There are so many little things like this to learn, and re-learn in the game...
I agree fully that the pirates that find you every time you drop into rings is bad game mechanics, and does not really add to the experience. well most of the pirate gameplay leave quite alot to desire. There is no haggle/negotiations going on, you can't even demand stuff from NPC's if you are the pirate, but NPC pirates can tell you drop cargo and do it in an absurd request, drop cargo worth 60 000 credits. how much cargo is that? instead of asking you to drop 10 T of biowaste for example.
So the pirate gameplay is a bit hollow, and even if you are trying to comply with the pirate demands, if you are not fast enough to figure out how much to drop etc, they can still fire at you, while you do nothing, but standing still, no deployed weapons etc, etc. there is no "I yield" button to hit, to signal the pirate that you intend to comply.
So there should be 3 ways to deal with pirates
1. Destroy them, either by yourself or wait for authority to do it for you, but this mean that you have to survive long enough for them to arrive
2. Run away from them, works great if you are in a faster ship, but running away to another system only resets the mechanics for next time you drop in...
3. Comply with giving the cargo, that is not always working... so this can very often turn to either option 1 or 2.
And playing the game on and off for years, you have will have re-learn quite alot of things that have changed over the time, you are the prime target to get hit really, really hard for the Crime and Punishment 2.0... if you haven't already been hit by this. there is a big difference now between a fine and a bounty. A Fine you can always pay off with no problem, if you have a bounty and goes to the station to do the right thing, you receive a free trip to the nearest detention centre that often is 200+ LY from your current location, was super fun when you got this trip in a low jump range ship with no fuel scoop...now atleast you can buy a crappy fuel scoop at the detention centre, took them long enough to add that...
There is a first thing for everything in the game, and all I can give as advice is to be on the lookout and be ready for the unexpected. Flying shieldless was way easier a few years back, now it needs a bit more situational awareness for this.
Also, other players, while mostly a great bunch of people, that prefer to shoot a friendly O7 your way, there are still other players that prefer to shoot at you with weapons. And you can play the game and have hardly seen any hostile players and then one day, you seems to run into hostile players all over the place. So the space is big potential hostile place, and security rating of a system means hardly nothing, so be vigilant if you intend to play in open, then visiting engineers, community goals and founders world is prime hotspots for encountering hostile players, basically any places that will draw lots of players to visit that system, so try to be prepared and more vigilant about player behaviour.
Also note that with engineering and the then the 2.0 update to engineering, the power disparity between a fully engineered combat ship and typical cargo ship build is huge, where the cargo ship can be destroyed in seconds... Do not forget, that NPC ships can also be engineered, and we have no real way to see if another ship have been engineered or not.
So pay attention to what happens, and if it happens once, it is not uncommon for it to happen again, in most cases the game usually indicate and give us a message about these things, but some, like the pirates when dropping into rings todo mining, you have to learn about. And be vigilant when going to places where you are more likely to encounter other players, as it only takes one hostile player to destroy you. So if you do not enjoy being on edge to visit those systems and yet want to see other players, try out the private group Mobius, that is about players sharing the galaxy, without the pew-pew at each others part. or simply go there in solo.
Also a function that have got more attention lately is the possibility to block players that you do not want to play with. So you go to place, and another players decides to destroy you, you can now say thank you (more likely f---off) and block that player, and you will probably never see that player again when you play, so that player got to kill you once and now you are "dead" to him... so those getting blocked alot do not like this function very much, as that limits how many players they can find to destroy.
