Does RP even matter?

[Quan]

If traders start running, pirates should have no qualms about shooting at them. The onus should fall on the trader to role-play because he knows that he has been accosted by a pirate and if he chooses to run, it only means that he understands that he will be shot at by the pirate. There's always the option of surrendering with a higher price attached when he is about to be demolished. You can negotiate, trade down, bargain for some of your cargo and the pirates should also learn to accommodate and react.

This doesn't mean that the pirates should just start their demands with 5 million or die. Gimme or die is not good RP. Banter, set up demands as you go along, tell them to pay a toll fee, make fun of them, tell them to leave some of their goods. If they refuse, show them your big guns but don't kill them. You want funds, not deaths, unless you're roleplaying as a killer or something.

I don't like the rank and credits system. Pirates should pirate based on their preferences and judgement, whether the guy in the Rhino is capable of paying high dues or how much the boss of the company would pay to keep his transport well and healthy and not because he is level 90 and worth it. One of the guides I read about pirating talks about how a pirate should look at the ranks and decide if the players below 50 is capable of paying 2 million. Those player wants RP too, if they meet pirates, it's good too, you can always find something else to do with them. Acquire them, turn them into your runners if you think it's possible, hire them as fledgling pirates and pay them a pittance for every ship you pirate together, make them into partners as they grow out of apprenticeship, hell, introduce them to your drinking buddies and wife. It will be nice if the ranks system can be removed.

No permanent death makes players go pew pew pew all the time rather than make conscious efforts to find alternative solutions in their RP. Will the trader be more likely to run if he knows that he's going to lose everything (not just his reloads and cargo, but his 200m transport as well), or will he be more likely to pay up or bargain for a price? Will he spend time hiring fighters to guard his flanks? What about the pirates? Will they be more likely to target big transports or find easier targets because that transport has a couple of fighters flanking and scouting for him?

Like the anecdote the OP listed, he had reasons to be where he was and the other party objected (maybe he had his own orders/reasoning), he could be escorted out of the system or given due warning to remove his presence from the sector. The other party can also talk to his boss or partners and decide what they want to do with the miner. Maybe hire him even. If it comes down to destroying OP, then at least give him the RP. Why would he just go pew pew pew and end an ENTIRE CREW's lives? How would his faction take to his massacre of an entire mining crew? What would the authorities do? What would the consequences be? But no, pew pew pew is much easier and fun, and nobody really dies. That's why RP is limited.

Interaction, it's not just pew pew pew. Just my two cents. Not trying to dictate RP, but saying that RP is not limited to pay up or die, and that there are many more options and those options might lead to interesting encounters and scenarios.