Back when Painite was king that was my zen place.
Get my Minerconda. Turn on a podcast or something and turn my brain off for a couple hours. I loved it.
But then they had to go changing shit.
Doing trade routes in solo mode is considerably less engaging, but is still a great zen thing for me while I listen to podcasts or half watch something.
Shit man. Play in open just for the engagement. Random interdictions and negotiating with pirates is annoying when you’re new and broke. But it’s just part of doing business when you get a few ships and some coin under you. Breaks up the monotony of the trips. Most pirates are RPers. You give them like 10 units of beer or something and they’ll let you go.
But then there’s the straight up gankers. They just suck. Losing 2 hours of work because some scrub who can’t pvp can feel better about himself never gets easier. At least it didn’t for me. They did inspire me to build a revenge FDL and learn to use it tho.
Edit - One time I talked a couple RPers into flying block for me on a run into Jamison. They interdicted me and asked for x tons of something. I offered them 3x that to escort me to port and protect me from gankers. I got interdicted twice more on the way. They killed 4 otjer pilots protecting me. Was a good time.