I have a suggestion to make the "milk run" bar missions, where you ferry goods for people, less punishing. What I mean by that is sometimes there is literally NO WAY you can do a mission; by that I mean you get to the drop off point, and its a pirate base. You get attacked by a pirate fleet, and are forced to fight because you are unable to disengage as you have a huge fleet.
You win but now the station refuses to trade with you, so you cannot make your delivery, and now your ***.
Why do I say this? Because now a max strength death fleet bounty hunter will prepare to come after you and dunk on your day because you can't do the now impossible delivery mission and inevitably fail.
What I think would be good is if, like when you can't hand in your payment for the Tri Tachyon loans and ask for more time, you can do two things:
"I can't do this delivery"
"I need more time to do this delivery"
The first one makes you lose 10 rep with independents, the other one makes you lose 5 but gives you an extra 60 days. It makes the delivery missions make sense (because sometimes you literally cannot do their mission due to this or that reason and have to abort). And would make sense in a lore sense; why would you send a max strength death fleet against the guy who is 100/100 Cooperative reputation with Independents and is known to have a good track record with deliveries but just can't make your delivery?