Play SOLO until you have the money the ship/s and the upgrades you want then go open play - it will save on the pain. NPC's are easily predicatable but human players as you have found out to your cost are the unknown quantity and more often as not, will cause you a loss of profits.
It is not really about flying what you can afford to lose but more, fly safe and in a world without humans until you are ready and financially viable to take on heavy losses.
Sorry for your hassles, I would be happy to bung you a couple of million if I was able to.
Yeah... the thing is I was trying to avoid that. It seems like a bit of sucky thing to do, ranking up on SOLO mode and then bringing the heat into OPEN PLAY. I figured I should just make a choice one way or the other and stick with it, so I did. I stopped playing on SOLO completely once the final release arrived.
Also... I have taken heavy loses before in the game. Lost an Anaconda in Beta and came back from it. And I'll come back from this. I just think there could be slight improvements, like making it clear how much the equipment will cost in the rebuy etc.
It was completely my fault. It was stupid and careless.
Someone else said I was impatient. And normally I'm not, I've played slowly before; grinding my way through trading, but they were quite right on this occasion. I have a big international house move coming up in 2 weeks, and I know it will be at least a month before I can get back to the game after that... so I tried to get a little ahead so that I wouldn't be so far behind when I returned. And I KNEW I was taking a risk, but as I said: 2 things in particular.
1. I had no idea when I bought the Asp that the rebuy would be 1/4 of a million, or I would have waited a couple more trade runs in my LT6 before I traded up (and maybe that info was available somewhere online and I just didn't look hard enough)
2. I thought that I could afford the ship re-buy (should the worst happen), if I simply didn't get the entire load-out. WRONG!
Also... I have beaten several players and more NPCs than I can count, so it was partly my own complacent arrogance that got me killed in the first place.
Anyway... I miscalculated greatly (both in credits and being too cocky) and I paid the price. But I still think it could use a little tweaking. I know most people here don't agree (one or two of them very abruptly), but there have been many things suggested on the forums throughout last year that I disagreed with. It would be a boring world (and ED universe) if we all wanted the same things.
Thanks for the credits offer by the way. I wouldn't have taken you up on it, even if it were possible, but it was a nice thing to say.
I'm sure I'll see you all out there again in the future.