lately i've seen a lot of the finger pointing between traders and pirates. and while flying around on my traderoutes today with my centaur, i had a possible solution that would maybe make both sides happy. so my suggestion would be...

take away one or two weapons ports on the trading ships (such as the centaur) and replaces these with an additional engine and/or battery port (or at least give the option to either a two engine/battery one weapon setup or a one engine/battery two weapon setup)

...this would allow traders to travel much faster than their pirate counterparts, and thus give them a chance to escape from pirates. on the other hands, traders have to give up weapons ports which would lessen their ability to defend themselves from an anbush. in other words, a successful pirate would have to set up an anbush on a trader in order to destroy the trader and a sucessful trader would be constantly on the lookout for pirates (perhaps even hire scouts) and would at the soonest sign have the ability to escape (by outrunning the pirate).

hopefully this is a possible solution to the current finger pointing war between traders and pirates.

It is currently possible to out run pirates. People just don't know how.