So if a trader decides to run the gauntlet and try to get his goods through it's his own fault and he deserves to face losing between 1 and 20mil (insurance and cargo) vs the attacker who faces a *possible* loss of < 1mil (if they get unlucky and get rammed) and a more likely teeny tiny bounty they can lose with a sidewinder. If we follow your reasoning to the logical conclusion then all traders should only stay in solo and never poke their heads out. And then there would be nobody to attack pirate/pvp.
See this is why I have no sympathy for traders (other than they shouldn't be murdered for fun). Traders are blinded by greed. You say a trader might lose between 1 and 20 mil... well that's nice. Let's look at it from an hourly earnings perspective...
Pirate earns ~500k/hr or less (these days a lot less)
Trader earns ~3 - 9 million an hour (or more? I don't know, I don't trade)
So a trader with a 20 mil rebuy is earning at least 9 mil an hour, probably more, probably 9 - 11 mil, so in two hours time they can re-buy everything and be back to normal.
Pirate earns less than 500k/hr, they might have a 1.7 - 3.5 million re-buy... that means it will take the pirate 3.5 - 7 hours to recover.
Let's say that again...
Trader has TWO HOURS risk of time
Pirate has SEVEN HOURS risk of time
Who has more risk? Who has more loss?
In 24 hours... Pirate might earn 12 million (yeah right--piracy is limited to only a few hours a day due to server load, so... realisticall)... pirate actually earns 3 - 6 million
Trader earns... 72 - 216 million.
Wait. Traders earn 18 times more money?!?!!?
SAY IT IS NOT SO.
I have no pity for traders.
(but I find myself defending them anyways from murderers because the spice must flow)
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Becouse we have traders, explorers, pirates etc and PVPers the game cannot be ballanced as the PVPers will always have a ship built to kill and the others can not compete.
The only way to ballance is to make it high risk for the PVPers such as no insurance and increase the security response.
If this was reality the space stations, authorities would lose out on trade and have to do something about it to make space safer, unfortunatly FD has done nothing to help the majority of players, just the PVP minority, which in my opinion is a strange business decision.
So let's see... let's take a game choice (because PLAY IT YOUR WAY) that some folks choose, that already makes no money, and make it impossible for them to recover...
Because
Other players who choose to trade and make 18 to 50 times (assuming pure PvP [not pirate] makes near-zero credits) more money per hour who can be sitting on giant credit balances can continue to make giant credit balances which usually ends up in them growing bored and quitting the game because there is no content.
That makes sense!