I'm tired of having to type this up in response to every troll that spews "JuSt HiRe An EsCoRt lolz" in response to piracy concerns. Escorts do not work. They never have, they likely never will. It's simple math: Any player with a combat ship can make millions of credits per hour currently by grinding out simple, easy pve bounty missions. Even running the lowest threat missions and ECN alerts, you can easily average 250k per hour, and this requires nothing more than a simple solo fighter. Now look at the most profitable trade routes currently in the game. Ignoring the limitations in place for purchasing and selling cargo, and using the largest capacity trading ship available (the Hercules C2), you're looking at 208k profit per run with the best commodity at present (agricium, arc corp to samson & son's, 12 minute trip - we'll say 15-30 minutes given the eventual advent of loading and unloading times, takeoff, resupply, etc.). We'll call that 500k per hour rounding up and allowing for how cargo refactor will be changing things. Realistically, with sale limits you won't be making nearly that much. Now that c2 hires escorts, and has to split the profits between them. With one escort, you're looking at 250k per hour each, so maybe this matches up to the profit a below-average player could make running pve missions on the easiest difficulty. Any more than one escort, and now you're making well below the minimum profit a single combat player can make running pve missions (166k/e with 2 escorts, 125k/e with 3 escorts, so on and so forth. This number gets drastically lower if the escorts are multi-person ships, or if the C2 has crew members to pay as well). Then we come to the next problem: On that trade route, the Cargo ship owner is having to pay 1.7 million credits up front for the cargo. Most escort players also want to be paid up front (Because hey, if they fail who's going to pay them if you're dead?), so that's a further investment he has to make. Even with just one escort, he's already looking at a 2 million credit cost, to make a measly 250k an hour: something he could do in a combat ship with absolutely no up front investment needed. And on to the next problem: There are no guarantees. Your escorts may be completely overpowered by attackers, especially if you hire only one or two. You never know what a 'pirate' group is going to come at you with, so unless you over-pay for more escorts, chances are you'll be outmatched. There's also no guarantee that your escorts, even if evenly matched, will be able to stop your ship from being targeted and destroyed first. It's not a difficult thing to take out a large, slow cargo ship while simultaneously avoiding or tanking fire. If the attackers outnumber escorts, this becomes an even more likely reality. The pirates can simply ignore your escorts, blow your ship up, and come back later to claim the cargo - because, despite all logic, CIG says that your cargo will survive catastrophic ship destruction now. So yay, thanks for that experience team, really looking out for the interests of the little guy there! You have no assurances of your escorts' ability to protect you, and at this point it really becomes a better financial decision to just avoid hiring them altogether. But wait, there's more: The incentive to partake in piracy is higher than ever. That C2 has to pay 2 million+ credits to even make that run, and will at best make 250k profit. The pirates, though? They invest nothing up front, and if they collect all of your cargo after blowing you up, they stand to gain the full 1.9 million credit value. Yea, apparently in this universe crime does pay. Why take a 2 million credit investment risk for less than an eighth of that in profit when you can just go blow up some other poor schmuck in a fraction of the time and make 2 million instead? Then there's the enjoyment factor: People don't like to be bored, especially when they're playing games. Games exist for entertainment. There is far greater entertainment value in doing something interactive than there is in something not interactive. Flying escort for a cargo ship, or a mining operation, is largely noninteractive: you sit around waiting for something to happen, which may or may not happen, twiddling your thumbs the whole while. This looks bad from the employer's point of view as well, because he's paying you to do literally nothing on the off chance that he gets attacked, and then he's taking every risk with absolutely no guarantee or assurance that you'll even do the job he's paying you for. Meanwhile, you could be off doing action-packed bounty and merc missions and actually enjoying yourself while making drastically greater amounts of money, so really you have no motivation to offer your services as an escort in the first place. Simple fact of the matter, and TL:DR for those of you with the attention span of a squirrel: Unless the numbers are dramatically changed, hiring escorts is not a solution to piracy. It is not profitable, it is not enjoyable, and it is not reliable.