velvet yoke
It would be nice to have other rewards than money when rescuing distress signals, like a map of nearby asteroids, scout data on hostile and neutral ships, or even indication of other stranded people who have no ability to emit a distress signal !
Concept of a mission description :
-"We were going to recue an hijacked ship, but our propulsion was destroyed by an electromagnetic anomaly ! Rescue us and we'll be able to give you data on the hijacked ship's position !"
Other types of escalations could happen too, like destroying a pirate station could yield an item that if you manage to find it among the wrecks and take it aboard your ship you could analyse it and it would show you the way to a pirate mining operation !
gilded hare