We'll have to agree to disagree then I thinkAdd a couple of decimal places to the influence figures if you want to see a eagle pilot making a difference....the point is that anyone starting out in the game wont really be all that interested in the BGS, they'll be busy with earning credits, upgrading ships, ranking up etc, only when they get to a position of having a good trading ship might they actually give a cr*p about the BGS, like most of us here I assume....
this assumption neither meets my "career" (i started working the BGS with an Adder), nor my experience in working with larger player groups - very often new cmdrs assume that they can't help or make a difference, or that they can't help in war, because they have "only" their exploration AspE.... in all those cases they can always help by getting a small trader or a small combat ship, and share the efforts.
actually i pretty much believe that people who like to "progress" in ships are only in rare cases those who like to play the BGS ;-)