Sounds like a good idea.... but...

"It would make Escorts more than an easy source of income for players."

is an understatement :p I'll take an escort and jump to a collector sector and start killing up oruns :p Can you limit payment only to sectors that currently have one of the convoy bots in it? Or is this done already?

. . . Which would result in players seeking out an ion storm & then taking escort missions back & forth across it.

Overall, that sounds like a lot of merchants getting properly escorted -- a definitely pro-social activity.

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Perhaps this would also influence the faction standing with the shipping faction if ALL of the convoy is delivered safely? (& down if there are casualties -- what are we doing paying you 80K/kill when you let them take out our Behemoth XC.)

I like the mission-oriented reward of a percentage of the profits from the convoy where the incentive is to protect the transports all the way to delivery and not to kill things to make more credits. That being said, the current percentage seem disproportionate and should probably be reduced for escort missions that see no combat. I can see bonus payouts per kill or an increase in the percentage in the event of combat, though. Waiting to see how the changes in the forth-coming DynaEconomy(TM) will affect prices (and therefore Escort payouts) before commenting further.