It's easy to gank a freighter in 0.5 space.
Simply have 1 of your team mates get concorded as far away from your target. During that time bump the freighter & using the new Tier 3 battlecruisers, let off a few alphas. Scoop the cargo with an industrial. Rinse & repeat.

CCP should have concidered the impact of introducting Tier 3 battecruisers with higher alphas then tier 2/3 battleships for half the cost. At least give freighters mid & low slots so they can fit some passive hardeners. Your customers would greatly appreciate it.

This!

Yes, they can take 1 load out of high sec... but then how do they get back? Hmmmmm.....

the salvage ofc

You reduce your wartargets ability to move assets around. This is usually a solid advantage to have. Plus of course the ISK value of several b. And, if you're into that kind of stuff, the killboard embarrassment.

I will say it again: Freighters need module slots, just like every other ship. Then their captains can decide for themselves if they want more room or more tank. The smart ones will take tank. The cargo ones will probably keep getting ganked.

But the point is when players have zero options then player intelligence (or lack thereof) never enters the equation either. There is no tangible difference between a smart, cautious freighter captain and a moronic, greedy one when both can be killed by the exact same gank setup.

When freighter captains do have options - such as sacrificing tank for cargo & vise versa, only then will people have any right to talk about whether ganking freighters is a problem or not, because only then will the issue of ganking actually be factoring the freighters into the equation. Because right now the freighters themselves, and their captains, aren't even part of the gank equation: They're a fixed set of numbers than can be destroyed with a 100% certainty by a fixed set of gankers, no contest, no questions asked. Player ability or decisions don't enter the picture at any point - and that is a problem. That is nothing more than pure, undiluted bad game design, plain and simple.

Now if you give freighters module slots and they do nothing but fit cargo extenders and stuff themselves with billions of ISK worth of stuff and get ganked, well at that point you can legitimately tell them to STFU and grow a brain (or bring escorts). Meanwhile, the other freighter captains will be using those module slots to tank themselves up to the limit so as to make ganking a losing proposition, ISK wise, for any would-be attackers. Either way, you would get a fair game for freighter captains where Risk vs Reward is actually a thing... because right now it isn't.

Sure they do.

Don't fly with enough loot in your freighter to make yourself worth Ganking. Ever seen a Freighter Suicide Gank Killmail where the Freighter was Full of Trit?

What you call a nerf is not a nerf at all - it is just specialisation: