Do the random NPC pirates take your ship's loadout into account when generated?

I've noticed this a few times now. When I find a suitable trading hub I yank out the Class 6 shield in my Python and refit it with a Viper-sized Class 3 (just enough to bump Haulers out of the way of the docking slot and protect from toast rack boo-boos), and load up on high capacity cargo holds to get around 284T of space. Then I proceed to milk the trade route's demand for all its worth.

Almost without fail the game will spawn something like a Deadly or Elite Anaconda/Python/Dropship and interdict me. The interdiction mini-game is impossible to win. The Red bar goes up even if you have the escape vector in the middle of the screen and the whole reticle is lit up bright blue. So I submit to avoid taking 10% hull damage. When we drop into real space, I easily outrun the big bad pirate ship and then continue to my destination.

Afterwards I downgrade back to the fighting configuration: 6A shield, shield cell banks, etc. But only 200T of cargo capacity. Do the same trade route and ... nothing. The same high bounty bad boys that almost always popped up before are no where to be seen.

I get the feeling the game somehow looks at the relative value of your ship. The mega shield costs quite a bit more than cargo holds and the dinky fighter sized shield, and somehow the game knows this when deciding to interdict the hell out of you or not. Moral of the story: If you want no interdictions, trade in a warship.
 
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Not sure, but I did over a weeks' worth of trading in a shield-less Adder and was never interdicted at all. Not sure if this supports or doesn't support your hypothesis.
 
Not sure, but I did over a weeks' worth of trading in a shield-less Adder and was never interdicted at all. Not sure if this supports or doesn't support your hypothesis.

I dunno, is the default Adder shield expensive? Maybe swapping it out for a cargo hold doesn't change the overall value of the ship very much so in the AI's eyes there's no difference in how 'soft and juicy' a target you are.

Or it all could just be really bad luck for me. But I swear every time I pack the mini-shield I get all the high bounty interdictions I wish would happen when I'm geared up for war.
 
I've been interdicted when I didn't even have a cargo hold, so it doesn't seem to me like they check anything.
Although that was shortly after release. Maybe they've tweaked things since.
 
Supposedly they do. Yet I've been interdicted by a Sidewinder or Eagle with no shields more than once (while in a Cobra).

It always spawns 1 token pirate in unknown systems, which is annoying. There should be more logic to it.
 
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