I have experienced this a few times, with traders docking, switching to heavily armed characters, and then fighting back. It did get very tiring, with said traders saying they "called backup" or bombers running away and calling in a destroyer or something heavier. It makes a pirates life unnecessarily hard and I am glad that this decision has been made.
Also, now this is against the rules, traders should be able to hire escorts more often because they are now more vulnerable and cannot rely on their other characters to protect them.
