What is the ratio of Traders using Battleship Scanners vs the Traders not using them? In my experience most Traders do not use BS Scanners. I can almost guarantee the figure comes out heavily in favour of the ones not using.
I have plenty of Traders and only 1 of them, a Liner, uses a BS Scanner. The reason this Liner uses a BS Scanner because it travels through very dangerous Territory and carries Marines to the War Front. Hence there is an RP reason for this.
I have seen recently quite a few threads asking for Traders to be nerfed in one way or another. Reduce their cruise speed when they are not on Trade Lanes was one of these. Trust me, Ladies and Gents, Traders can and will avoid Pirates if they want too. It doesn't take a Rocket Scientist to work out if there are Pirates around when you see Death Messages with the same Name attached to them. Or even if it is the same Name sat in the same system(s) hour after hour, night after night. Traders soon learn who to avoid and if they want they will drop off the TLs and just dive under or over even if you reduce their Cruise Speed.
I have also seen where a Trader has 1 or 2 Escorts and have come across a Pirate who decides to pirate the Trader. Some of these 'Pirates' turn out to very good PvPers, in bombers, and so they ignore the 'incompetent' Escorts and still explode the Trader for actually having the affront to have those Escorts. Then he turns around and destroys the 'incompetent' Escorts just because they had the affront to shoot at him and dent his shield a little.
InRP the pirate would probably look at two Fighters and a Transport ship vs his Bomber and get out of Dodge. But we all know that the good PvPers are not going to RP their characters as an 'Average Joe' and leave the area quickly. So the RP value goes out of the window as the 'Pro' gets 3 blue messages and complains that the Trader and his Escorts didn't RP!
Until the average Pirate doesn't sit all day, everyday on the Trade Lanes hitting every Trader that appears on his scanners for a stupid amount of money and RPs a bit more that 10 millordie you have 5 seconds to respond BOOM then, in my opinion, the Trader needs every advantage he can get.
The Traders get to know very quickly which Pirates do the the decent RP and they don't go out of there way to avoid them. I even paid a Pirate when I was sat at a Jump Gate even though I knew that on the other side of the JG was a Base on which I could dock before getting blown up. This was because the Pirate was willing to converse and spend a bit of time at the RP.
'I would like to be half as clever as some people like to believe they are' Life is full of disappointments, it is how we handle them that helps to define us, as a person
