Open up the nomads. Give them to the pew pew crowd.

[Trogdor]

:lol:The trick is to find a trader character you enjoy RP'ing (and a ship you enjoy piloting) - makes trading less tedious. I don't even use the most profitable ships nor the most profitable trade routes, and I still made enough money to have a bunch of snubs, a couple of caps and two CAU VIII's (although I just lost one by dropping it in space the other day) + wasted a huge amount of money before I learned about the ship sale here on the forum. And I have enjoyed most of my time trading, it hasn't just been "Go to" / "Dock" all the way.

Truth be told, I often go above/below plane, and I mostly trade on my Junker ship and thus have a habit of being less exposed to piracy compared to Ore haulers, but I have also tested out different corporation ships/trade routes with no problems at all. Just stay away from Ore trading, as most lolpirates make their money lolmining, so they know what to do to extort miners/ore haulers. Personally I rarely had trade runs that didn't turn out profitable, and that is even considering the fact that I run a somewhat risky trade route.

Oh, certainly. I use a Bison myself. But when you're trying to work towards a goal (particularly when that goal is keeping you from doing what you -actually- want to be doing) there's a lot of incentive to do it in the quickest, most efficient way possible. Roleplaying a trader can be fun - but only for so long. Eventually the roleplay becomes as tedious as the route. And changing your route/cargo might often mean also changing your ship/ID because of all of the cargo restrictions these days (looking at you, Rheinland). Ironically now that I've discovered how much more efficient trading ore is, I'm having much more fun roleplaying with the miners. Plus, I'm getting pirated a lot less. Once I get north of Berlin and into Kusari, there are no pirates to be found despite the huge value of the cargo I'm hauling. It's literally more than twice as fast to earn money trading ore than it is trading regular goods.

Point is, if trading normal stuff during the day was as profitable as trading ore at night, I wouldn't have any qualms at all about hiring escorts to protect me against increased piracy or nomnoms.

---