge number of different bases,
but I don’t see ANY criminal group that would come and demand a share from the owner of the base.

Corporate Warfare
Corporations do not make secret agreements with criminal groups in order to harm their competitors
- I want to note that a hell of a lot of players are just afraid to do this (dunno why).

Playing as criminals requires the use of brains and imagination. In order for a merchant to risk flying through the criminals, he\she must understand that something interesting may await him\her, other than stupid extortion of money. It's not for pew-pew at each other and not for pew-pew on the pebbles. And especially not for playing the “W” button simulator. This is why piracy is “boring”, not because the prices on some bases are not "correct".

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It's a wonderful life