Unfortunately, Wingmen or crew members don't do jack for people who do this type of thing. Note that he is in the armistice zone. Wingmen can't shoot weapons and I suspect that the pirate did not have a crime-stat. Had the wingmen rammed the pirates ship, the pirate would have claimed "HE" got rammed. Had the starfarer crunched the guy, again, he was rammed. Either way, the Starfarer pilot or wingman just got a crimestat while the "criminal/pirate/griefer (and yes, this IS griefing) gets away with no penalty other than to respawn a fast spawning ship.Pirates will exist and a Starfarer has the potential like other transport ships of being a sweet payday for them and so flying one alone is just asking to loose it. After all were was your wingman and crew? There is also lots of bugs that can be exploited, a lack of a robust security system and bored players who are looking for something to do in the sandbox. So its leading to a lot of negative behavior that hopefully will calm down as game features come online. But like I said Pirates and those with nefarious designs will exist as both players and NPC's and so you will need to pick the mission and ship that best fits your current situation. Going at it alone near hot zones of pirate activity? Perhaps a solo Starfarer is not the right choice.
I get what you are saying. I really do, but game mechanics are the issue here. Griefers use game mechanics to exploit a system that is broken and cause problems for other players. This is not a pirate in open space or near an outpost that is trying to capture/force down your ship so they can steal/loot it. It is not a player with a crime stat that your escorts can happily blow away and get rewarded for it. This is a person who used an armistice zone, ramming mechanics, to force someone down in a place the griefer could not take any advantage of it. It was only to cause someone else problems.
I have no problems with the pirate who hits you in open space. Yes, there does need to be a way for people who threaten you to be shot at and engaged/driven off without the escorts suffering a penalty, but that's a different issue. I have no problems if a person tries to force your ship down near the surface of a planet outside an armistice zone (so long as you can shoot them back with no penalty). But what NNBF described was not that. It's this type of exploiter that causes more problems for PvP acceptance than almost anything else. If you really want this game to have open world PvP, this is the type of thing that needs to be fixed. It can be with game mechanics, bans, etc., but it has to get fixed.