Basically as I see it the simple solution would be:
1) make cargo canisters have a time limit before they expire, all the crap in USS's would be metal alloys or some stuff like that to balance out. Then increase the limit of cargo dropped so pirates are happy
2) Add a rating for murderers that is FUGITIVE if they kill x amount of clean players this rating gets stuck to them for seven days cant be bought off cant be killed of with a sidey its there for seven days. If they continue killing its increased. This way FDEV can see all those with stupidly high FIGITIVE ratings are ruining the game and can take action to sort it out, im not saying joe public who gets annoyed with a certain T7 in a USS asking for tech and blows it away im talking about pvp.
3) Make exploring sales data distance specific - I have gone out 1000ly and still sold data for as much as it was at just over 20ly.
4) Make payment of kills damage specific - four players in a instance killing a group and some twit flies in out of nowhere and puts the last shot into a 250k anny shouldnt get the 250k it should be spread out with the ones that caused the most damage.
5) Make mining work faster - nothing more tedious than sitting there blowing up a rock to find out that after x chunks the asteroid becomes immune to lasers so you have to find another one. Remove that bit and they will be happy. Metal rich should mean decent yields not the same crappy ores you find in crap fields.
6) Make the trade data in the BBS panel show the last prices from your last visit to x system (stored locally on the machine to save server fragging) this will make trade runs brilliant. Also allow players to get trade data from VISITING a system and not docking (like Elite/Frontier/FFE) this would make it better as players could travel around the galaxy looking for the best prices not actually docking if they dont want to.
7) Have special badges for players to be daring - things like a SagA badge thats a black whole sort of thing for ship decals, or a ive been to the rim of the galaxy badge. Mad 1Mil in one run badge etc. Give people things to strive for to keep them interested its the lack of things that makes people pick up ED then get bored.
8) Flesh out the PP element - actually have wars not just a pen and paper fantasy of x person fortifying and y person undermining actually get players to fly across the border and attack trade routes and stations, cause havoc in the name of their chosen PP character. Players want to feel that they are part of something not just moving parcels from x to y to fill in some imaginary spreadsheet on FDEV's computer.
9) Flesh out wings a bit more - allow wings to see the destinations targeted by the wing so each player can wing up and then travel at the slowest ship speed to the target this will allow players to wing up and fly with their mates possibly escorting a T7 full of palladium
Its simple adjustments like this that actually would make the game come alive, being a coder myself I know these are simple adjustments that wouldnt break the game but would make the whole experience much more interesting for all of us.