g hell am I sick of this grind.
Oh, I don't like grind myself, also I have impression that one of the reasons of the actual in-game "grind" mechanics is the side-effect result of the most effective grinders and "we are in a hurry" kind of players.
Yep, I perfectly understand your feelings. And with this mysterious attack on your ship - also.
But omitting this part of the discussion -
So far there is at least one somehow effective method to get some MEF's -
post written by commander Dommarraa looks like the best proof of this.
Also, even your negative and very costly "experience" can produce some practical conclusions (and I'll try to figure out them as this is that minimum help that I can provide):
1)
Unprovoked "shooting" without "warnings". This can be some unknown "glitch", but also there are some already known:
a) One or two times at the very beginning of my mapping experience I've encountered this when my ship was happen to be parked on the "usual" routes of defending skimmers (that is possible in some layouts).
The effect of collision between your ship (even parked) and a skimmer is very well known - and who will be accused as a criminal. There will be no warnings (case of zero-tolerance here)
b) With conda's (and probably with other ships of comparable size) there is at least one additional issue (see -
my bug report here). Read my story there, there is no chance to re-board the ship, only some chance if you dismiss it instantly (in case of tradeconda) and sacrifice your srv. But at least here you've got "warnings".
So, for your security reasons:
a) avoid using large ships for DAP runs if possible (also take into account that sometimes there is no any place to land them in reasonable proximity of a settlement).
b) large ships - beware on landing of the trespass zone proximity
c) in case of real - or just suspecting - any kind of problems - dismiss your ship as fast as possible. Don't try to return to your ship and board it to fly it on your own - just dismiss - if you don't want to lost your valuable cargo and to see insurance screen with big sums awaiting to be paid.
2) SRV driving
a) Don't use "drive assist" in settlements. SRV is pretty difficult to handle in that mode.
b) practice
c) If you got stuck in something due to issues with game mechanics/graphics - you can reload to vanilla Elite instead of sacrificing your SRV and then back again.
Don't loose your hope.
Hope this helps
(at least for other commanders - something to be aware of)
o7