At a USS, collecting materials for engineering. As said, no cargo, no missions, not wanted, no affiliation with local factions, just passing through. There's no reward nor reason to attack me. I avoid open play for just that reason. If you don't want to fight, you should have a way to avoid it. This tries to force you into combat situations when you may be ill equipped to partake. If this was indeed a conscious decision of the devs, in my opinion, this is a short sighted decision.
While I agree with you (you should have ways of avoiding conflict) the game is set up very poorly for it. High sec really just means security will respond quickly but there is still just a % chance that degraded emissions is a trap. Security levels only apply to individual systems, there is no overall geography to the bubble; high security sectors bordered by medium, bordered by low, with pockets of anarchy, you know, the way cities and neighborhoods work.
I remember when the AI was glorious back in 2.1, but a lot of players couldn't handle it so they nerfed it into the ground. The problem (IMO) was not the AI, it was that there was no way for a player to make an informed decision about how to avoid a situation you didn't want to be in, you were just forced into them because of RNG and your rank.
The only thing you can do is be cautious, roll with good equipment (speed can be very effective, much more than shields), when you drop in, be prepared to run or fight, don't just tunnel the goods, hang back with pips in eng/sys in case you need to bug out. If it looks clear after 20 seconds move in. High sec systems do have good security response, so you can always get in, and then let security drop in to help you.
Well at least you were in an Anaconda. I'm in an Asp Explorer with enough defences onboard to get away. Close cargo hatch, hit jump and keep boosting until out of mass lock range. Imagine if you had a paper-thin Asp or Diamondback stripped out for exploration, hauling nothing but 100s of millions of credits worth of exploration data. One pirate could wipe out everything you'd done for the last several weeks with one shot! That's a little beyond adding a bit of jeopardy.
That's exactly what happened to me when I came back to the bubble with 180million in exploration data in a stripped down low integrity Asp a long time ago, dropped into my first populated system (I had chosen a high sec system with an outpost very near the star with great care) and immediately was interdicted by an NPC pirate in a viper. I was extremely irritated, there was no sense, no excitement, no logic.
It was actually really well done and quite dramatic, so it must be intentional. I quite like it, it adds a bit of jeopardy. It definitely woke me up.
