you assume pirates and independent people just living without a government are more mean and prone to violence than a government that works with the pilots federation. history's most successful organized crime syndicate that literally makes it legal to murder for parking violations.
no, anarchy should be easy to do illegal things in (relative to governed and pilot fed friendly systems). they should be easy to take advantage of and should be short lived as a faction state. I'd go so far as to say that anarchy would be more docile and less equipped to handle aggression than governed systems.
by definition, anarchy isn't organized to coordinate opposition, track transgressions or likely to be interested in supporting eachother. it's this weakness inherent with anarchy that makes this way not something that large groups of people live under these days. anarchy is weak and easily consumed by surrounding interests. it's why anarchy is destined to be short lived. the need to organise and protect the whole from others organically creates government and ends the anarchy. in elite, anarchy should be a system state as temporary as 'war'. easily lost once achieved.
it sounds like what you want are syndicate/mob type systems that are organized and have rules and govern but reject the pilots fed and have ridiculously different laws that reward their evil motivations and punish anything that opposes them.
...which is exactly the problem in the game right now... fussocking over terminology is missing the point here.
Leaving so-called "anarchy" factions as helpless as they currently are, when they are
clearly portrayed as criminal factions (i.e not "anarchy" factions) is the core issue.
Meanwhile,
mv faction_descriptors faction_descriptors.old; sed 's/anarchy/criminal/g;' faction_descriptors.old > faction_descriptors ain't gonna cut it, even though that should be part of any change.
There
needs to be equivalent penalties for hurting <what is currently known as an anarchy faction>.... but FD would be drawn on the fact their C&P system is a steaming pile of trash.... they can't piggyback their existing mechanics because you'd wind up gaining notoriety for killing criminals, which means the faintest whiff of a fine in lawful space would see you locked out of paying it till the notoriety cooldown dropped. There would be huge blowback for that.
Regardless of terminology, the current problem is that people can wail on anarchy factions in a way that has far less penalties than doing the same against a lawful faction, for exactly the same reward, which has been just one facet of a multitude of issues for the entire criminal career path.
Personally, making all "anarchy" factions "criminal" or "unfettered" factions at least for clarity, and making them apply bounties to offenders as well, and fixing the mess that is notoriety so that it's at least superpower-specific would be a start... then having more meaningful outcomes from security statuses, which are influenced by BGS states, would be a reasonable next move... then inducing things like Civil Unrest, if it were to result in voiding criminal consequence for a time, might be worth a damn.
