There should be a thread and a guide about "How to pirate responsibly".
This game is made for both players of pirates and players of traders/miners. A game is only successful if every role is fun and players decide to play this role because it is fun.
Basically, pirates (often quite experienced players with good equipment) feast on the new players that still feel the need to earn money. They must, if they really want to participate in the game on equal terms.
Thus it would help if the pirates thought about the other player's situation behind the characters as well, when he pirates.
Some thoughts:
Demanding ALL cargo e.g. of a mining ship is an OORP loss of time of about 1 hour that you were sitting in a mining area shooting rocks, getting taxed at least once (since you are chanceless and it's easy money and people like to be on the side of the winner and not the loser!). The loss is about 20 million. That's way too much loss to be fun. Don't do it. I'm not a bad loser and I know that losing can be much more fun in roleplay than winning, but I can#t find any fun in losing sums like this.
Taking a little money doesn't hurt. It's part of the game. Pirates need to play their roles, traders too. Why not say "okay" to an offer of 500k, or 1 million? All money? 8 millions? This ruins the fun in gaming. If I spend 1 hour shooting rocks, I want to have a chance to get something from it to move on in the game.
Half an hour ago somebody (he was RPing nicely, everything okay from that point of view - so this stays anonymous) took ALL money I had (not too high sum, but everything) and I died later on because I had not even the possibility to repair the hull damage. Great. It was much fun to lose 8 millions to a pirate and to be killed later on and lose all the cargo as well. 2 hours of playing resulted in a loss of about 30 million credits in less than 5 minutes. Wow. Great thing. I don't know how many of you would enjoy that. I can't.
Just another thing to think about when pirating: It's also not nice to shoot a trader to zero shield (just to make your point, he agreed to pay or he already stopped) in the middle of an NPC swarm. How can I type, pay, defend myself against the NPCs, and pay afterwards for the hull- and equipment damage if I have nothing left? It's metathinking and a bit of "How would that feel if we changed positions" that could keep things like that from happening.
The situation that prompeted this post seriously made me reconsider whether mining/trading makes sense or whether it is just an aweful, stupid waste of time while other players profit from my time spent in mining areas by ripping me off in a 2 minute play in which a trader has no chance at all and no real roleplay possibilities. Sorry, I don't see the fun of roleplaying a situation that is completely clear from the start.
So the plea of a quite new player would be:
Be kind to the players behind the characters you pirate. I don't want all my efforts to buy a new ship be ruined by a player encounter. Tax me, ok. Shoot my shields and hull, okay. But give me the chance to get out of this as an OORP content person.
Just keep your demands moderate so that I can enjoy losing a little but winning enough to make the game move on smoothly for both sides.
Have a feeling for "what is possible" in the roleplay. If you see that it's a small ship and not very high player level and not even full armor class, and if the player tries to find an ingame solution that works for him, why not agree and leave both sides happy?
This is how it can work because the game needs to be motivating for both sides. We can't have only gunboats and stronger ships in the game bscause playing smaller, weaker vessels renders you a victim to everybody.
Mature gaming attitudes should make metagaming thoughts like the presented ones obligatory. They are obligatory for me.
Sorry for the frustrated tone. It was just a bit too much.
Andy - just another player on the same game who wants to have fun.