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Ditto. Here's mine, and how I think it should go. I'm leaving merc and explorer out, as I barely know anything about mercwork and explorers are basically disconnected from the rest of us, and are fine as they are in most ways.
As of 1.3 Beta:
Mining: 2:2:2
Trading: 3:3:1
Bounty Hunting: 2:2:1
Piracy: 1:1:3
However, I can't describe the next section with these numbers.
Mining: It should be only slightly less profitable than trading, but since you don't buy the commodities it's less risky. Mining while under attack is fun as well, and since one attack can ruin so much time, it's quite fun.
Trading: Some people like trading. For those that don't, I personally think they should just get out, but still, a great amount of credits is needed for this mundane task. It should pay top dollar, but extremely dangerous, because in order to make the most cash you need to de-arm yourself, and a pirate will often find you in such a state.
Bounty Hunting: It doesn't exist yet, however, bounty
farming does. I think bounties should be much, much higher, into the millions range, but opponents should not only be tougher, but much more difficult to destroy. For example, an Elite Anaconda might have a 1.5 Million credit bounty on his head, but you would have to chase him through many systems using the FSD Wake Scanner, fight him many times and perhaps you may be destroyed during this process. His jumps won't be far, so combat ships could keep up, but would likely lead through different jurisdictions, allowing bounty hunters to become true to their name. They aren't Rent-A-Cop, they're out for cash. None of this spawn a good RES instance crap.
Piracy: Time for my profession. This is really bare-bones at the moment. With a 201,000 Galactic bounty, I have been travelling for hours and have not been interdicted by any NPC bounty hunters, not once. Seriously? Not only does my profession pay me peanuts, but there's no excitement, either? Declarations of piracy needs to be implemented, Hatch Breakers need to be made usable by anyone not in a Sidewinder, shot-out drives need to pull ships to a stop, and more. Why introduce the criminality punishments before making piracy viable!?
