Why is the community population declining?

[Anaximander]

We won't introduce rules about maximum piracy demands, because if we put a non-context based maximum cap - it becomes the default demand.

"$30m demands get you sanctioned."
"Kay. 29m r dai."

We'll continue to use our judgement to decide which demands are abusive and designed to enable pirates to kill traders and nothing more. If you feel that was the case, submit a report - we may disagree though. There are lots of variables that affect the context.

If you introduced % of ship's value lost on death, pirates would have a real incentive to salvage what they can from the situation, and the trader would have a real incentive to pay up. You could let go of the "unreasonable demand" limitation.

Official factions could offer ship replacement programmes, giving players a real incentive to join.

In EVE (yep, my new favourite basis for comparison) you can be unlucky and have your ship destroyed and your pod with all your expensive implants ransomed - you have to trust the dude that just killed your ship with your money and hope he won't kill your pod/clone, but he is free to kill your clone AND keep your money if he should choose. Most ransomers are honourable though, because they need every bit of extra cash and understand that by not keeping their word, their reputation will be tarnished, and they won't be able to random any player who does background checks / knows who's who.

Sometimes order come from chaos (like EVE), and sometimes order leads to chaos (like here). Maybe I should apply for TAZ :-)