Its not mindless pew pew, there are way better games where you can grab your guns and shoot 24/7 at anything that moves.
Explorers and traders far away from the populated areas dont risk anything and can still fly without shields in open. Pirates are really rare, psychos dont fly 200ly deep into space when they want some shooting. So what is left? NPCs, they became stronger but they are still stupid, they dont know how to manage the power distribution in the ship, how to masslock you properly or shoot at your drives when your shield is gone. So even the worst pilot in a heavy T9 can escape if he is using shields, mostly without any damage.
@Robert Maynard
Cargo insurance would help, but this will cut down the profit > people move to solo/private. Good idea but only if this will be balanced around all modes to keep trading profits the same or even make the open profit a bit higher when flying in populated systems (just a simple CMDR counter in the system for the last 24 hours, triggering the bonus in open mode would work). We already have a ship counter, so this is not that hard.
About unwanted PvP - anyone can avoid it. But giving people a way to fight eachother without faming the whole evening for 2-5 fights, depends on how lucky do you get when going for soft target.
Same works for deaths in PvP (weapon damage or ramming). Drop the insurance, increase it with every player kill (like you start every week with 1% in case of death by other cmdr, for each kill your insurance goes up, 1% steps back to normal. Death would reset the counter). Sounds complicated, but is actually pretty simple. Insurance in RL work the same way - if you are a stunt driver etc, you will never get the same conditions like an office worker.
