A trade mission where players could join a convoy as members, (not escorts). I know rats will probably deny this, but I think this would be a sound idea for lower level traders. On the other hand rats could find some fun in it because escorts would immediately engage them and large furballs could be formed this way.

+1 and make it group with the escort missions as well, so players can be in the same convoy as both haulers and fighter escort. This is a great idea to replace the existing "single player" Trade Guild missions we currently have.

Some rats run escorts while pirating, so this could also work in the pirate's favor.

Heh, I pirate my own escorts, and sell their loot back to the station that gave me the mission. Most of the time I don't even have to leave the station sector before killing them (first two killings of your "escorted" convoy do not have faction penalties most of the time). And that initiating station is often the one offering the best price for the goods being shipped. Yes it is fairly broken. (It used to be even better - two years ago when I first donned my eyepatch, NPCs never penalized you, so you could kill as many of them as you wanted, wherever you wanted. It was glorious!)

Anyway, on topic. Why can't you do this with existing escorts? They don't actually care what ship you use and whether you actually defend them. All they care about is that you stick with them. If they die, you take no penalty. You just make less money, since the pie (and therefor your slice) becomes smaller.

The only thing lacking is for the NPC escorts to defend you as well as the convoy.

Also, I should point out that pirates are not interested in large furballs with convoy escorts. The point of piracy is to kill the cargo ships and take their cargo. If we get into a big fight with the escorting NPCs, the cargo will just fly away. If we just wanted to fight NPCs for the sake of fighting, we'd do hive skirmishes.

The way convoys work right now, it's usually best to just ignore the escort and focus on killing the cargo ships. And if there is a player cargo ship, I can guarantee you it would be the first thing we'd target (unless we had scanners and the NPCs were carrying really good stuff). Players are potentially much more dangerous than NPCs (even when the player is in a moth and the NPC in a combat ship), and players also know how to run away.

The only time it's worth killing the escort is if the convoy has a long way to go and a lot of ships. For shorter trips (or trips that only go a short way before reaching nation space), there isn't time to kill all the escorts first. And for small convoys, it just isn't necessary - you can have the convoy mostly wiped out before the escort begins to interfere, and small convoys have small escorts. You just have to watch out for the occasional WTD. Also, every time you follow the convoy through a jump, they forget they were mad at you.

Now, if the mechanics of convoys were changed so that the cargo ships did not leave until the escorts were ready, we'd be more likely to fight the escorts. It isn't that we're unwilling to fight for the loot, it's just that the loot is the goal and current game mechanics make fighting the escort counter to our goal. I would love to see slower, more valuable convoys with bigger escorts that behaved that way, so that we could fight hard and win big. Balancing defense, reward, and frequency are the hard part. Don't get me wrong here, I'm not asking for things to be easier. Just more fun. Current convoys are low risk, low reward. I want some high risk high reward convoys.

The transport side of the escort mission actually is an independent 'mission' that was designed to be taken by players (as well as NPCs). I'm not sure just how much it would take to finish that (it's been a long time), but the work : (players * satisfaction) ratio is probably not favorable.

Thanks for the comment Pizza - it's all stuff I've thought about before, but I think you've distilled the really important flaws and have sensible, relatively-easy solutions. Note that your convoy betrayal is recorded, and I'm going to do something with that info Soooon!

We look forward to seeing the outcome in a couple years then, Mom.

^

You'll never know the real ratio if you never try it. It can be hypothesized that it won't worth the work, but it may turn out that many players would take it indeed. Just to get some protection let's say. If you consider the amount of noobs trying to trade they ould definitely boosted by the "free protection". On the other hand sometimes vets also could take advantage of such missions. Not talking about group missions, just like the HS-es. Just let people take the same mission and let them choose which role they prefer, escort or transport. The rest will work out themselves. Multiple humans as transports, 1 transport 1 escort... the combination can be infinite.
E.g a voy with valuable trident parts within would be escorted by more if player donated some money beforehand or other ideas... This would really bring people together imo.
I know that rats mostly go for the loot, but making their work a bit more difficult is not bad. Taking some risk for the valuable reward worth it I think.

EDIT: Just consider the number and "population" of the non fighting guilds, and 1/3 population of the fighting guilds. Multiply this with the satisfaction of the trading players and you'll get a huge number which imo significantly larger than the work needed to complete the already started development. If really soon (tm) could be applied and such mission would appear for e.g this christmas me and fellow traders would be more than happy.

So, are the extra "o"s in Soooon for extra Soon(TM)?

Sorry I missed that... My intention was to write Soooooooooon (TM) , if I could buy some extra haste with that ;)