I'm sure that there are many people who assume an inherent advantage for the attacker, even in scenarios where no such advantage exists, and this presumption is keeping them from getting better at the tunnel game. However, there are almost certainly situations where the interdictor has a mechanical advantage they aren't supposed to have.
All true, but all beside the point.
My CMDR's trade ships are usually shieldless and none of them have ever been shot down by anyone or anything. I don't realistically expect to ever see a rebuy screen in them, outside of very contrived scenarios featuring competent gank wings that have been forewarned of my CMDR's routes as part of a deliberate challenge/test. Preventing an interdiction tether at all is frequently possible and if that fails, submit/high wake is too easy and usually happen before additional attackers can even be pulled into the instance and get their bearings.
But again, the countless ways to escape from hostile encounters and the extreme bias toward the defender in almost all other circumstances, does not mean that the tunnel game implementation is free from problems.
It's not so much that winning is impossible--I've seen plenty of CMDRs beat many back-to-back interdictions--it's that the penalties for fighting and loosing an interdiction are much greater than submitting.
Outside of those situations where the entire point is to tie up hostile CMDRs for as long as possible, my CMDR would submit to every CMDR interdiction even if there was a 90%+ chance of beating the interdiction. I know I am safe from all but the very best pilots during that tiny short cooldown window, but a long cooldown can easily be a rebuy screen, even against mediocre opposition. Ten short cooldown submits is safer than one long cooldown hostile encounter.
If I'm alone and dropping into a populated system where I expect hostile to be present, I'm not going direct to my destination, I'm pointing away from all gravity wells and opening up distance as quickly as possible, so my velocity increases as quickly as possible, so my sensor range increases accordingly, so I can see everyone and assess them as threats. If anyone is following, I'm further from gravity wells than they are and will remain out of range, barring better use of SCO on their part. Normally hostiles will turn back, looking for other targets, rather than follow somone out on to space forever...at which point I can loop around and make a high speed pass toward my target, either automatically dropping out if someone I can wing with has a beacon, or gravity breaking into my actual destination or a convienent orbital cruise zone.
I don't see this as unfortunate. The game is supposed to enable interaction, between CMDRs and NPCs aswell as between CMDRs. Large segments of the gameplay are dependent upon non-consentual interaction and since so much time is spent in supercruise (even after the addition of SCO) interdictions cannot be overly difficult.
If interdicting targets was always a major ordeal half the combat and combat adjacent mission in the game wouldn't work, piracy and anti-piracy escorts couldn't be a thing, and SC would be little more than a waste of time; they could go back to that idea of selecting a destination and playing a short loading screen animation as we functionally teleported around systems.
I do agree that the tunnel game was poorly implimented, bias or not, but anything that makes opting out of encounters too automatic, or that shortens encounter windows too dramatically, deletes gameplay.
The ideas that haulers don't have a chance during or after an interdiction, or that being in proximity to a station is safer for haulers, are both fallacies. The attack window within station masslock is much, much, longer than a short FSD cooldown and often longer than a long one. Stations also do not automatically engage law breakers, unless they are shooting at or are hostile to the station, and most gank vessels can survive being attacked by a starport much longer than lowest common denominator traders can survive being attacked by that ganker.
Anyway, before the minigame interdiction was automatically successful. A tether just yanked the participants out of SC and into the same normal space instance. We also had a 20km, rather than 10km dropout distance around stations. I've always felt it was an all-round better, and more balanced, setup...more emphasis on piloting and tactics for all involved.
