Win for everyone not playing PvE. I gave you an example why. If all weapon category skills would include 1 skill named "weapon use" it would be mandatory too.
Or the game is focusing strictly on PvP, then tell some newcomer to perpetuum to spend first month of gaming in a mining bot. [sarkasm]The game will definitely flourish then[/sarkasm].

There might be, there probably - no... surely is. When is the exact time I can move to a stronger, better one? Can I find out? No... I will probably die... But I am not concerned about myself. I have a nice and friendly corp which will probably help me even if I notoriously die trying to explore. But this is me - a noob to perpetuum - but a 15 yrs veteran to MMO. Now imagine a newbie trying to get a grip on the title - dying all the time aint fun. Pretty much all of the MMOs out there focus on getting a newcomers to try out the game and get the excited feeling to subscribe to continue the fun. To get the noobs wanting to play the game is to make more of them reach the subscriber status and therefore adding to the player online amount. This game, this type of game needs more players - the PvPers will be happy (more targets) the devs will be happy (more money ;D ) and even the idlers will be happy (more ppl to chat with waiting for the right amount of ep).
Once again: "there surely is a spawn that is right for you. you just have to look for it." But when I find it - will I be bothered to farm it for months before I get the right extensions? I had my fun running around with mighty arbiters on my behind, shooting em one by one, waiting long minutes to regain hp/acc. Even if it was not an efficient income I considered it fun. You tell me to find some sort of rookie spawn for easy and safe farming - I tell You that I will have more fun watching my ceiling pain pale - I wouldn't have to move my hand to doubleclick on the red crosses.
The path lessened the gap between rookie and seasoned industrialists. But widened the gap between rookie and veteran PvE agents... Not everyone wants to mine, and build and wait - consider it.

I know how to find a spawn and differ the type of mobs. At most cases I knew how to deal with most of them, and which required what tactics of me. Since the speed change there are only 2 types of PvE tactics: Attack or Flee.

This is exactly where our opinions differ - You would prefer having a couple of same mechs/hmechs coming at you - no size penalties, shoot em out, get loot, repeat. I take it you can tackle pretty much any mob out there, with a fancy mech/hmech and quite some extensions. This kind of PvE in my opinion is no less boring than mining. Not to mention the enemies must be quite silly:
- He took out 3 heavy mechs, we couldn't outdps him
- Ok lets send 3 ewar mechs at him
- They annoyed the **** out of him but couldn't make a dent
- Oh wells lets try the heavy approach again
In such case the mobs are not even slightly intelligent and it cannot be called fighting but rather harvesting them. I have been called to "farming a spawn" a few times with a sole purpose of disposing them annoying light bots in my assault. If mech spawns are mech spawns now, there is no need for me anymore. I would say that a spawn consisting of say 1-3 dps mechs, 0-2 ewar mechs, 1-4 light mechs with demob at once would be much more interesting and challenging to deal with.
  I take it You are quite bored with PvE already and would just rather the ease and efficiency when doing so. It is understandable. Some of players (esp. new ones) preferred an inefficient tackling with single high tier mob for the sole purpose of fun - vets would not call it fun, they would call it silly. Now, I am forced to sit at a spawn with a tier I can handle and wait for sufficient ep amount to move on to a bigger one, to even try a bigger one.

  I am not a quitter, especially that I know plenty of corp members would let me tag along for better mobs even if my dps is merely ticking them. But know that the path have made newbies life a lot harder, not more interesting or challenging - just plain harder.

Bolded for emphasis.  Welcome to the game.  For the 6 months or so, sitting around waiting for EP is mostly what you do.  Over a year later that's still mostly what's done even with vets well in excess of 600K.

The way the inter-island teleports work now probably hurts newbies the most.  Sure they only have one choice, sure they can drop a beacon if they know where they're going but 50,000 nic is nothing to a vet it's a lot to a newbie.  They're basically trapped with the golden triangle of newb training gone.

I suspect when they re-do the PvE stuff which is supposed to be what's up next with PBS having just come out, they will also do their diminishing returns stuff to combat which will nerf the *** out of combat vets the same way that this patch did to the indy vets.

Synopsis (EDIT): The direction this game has taken from the very beginning is at least 50%+ of the patches make the game harder for no particularly good reason.  Travel times have tripled at least, even with beacons.  This makes everything else take longer by definition.  Bot costs have gone up at least 500%, probably more, requiring far more and far more valuable resources now.

The DEVs have consistently ignored soloists, small groups/corps and focused on BIG mechanics for LOTS of people that don't exist.  The # of kernels required for the PBS stuff exemplifies this.

$.02

The difference between players and NPC's is you get to chose how to fit your bot.

Your post above includes ways to make yourself faster, and that is why Nav was removed. Speed was so important that there wasn't any real choice in how players needed to spend EP.

Speed is still important.

Not all NPC's fit light-weight-frames, some of them 'tank up' with plates, those that do use LWF's are easier to kill, as LWF's reduce your overall armor points.

Each NPC has a weakness to a certain type of ammo, their resist is lower to that damage type, so you'll do more damage quicker. And in reverse, you're bot will have ahigher resist to certain types of ammo your NPC spawn would be shooting.

Ewar just sucks. It does. It makes spawns alot more difficult. Learning how to counter ewar is part of the game.

Many of the prevous farming techniques depended highly on just 'over-powering' spawns, or being faster and simply kiting them. New patch, new rules.

tl;dr - Find NPC's that are weak to your resist, scout them out with a scanner to see how they are fitted, fit to counter them. Perp is like chess, easy to learn and hard to master.