(Off-topic but actually I personally am a Federal Vigilante Executioner and former Adle's Armada member, not a pirate.)
Didn't mean to think I was calling you it, but taking it in the spirit of your post where "I as a pirate" which is rather meta, preteding to roleplay a character...
On-topic: as I said in my earlier post and will repeat - hunters can cause tactical disruption and yes, repeat interdictions can achieve this.
And that;s why this tactic is retriubution rather than justice. There's no better method, but there's no good ones, so it's pick whichever bad one you think is most acceptable.
And for retribution, what they want is to say "How do YOU like it?". Actually putting someone to the rebuy screen can be, for that, less retribution than spam-interdiction. Which, yes, IS harassment. Not good. But there's no good at the moment.
To paraphrase Winston: Retribution is the worst way to get justice, but all the other ones available are worse. Unlike winston there, I want a better answer. Even retribution, for me, is ctharcism, not helping, and therefore selfish.
I'd like to see missions where two or more players are involved (hence has to be Open or Private) and one is asked to go to some place at some time and they'll get given the cargo to move, and another is asked to go to the same place and win up with that trader and protect them when they go deliver.
And when there's C&P, a mission available near by the route have that package as a target and any "pirate" player in that system can accept that mission and their actions are "condoned" by the pilots' federation and aren't hit by the PKer punishment.
So the two accepting don't know if there will be a directed player pirate on the way. A random player wanting to interfere have the escort to deal with as well as criminal charges, and a pirate player who was in the right place get a legit way to smack players as a pirate.
Retribution is one way to deal with it, but be ready to drop it when there's something better to come along. And in the meantime, retrivution doesn't matter if death isn't dealt, only retributive harassment to those who haven't learned yet that we are all civilised, even if we're playing a maniac, and that there's a good reason why altruism is so necessary to civilisation.
- - - Updated - - -
Nope.
Because of false positives.
Griefer Bob flies his 1% hull sidewinder in front of trader Bill.
Bill hits Bob. Bob explodes. Bill is fired at by the station, losing his ship and his cargo and earning a bounty.
AND now he wrongly is tagged as a griefer for two weeks and griefer Bob and his gank wing can hunt him down for more immersive content.
I don't think collision counts as a player kill, hence why some griefers will body slam a player to get them to open fire first and get a bounty. If collision counted, the griefer troll would get a bounty for their attack and the reply would be legit.
But maybe that's not the case when the collision ends in player death.
PS Back to Truesilver:
"I'm afraid I think it unrealistic that vigilante gangs are going to assemble and drag themselves to some random place to find a ganker for the fun of getting a few interdictions on them."
But some players would gang up and arrange a turkey shoot to get back at them. There's enough noobs who've played long enough to get decent at combat and buy a combat ship, that they can get together and do it.
And some of them will be good enough, especially against those who pick on the defenseless because they're not very good (and others have little practice against an equal), many will be able to go 1-to-1 and just keep interdicting and making them wake off until they log out or find mates to join them.
