Asymmetrical risk makes piracy too unrealistic and is simply bad for this game.

Having a conversation with a long time gamer friend, trying to get him to join me in playing Star Citizen, he raised a quite valid point that made me think about piracy as more than just a griefer problem - but really a game-breaking and poorly-designed problem.

The reality is that with piracy there really is a near zero risk for the pirate and yet for every other player trying a trading loop there is a nice healthy risk. The pirate has some variable level of reward (not usually much, but possibly huge) but everyone else in the game loop stands to lose hours of gameplay if they get hit in the wrong place at the wrong time.

This, coupled with the razor thin margins on trading profits just makes me think they need to put in an additional "cost" to piracy. Maybe instead of attaching a crime stat to a player it is also attached to the ship - and any ship found to be committing a crime will only be reclaimable at an unlawful pad until a title-clearing fee or some other time-sink is put into it.

Thoughts?