Realistic vs stop whining noob
While I understand that many of the Elite fan base want Elite to maintain its non-carebear approach; lets not get so caught up in that attitude that we lose all awareness of some basic sense of realistic behavior.
First of all, populated well patrolled systems MUST exist. And these core worlds and sectors are the ones that are most likely to generate pilots. Everyone else needs other types of workers more desperately and while the occasional kid is going to save up to get some flight training and find someone willing to loan them a ship... it's far more likely that the way you get into being a pilot and having access to a ship because a local business/corp needs someone to fly milk runs. Boring safe runs for pay, not personal profit. Translation: in system or adjacent system flights hauling data, or a passenger, or a single cargo unit. This is your 'job', to shuttle these things back and forth with little risk. However, on the side; you can use the rest of your cargo space to haul some legal cargo of your own to earn some additional credits. The ship you start with is something like a Hauler, not especially agile and with NO weapons at all. After all, you are supposed to stay in these core systems doing your assignments and if a pirate does accost you, system security should be there fast enough to protect you.
After doing enough of these little missions, you can buy your own dumpy little Sidewinder. Or maybe you go off contract early and sell your company's ship on the black market for enough to get you the Sidewinder (the stolen ship sets your initial bounty/fine amount). Either way, you don't get paid a regular wage (contracts aren't automatically there anymore, though there should still be plenty of these in these 'core systems') but you now have some teeth to move out into slightly riskier systems. And of course, with added risk, the rewards should be higher.
When you leave the well policed 'core systems' the mark up on cargo should be much higher. If there's a chance that I'm going to be interdicted by pirates and have to fight EVERY run I make with valuable cargo... the cargo is either going to be insured or the price tag on the risk is applied to hauling it (and that includes the risk to the ship). As things are now, the cost of repairing even a small amount of ship damage is far higher than the profit return on goods hauled across multiple star systems. And that cost comes out of the pilot's pocket. That system of operation would ensure independent cargo hauling would never happen... all carriage would be done by multi-system freight hauling companies under combat escort.
The bulletin boards should be much more 'full' of potential assignments. Every board should have at least 3-4 that are cake walk errands that pay < 2000 credits. And a few low end bounties... that reward several thousand 4-5k) for crappy NPC pilots in Sidewinders with damaged equipment (one of their guns is down, the shields don't charge to full, etc)... to give new pilots a chance to learn some combat and earn some money. All the bounty runs I've seen so far are 150-200k credits. They're all in high end ships that take me out in a single exchange of fire. So while the reward seems good... it could be 10 million and there's just as little chance of my Sidewinder bringing them down. And few of the cargo runs can be completed with the Sidewinder's cargo space.
So while I can understand and whole-heartedly support the earn it, fight for it, attitude... I think it and the risk/reward balance would greatly benefit from a slight improvement in the realism of the economics and understanding of how an independent cargo / shipping network works.
This is not a game where you start with a mandatory tutorial in a happy-go-lucky beginner area. You can skip the tutorials, but you'll discover the cost of doing so.
