But then its a pointless exercise, because you are judging Open now without the changes that focus on condensing the player spaces.
Surely everyone who is interested in interdicting people are already in open. Its not likely they are in solo is it?
And its not like making it open only will cause many haulers to switch to flying in open, they are more likely just to quit. So its not like i get the benefit of there being more possible targets to distract the hunters from me with alternate targets.
So, i don't see why its not a valid exercise.
There is a chance that if it went open only, and with a loss of many PG/solo haulers, powers will collapse, so play areas will be more condensed, and in theory, it might attract more hunters to the feature. But that could generate a snowball effect, where more hunters, less space, makes it harder and harder for the remaining haulers, until there are so few haulers all powers simply collapse back to their home systems. It should balance out a bit though as hunters on your side should be more likely to be able to help and some of the other side's hunters should be protecting their home terriotiries as well.
I think either what you would end up with though is just the hunters attacking other hunters while the haulers largely get on with things (and running when attacked) or, more likely, due to how PvP is in ED, if someone is kitted for hauling large amounts, then dying, a lot, and eventually quitting or kitting for defense and hauling so little they can't contribute enough to make any sort of impact. The other option of course is for everyone to fly cutters, so mass lock not likely, you have speed, and cargo space. Just imagine how boring that would be though, everyone just flying around in Cutters.
Anyway, its all pure speculation, but overall i feel its a good experiment to get a feeling of how it would be. If there are people out there attacking, then they are in open and should be attacking me. I want to see first hand just how dangerous it is and how likely it is that i will be able to get through and make my deliveries.
I do remember a few years ago PP hauling in open and i didn't get attacked once. Admittedly though i didn't do it for long, just a couple of days, because it was soooo boring.
And before you say it, no, being attacked by gankmobiles won't make it more interesting, just annoying. Either i'll consistently escape, in which care its just an annoyance, or ill consistently die, in which case it will simply reinforce my opinion that it going open only will be the death of hauling in PP.