You log a pirate, and wait at a jumpgate to catch some fish. It's been 20 minutes, and at last, a ship comes in. You demand that it halt, and hand over... 100k. The trader mulls it over, and begins docking with the gate. You engage, follow them through, and cut-off their escape via the lane. In another 5-10 minutes, you blow up the transport which never fires back, but uses all of its regens. You are back to square one, but no more fish come, and you receive a nice message from the trader you killed. In another 20 minutes, you're accosted by a pair of lawfuls, make your exit, and log off.
You log a pirate, wait 10 minutes, and get a fish. You demand 100k a quickly get the transfer. You jump over to a nearby system and harass a few miners for 100k a head. It's been about 25 minutes, and you're up ~400k - a great day. You catch no one else as people avoid your fishing grounds. You consider asking for 200k per head next time, but are afraid of getting sanctioned.
The trader that passed you is up 2mil by finishing the first leg and taking a different route back. They are still pissed at you and add your character's name to a list of enemies using a discord bot.
How do we close this disparity?
Remove names from the player list? Allow pirates to make unlimited demands? Reduce the time it takes for a single pirate to kill a trader?
All of these have their own issues that have been discusses before, but maybe it's time to revisit them? The transport rework is coming eventually, but in some ways it will make the issue worse.
The idea here is to incetivize pirates, which incentivizes lawfuls and escorts, which themselves incentivize more trading. A nice ecosystem, if the gameplay for all its parts is sutainable.
