That model works for Star Citizen, with its one system and one planet.
Elite has 400,000,000 systems and quite a few more planets, moons, asteroid fields and other places to hide out. It's possible to hide yourself anywhere in the galaxy, and the odds of someone actually finding you reach infinitesimal. Then add to that Elite has 3 modes of game play - Open, Private and Solo. A person could easily commit all manner of heinous acts in Open, then switch over to a Private Group or Solo mode to evade those looking for them, only to reappear, at a station, in Open, hundreds of lightyears away, commit more heinous acts, rinse and repeat, and there's nothing to be done about this.
So let's just throw Star Citizen and Eve and everything else right out the window and talk about Elite.
It's the system that is going to also work for hundreds of systems and thousands of planets.
400 Billion systems means absolutely nothing when all of the meaningful content aside from pretty pictures is restricted to a few thousands systems all right next to eachother. Adding a few major criminal organizations that are named and improved and more interactive versions of minor factions to scattered anarchy systems and having missions like we already have except to go out in to neighboring systems and commit crimes such as piracy, sabotage, murder, smuggling and more with various benefits to the people who get high reputation with these syndicates. And no, it wouldn't be impossible to find somebody. Okay you flew to a random system outside the bubble 1kly out. Now what? You can't be found but you also can't do anything. Players participating in this manner of gameplay will be in the anarchy systems and government systems surrounding the base system of the syndicate they support. Now your 400 Billion systems has been reduced to a dozen, if that, and when you factor in the inevitable "most profitable system" that will arise, now you have 2. The home system, and the system that they can make the most money/rep out of.
And that is exactly why any PvP interactions/systems born of this should be Open Play only, and even if they weren't, this is a PvE system as well as a PvP one. Okay so somebody is doing this in solo. They are still being rewarded with meaningful gameplay behind being a pirate or hitman and the like. And even if somebody was just PvPing this system and mode switched like you described...so what? They still have to attack other players, they still have to show up in Open Play at some point, and you deeply underestimate how fast people can traverse the bubble to hunt somebody down.
And no, we shouldn't. Eve and Star Citizen are wildly successful and there's a reason behind that. Ignoring what other games do right and continuing to produce meaningless content and killing off play styles will only result in Elite's downfall.
It sounds like a terrific idea.
Attempt to introduce meaningful consequences for criminal behaviour, however, and you'll get nothing but bleating about how unfair it is, how it punishes people for doing things the game allows, how anything the game allows should be entirely acceptable, how people will just find ways around any consequences intended, how anybody who doesn't want pew-pew should lock themselves in the cupboard of Solo and how anybody who thinks differently is just a carebear.
In fact, I'm pretty sure those were all arguments used by the OP to defend criminal behaviour in another thread less than 48 hours ago.
And if you're not going to accept the bad stuff, I doubt FDev are going to be willing to spend much time developing the good stuff.
Did you even read what I said?
People ALREADY put up with the consequences or find work arounds for them. The people who whine are the hapless saps getting ganked in open play because the people who want a criminal playstyle have no meaningful content and are bored out of their minds, so they resort to making their own meaning: farming for forum salt.
We already have the consequences, there's no reason to put up with them. Piracy is dead in all manner but RP. Smuggling is just trading with a bounty. Murder gets you cussed out. Sabotage/Fear campaigns are non existent. Kumo Crew has been dead last since PP went live. All because all of these actions have no meaning and pure consequences with nothing to counteract that.
Criminal activities in games should be high risk high reward. You are tempted to accept the consequences and risk losing nearly everything because the rewards and the rush from being a criminal are worth it to you. If you make the potential rewards worth the risk, now you get a lot of players who previously just ganked sidewinders hanging out in the same few anarchy systems running missions nearby, you get actual meaningful PvP with skilled PvPers coming to these systems to kill the criminal players with then gives the PvPers across the board meaningful interactions with other PvPers. It won't eliminate random ganks, but it won't be as common, and if it does happen you're probably near a major criminal system which is your fault for getting that close.
It doesn't matter how big the consequences are if the potential rewards make it worth it for people to risk.
And no, the other thread you're talking about was people throwing a tantrum about getting ganked in Open Play and saying they never consented to PvP interactions. My arguments were and still are "Whining about PvP in Open Play is like signing on to a World of Warcraft PvP server, running to the enemy faction's home city, and then whining in the forums about how unfair it is that you got killed by another player". If you don't want PvP, Solo and Mobius are right there for you. I don't see how that can be some big controversial opinion. If you don't want to engage in PvP, then don't play in the mode that allows open PvP.