Does RP even matter?

[Hielor]

There are two really important reasons to charging high prices as a pirate. Neither of them are really that big of an RP choice, but they connect deeply into RP.

1. It facilitates choice.

So you're trading one day in your favorite Behemoth (3,000 cargo) through Stuttgart (Luxury Food to Planet New London for 3159000 profit). You run into a pirate. He demands 500,000 credits. This is 1/6 of your profit. It's hardly anything. Does it cross anyone's mind that this is a bad deal? Is the choice here at all hard? Give him the money and go on your merry way.

Later you see the same pirate. He demands from you three million credits. This is the vast majority of your profit . This is a sticky situation. Now you have to think about what to do. Do I run? Do I talk to him? Are there Navy around? What ship is he flying? What ship am I flying? Do I have the right guns to attack him? Is the time I've spent coming here worth that much to me? Is Bretonia a safer haven than Stuttgart? Can I run something from Bretonia and avoid this person? These are the things your character thinks about. Within his personality, he can make one of those choices. I'd rather be a jerk and have a deep Roleplay involving choices than be everyone's friend and have bland Roleplay.

Well said, and this is true--but only up to a certain point, and it depends if the trader actually has a choice, or merely the illusion thereof.

If you demand, for example, all of the profit from a run or more, the trader doesn't actually have a choice--unless he gets away, he's going to be making zilch for that run whether he pays or you kill him. If he pays, he needs to finish the leg at a zero profit, and runs the risk of running into more pirates which would result in a whole lot of wasted time for him. On the other hand, if he dies, he has only wasted the time of the leg up to the point that he met the pirate, and he can immediately start another (profit-making) leg. He still "lost," he just lost less than he would've had he paid.

It's basically the "just kill me it's faster" problem, which is almost entirely the pirate's fault. If you as a pirate put someone into a position where (OORP, obviously) they're better off dying to your guns than paying you, then you are being an OORP jerk and are pretty much just fishing for blue messages.

This is even more of a problem if the pirate is equipped (or in a group) such that the trader doesn't actually stand a chance of getting away. The trader is essentially placed into a no-win situation, where all options suck, and that's not even remotely fun.