So before I start, this is a thinly veiled buff to piracy. I'm not going to lie, it's pretty much the only profession effected by the cargo mechanics in this game (barring mining, but most of these shouldn't impact that too much).
Currently, piracy is severely bottlenecked by the cargo drop / scoop / weight mechanics. There are also complaints that piracy results in the trader's death far too often, if you scroll to the end I also have a suggestion that, coupled with everything else in this thread, should make killing the victim highly unprofitable.
So anyway, these are my suggestions on improving cargo scooping without outright removing the little mini-game FD have put in place:
Increase Limpet/Damaged Hatch Drop Rates
Damaged hatches and limpets should not only drop more, but drop it faster. I say this because what you will find is that piracy victims very rarely, if ever, cooperate when asked to drop cargo so this is the most common method of acquiring said cargo.
Due to the short FSD recharge times the best thing to do is shoot their drives offline, when this happens they continue to float away usually at their max boost speed. By the time you've got a limpet on them or shot the hatch, some of it will come out and you have the choice between scooping the ~8 pieces or following the target for more pieces. If you travel too far, the original 8 that dropped will drop off the radar and despawn.
If you leave it too long, the target will also reboot their drives (which is fairly quick) and FSD off. This usually leaves you with, at most, 16 pieces of whatever they were carrying (usually a lot less). I assume this is why a lot of pirates kill their targets if they don't cooperate: it simply isn't worth trying to take the cargo by force. Whatever the cargo is, I can likely make enough money to buy 16 pieces of it in ten minutes in a RES or within a single trip in my t9.
Increase Can Despawn Timer
So... that timer... AFAIK no one can scoop more than around 20 cans before they start despawning. This severely bottlenecks the piracy profession.
I don't think this really needs discussing in depth as it's impacts are immediately apparent.
Item Grouping
So if someone is carrying 100 palladium, and they hit the jettison button, I think it would make sense not to flood the game world with 100 cans of palladium that no one will ever be able to (or want to) scoop.
Let's be honest, the scooping mini-game is fun but it isn't so much fun you'd want to spend twenty minutes doing it. I think the best way to reduce this tedium would be to try and put an upper limit on the number of cans dropped.
So if someone drops 100 palladium, it becomes twenty cans of "5xPalladium". If you have three cargo space left and go to scoop one you get three palladium in your hold and you jettison the two cans of palladium that wouldn't fit.
Scoop Speed and the Targeting Reticle
Two points here, one is that the scooping speed could probably be raised a little. I liked the video I saw on-line prior to purchasing Elite of someone scooping in combat, realistically if you did that you'd probably destroy the can. I'm not sure how necessary this would be alongside the other changes above, perhaps not at all, but it's worth considering.
The second is that the targeting reticle is dodgy on almost all the ships. Some of them slop downward, some of them if you aim on centre part of your hull will whack the can, on others it's best to aim to the far right/left. That's just poor design and needs fixing.
Increase System Defence Response for Murder
So this is the, rather simple, part I think would create a very powerful incentive not to kill people as a pirate.
On it's own, this isn't going to achieve anything. But if the person you just pirated has dropped 200 palladium all over the place, and killing them will get the in game police to show up, you are obviously not going to kill them.
To do so would mean abandoning the loot, which would actually have some value. Under the current system if someone doesn't cooperate it's quite easy to murder them and scoop the minimal amount of loot they dropped with no major difference to the outcome for the pirate.
There are suggestions to massively buff the bounty mechanics also, I kind of agree with this, but piracy needs to be made into an actual profession first. Currently that would just be a case of nerfing what is already the worst profession in the game into oblivion for the majority of pirates.
TL;DR
Cargo drop rates/scoop mechanics bottleneck piracy. Targets dropping more cargo and pirates being unable to scoop it should they kill the target will discourage murder.
Currently, piracy is severely bottlenecked by the cargo drop / scoop / weight mechanics. There are also complaints that piracy results in the trader's death far too often, if you scroll to the end I also have a suggestion that, coupled with everything else in this thread, should make killing the victim highly unprofitable.
So anyway, these are my suggestions on improving cargo scooping without outright removing the little mini-game FD have put in place:
Increase Limpet/Damaged Hatch Drop Rates
Damaged hatches and limpets should not only drop more, but drop it faster. I say this because what you will find is that piracy victims very rarely, if ever, cooperate when asked to drop cargo so this is the most common method of acquiring said cargo.
Due to the short FSD recharge times the best thing to do is shoot their drives offline, when this happens they continue to float away usually at their max boost speed. By the time you've got a limpet on them or shot the hatch, some of it will come out and you have the choice between scooping the ~8 pieces or following the target for more pieces. If you travel too far, the original 8 that dropped will drop off the radar and despawn.
If you leave it too long, the target will also reboot their drives (which is fairly quick) and FSD off. This usually leaves you with, at most, 16 pieces of whatever they were carrying (usually a lot less). I assume this is why a lot of pirates kill their targets if they don't cooperate: it simply isn't worth trying to take the cargo by force. Whatever the cargo is, I can likely make enough money to buy 16 pieces of it in ten minutes in a RES or within a single trip in my t9.
Increase Can Despawn Timer
So... that timer... AFAIK no one can scoop more than around 20 cans before they start despawning. This severely bottlenecks the piracy profession.
I don't think this really needs discussing in depth as it's impacts are immediately apparent.
Item Grouping
So if someone is carrying 100 palladium, and they hit the jettison button, I think it would make sense not to flood the game world with 100 cans of palladium that no one will ever be able to (or want to) scoop.
Let's be honest, the scooping mini-game is fun but it isn't so much fun you'd want to spend twenty minutes doing it. I think the best way to reduce this tedium would be to try and put an upper limit on the number of cans dropped.
So if someone drops 100 palladium, it becomes twenty cans of "5xPalladium". If you have three cargo space left and go to scoop one you get three palladium in your hold and you jettison the two cans of palladium that wouldn't fit.
Scoop Speed and the Targeting Reticle
Two points here, one is that the scooping speed could probably be raised a little. I liked the video I saw on-line prior to purchasing Elite of someone scooping in combat, realistically if you did that you'd probably destroy the can. I'm not sure how necessary this would be alongside the other changes above, perhaps not at all, but it's worth considering.
The second is that the targeting reticle is dodgy on almost all the ships. Some of them slop downward, some of them if you aim on centre part of your hull will whack the can, on others it's best to aim to the far right/left. That's just poor design and needs fixing.
Increase System Defence Response for Murder
So this is the, rather simple, part I think would create a very powerful incentive not to kill people as a pirate.
On it's own, this isn't going to achieve anything. But if the person you just pirated has dropped 200 palladium all over the place, and killing them will get the in game police to show up, you are obviously not going to kill them.
To do so would mean abandoning the loot, which would actually have some value. Under the current system if someone doesn't cooperate it's quite easy to murder them and scoop the minimal amount of loot they dropped with no major difference to the outcome for the pirate.
There are suggestions to massively buff the bounty mechanics also, I kind of agree with this, but piracy needs to be made into an actual profession first. Currently that would just be a case of nerfing what is already the worst profession in the game into oblivion for the majority of pirates.
TL;DR
Cargo drop rates/scoop mechanics bottleneck piracy. Targets dropping more cargo and pirates being unable to scoop it should they kill the target will discourage murder.