New guy here. Coming from an open online environment where there is no solo, there are no timers or any ability to disconnect without persisting in the world, the potential losses in PvP are catastrophic, and DDOS attacks are not something that is even considered, because they are an external connection issue.
Because you are coming from a game where you are playing on a central server whereas Elite uses a P2P system for player interaction.
DDOS attacks aren't considered because they are virtually impossible, the only way to do a DDOS would be to DDOS the central server which would bring everyone's game down, your opponents, yours, your friends, so it's not something that's worried about in a server client environment. In the p2P environment with the right tools it's quite easy to find your opponents IP address and attack just that player and not affect anyone else.
There are timers here because in the P2P environment, once a player has disconnected that's it, there's no way to make the player persistent in the universe, the timer is there as a sort of replacement for persistence, but it only works if a player uses the timer rather than just pulling the plug.
I will give you the benefit of the doubt because, as you say, you are new here, but these issues have been discussed for years by the community and the issues and problems of the P2P model compared to the client/server model are well understood.