I agree, the price increase changes a lot of things. The run and gun shoot everything that moves will quickly cost more than it returns if the players are not very careful, lucky or creatively successful.
As for piracy, the THREAT of an attack could cause them to cough up money or cargo in order to save themselves the expense of repair. An interesting business model might be 2 pirate ships, one at Very Long range with a Particle Beam barbette. This does 4D damage. Assume average damage and that is 14 points of damage minus armour value of the ship. So that barbette could cost 100 000 Credits per hit. If the VL ship had more than one barbette you are looking at some significant cost in repairs per round of combat. Small ships are looking at an expensive hit and probably a critical hit due to cumulative damage. The average for the Critical Hit chart is the Hull location. This can get very expensive.
The second ship approaches and gets the cargo. It probably has missile launchers to do expensive amounts of damage at closer range.
Missiles get an upgrade to cost effectiveness,
Standard missile costs 250 000 Credits for 12 missiles: That is 20 833 Credits per missile. A missile does 4D damage. Average cost of damage is 14 points of damage or 140 000 Credits worth of damage, minus armour. The earlier versions of missiles had them not costing one tenth the damage repair costs.
Adding in extra missiles to the salvo helps make sure missiles get through the EW and PD of the Ship. If multiple missiles get through there is a huge cost increase to the damage done with the multiplier. Getting a 3 missile salvo through the defenses and tripling the damage done will hammer a smaller ships finances, as well as its hull points.
Assume a 200 ton ship with 2 triple missile turrets fires at another 200 ship. 6 missiles launched costs 120 000 Credits per attack. If only 1 missile gets through and the ship has armour of 2 the cost of attack and defense is the same. If 2 missiles gets through the cost for the defender is doubled and the economic value of the attack is increased.
Going back the the Drinax game, or any mercenary campaign. If a crew is hired to "take out" a rival corporation and damage them in some way then a simple economic raiding operation could start inflicting millions of Credits of damage in a single battle. The Very long range kiting build becomes popular in that the goal is to inflict damage and run away and cost the enemy time and money in repairs. Targeting ships of a specific corporation could make them bleed money in repairs, or they keep ships running with damaged hulls, ever closer to a cumulative damage critical.
