Add carrots to the stick..

Yes, they really need to add back in some reward from the freighter/capital ship after you rescue it. The current "Hey, thanks for the rescue! Wanna buy the ship? No? Okay, have a nice day." Just doesn't cut it.

The attacking pirates are pretty easy to defeat and it's kind of fun but it's getting to where if I have something else in progress, I might just as well ignore the distress call and go about my business. I won't, of course -- law of the sea and all that -- but sheesh!

This sounds like yet another bad idea from HG. In Atlas Rises at least, you were given a moderate Units reward, a free warp cell and a free piece of antimatter. You had the option to refuse the reward (and the dialog made it sound like HG was trying to guilt the player into refusing it), but did HG actually think anyone refused it? A free warp cell? So you could try another jump and see if you rolled a freighter more to your liking? Of course no one refused it.

It's another change that seems intended to make the game harder that it was, and it was already hard enough before. And another instance in which HG seems to think players weren't behaving to expectations, so now HG is going to dictate behaviour by taking away features.

Sure, the individual pirates in this specific event were easy, but when your only access to capital ships is a rare event that could take a half hour or more to complete, giving us nothing to show for it but an option to purchase a freighter that has a 50-50 chance of being inferior to what you already have isn't an incentive to rescue freighters.

It's an incentive to turn to piracy.

Ya, I agree. HG bugs tend to cause carpel tunnel and ragequits. This feels like sloppy implimentation, more than playerhatred.

If they are polishing up, for Asian markets, I would think fleet code would sparkle. Commander Togo of Japan was a naval genius in WW2. China has some of the most interesting new carriers, with curved upward runways. Some of um prolly live for this.

I dont know Mandarin but a continuation of dialog leading to a no choice "LEAVE' click is straightup enduser abuse or real bad QA feedback during the game design phase.

Ramp-based carriers are less complex than ships with catapult systems. Cheaper to build, easier to maintain. But they don't allow aircraft to launch with as much fuel or ordinance as a catapult system.