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Regarding your 'Stand and Delivery' bit, yes in RL 99.999% of the time the target will hand over his cash since he is up against someone who is armed. But in the ED Universe, everyone is armed, or at least has the ability to be armed. And it seems SJA is trying to get her minions to adopt real player characteristics (and I think she is doing a damn fine job of it too), so if a real Commander would run and if he can't run, fight, so to will the NPCs.
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I have no problems with Pirating, as long as they understand there is no obligation for their targets to obey. They aren't obeying the laws of the Verse are they? Yet it seems when things don't go their way, even with NPCs, we see a rash of posts in the forum complaining that everyone is mean to the poor pirates.
The thing is, NPCs behaving the way they do
severely strains suspension of disbelief. Commanders act the way they do because, ultimately, the consequences of 'death' are just a monetary loss. If the consequence was actual death (ie, a save-wipe), the behaviour would be a lot different and they'd be a lot more risk averse. That'd be the way they'd behave if they were
actually spaceship captains in a position where they couldn't run. NPCs should behave in ways that a person
actually in that position would, not the way somebody playing a game where death has no permanent consequences does.
Secondly, there's a big difference between pirating, say, a trade loadout Anaconda, or even something like a Cobra, and a Type 9. In the former case, it's totally believable that if they can't run, they'll try to fight, because there's a fair chance they have the ability to make the attempt with a reasonable expectation of success, depending on what the pirate is flying. If you're in a shieldless Type 9? There's no way you can run, and there's no way you can successfully fight. Yet the AI will still die rather than surrender any cargo much (not all) of the time.
The criticism I see from pirates is not 'everyone is mean to pirates'. It's that the AI doesn't behave in a sane way for somebody in a position where they can't run and almost certainly can't win a fight. In that situation, they
should almost always be willing to drop their cargo to escape, but currently they often don't. It's not a question of there being an 'obligation' to obey the pirate, it's a case of the NPC reaction to the situation being totally at odds with the way people
actually behave when being robbed (ie, most people give the robber what they want), and it therefore harming suspension of disbelief and immersion. It also makes attempting to pirate NPC traders something of a waste of time, because there's no benefit from it.
