i agree.
i love to do PvE in videogames, and i enjoy Pve in this game because is fun.
Like other mmorpg, when you pve, i usually grind, but in every game theres a difficult scales, from liv1 to liv CAP, you always have to fight with tons of poor npc, but also tons of skilled npc. i means boss, dungeon npc, etc.
In elite we miss that, cause galaxy is more a simulated real life enviroment and have no much sense put something similar.
BUT Veteran player need challenge. i need some creeopy pve challenge, to do in wing with other 3 veterans and really risk our ship, not only in a pvp contest.
Hazardous res are easy, always 1vs1 non modded npc with my g5 maxed combat ship, some time some npc in wing but nothing special.
Conflict Zone are easy, theres lot of ships more harder to kill then res, but my g5 fully modded vette or cutter can easily win every battle without lose more than 2 shield rings, only pvp presence can trick my experience.
Again, theres tons of mission really really easy to do, simple with a sidewinder if you want, like shut down the generator, recover a black box, hack some data panel, destroy some skimmer in srv, a veteran player can do all that with one hand only.
Powerplay pve is a grindfest of nave beacon dropp and wake for hours, no skills required, just patience.
Pirating npc is broken, theres a ticket about from 3 months, but fdev seems dont care about, now if you found some mining ship npc with mining laser etc, they simply dont carry valuable minerals. Black marketing with tons of scrap isnt funny, anyway, stole npc cargo was so easy in past.
This game need more PVE risk.
I dont know if possible, but some zone to fight against, for example, elite npc with MODDED ship, wings of npc really good (modded cutter, vette, fdl , etc) to do with friends, something CHALLENGE to do for stay in a minimun of MMORPG enviroment.