I bought a new bus for my passenger route. Anyone else flying a T9?

Hehe.
Moooooo indeed however that's the flagship of the Cmdr Ice fleet so you scored some points with him...and maybe some local pirates too.

I love camping by mining T9s in Haz Res's.

I've never spec'ed out the Space Cow but I have seen NPC Type 9's put up a pretty good fight vs pirates.

I have seen 'combat' builds and I have fitted turreted pulse lasers to mine but I haven't figured out how to get them to fire on anything yet

I have been interdicted about 4 times so far by npcs and only once gave me any problems. I had a go at playing the mini game and was doing very well until I suddenly lost. Waiting for my fsd to come back while being attacked by 2 clippers meant that my shields were stripped and hull down to 47% when I escaped. Although my interdiction response isn't as smooth and efficient as it used to be as I have got rusty.

Against npcs the T9 feels quite survivable so far and gives me 1.8 million a trip. Since buying it I have made 50 million so another 25 and it will have paid for itself.

It'd be nice if they had NPCs you could hire as wingmen. I used to play Guild Wars solo for the storyline and found the NPC mercenaries to be a god-send.

Every once in a while, I dream of having a hireable T9 or Anaconda for farming pirates at Resource Extraction Points.

I used to fly a T9 a lot, but can now safely say that it's out-performed in almost every aspect by the Anaconda. Sure, the 'Conda has a smaller cargo hold but the bigger jump range, faster speed, and quicker turn rate means you'll be doing your cargo runs quicker and also you're not totally defenseless. You're also not advertising your trade route so people who see you don't know whether you're bounty-hunting or trading or whatever.

Geesh...Mr. Practical!
Where has the romance gone?
You and your T9...steering for the stars...steering for high adventure!

The romance is now called the Imperial Cutter

My mighty T9 now has 2 pirate scum victims, one Asp Scout and one DBE. Fighting in it is quite good fun although I can see the danger of getting caught up in a fight and losing when I could have run away.

Tonight my T9 finally made the last 4 runs it needed to pay for itself. From now on it will be producing pure profit unless I decide to upgrade it again.

Depending on your route, you may make more per hour in an Anaconda. Plus if some human CMDRs are in the area, you're not screaming "gank me!!" all the time.