Yes, you don't meet pirates. I searched for them yesterday, for 2 hours. I met not a single one.
Why?
Pretty easy!
The universe of Disco is huge. Trading opens many route options, much more than mining did.
Miner from Dublin went: Leeds-Magellan-California-NY Detroit, only if it was really bad they detoured to Cortez.
So pirates knew: Ah! This is the main line. Sit there and have fun.
The haulers knew: Ah, this is the main line. If I want to earn money and go low risk, don't go at prime time. OR (and that is IMG thinking): Ah, it is prime time. Let's try it because we can and it will be enormous fun.
Escorts knew where the dangerous part was and they knew some of the pirates, had dirty deals with them, informed the Navy, etc... roleplay!
=> Point is: There used to be almost guaranteed interaction in some regions because the mining mod clearly defined start and end points for ore runs. The routes were limited and could be kept under check by pirates.
Now things have become diffuse... no one knows where to be. Traders fly all kind of fancy stuff to all kind of fancy places, resulting in 4 players in [unimportant system X] and 3 in [unimportant system Y] with no interaction and no player-player meeting.
That's the problem.
It's not the pirate's guilt.
It's a structural problem when you take away hubs of roleplay and routes/points where game focusses.
I won#t deny: too much focus is bad. But no focus is worse because with the players dispersed like yesterday (at least where I was) results in exactly no roleplay happening.
