Because in RL if a freighter sees a bunch of small boats assembling they call one of the navy fleets patrolling nearby and if those small boats don't have a good reason or are armed they get warned and then wtfpwned. In EvE the Navy just sits there and even let's the pirates scoop the loot. Completely different.

How about every time a cap ship is solo it reverts to 300,000 EHP. If it dies (cus it was ratting) its the pilots fault for not having remote reps, scouts, webbers and instantly deployables cyno alts.

There is when it comes to ganking. Why don't people gank in cruisers but instead use dessies. Cost.

Thats balance based on cost.

I vote we make jump freighters cost the same as a catalyst and be done with it.

Lmao. So cost is not a balancing factor but if theres not enough loot to justify the cost you won't gank it. Got it :)

Since the next best thing, cruisers cost 5 x more (due to material costs) ganking freighters overall would be more expensive and overall ganks on freighters would likely decrease.

Which is why freighters need a HP buff or tank fitting ability. To drive up the cost of ganking to a point it was originally at, profitable to gank a pi+¦ata but not an empty freighter or just carrying a typical cargo.

The other direction would be a balancing factor is a material requirement. That doesn't make sense to me.

It is sort of silly to have a hauler so big and defenseless that ANYTHING you can fill it with is a bad idea. that's as broken as a 600M isk battleship that can't kill any other battleships.