Ok, I might be the only person who does this but sometimes I do like to do HW, watch TV, read a book, or just sit afk cause *** you that's why.
This general description is what is known in the gaming community, as I understand it, a 'casual gamer'.
Though I would like to emphasize my playstyle should limit my ability to acquire wealth, and participate in some activities. (Ex: afk pvp... definitely not a thing.) I have done all-day Scarab liquid mining, but I can easily eclipse that output with <1hr with a riveler, but at a semi-afk state.
So it is clear there is a spectrum of activities that can be done to some degree of effectiveness based on the player's participatory rigor. The question is how can we create equitable rewards based on the degree of this rigor? Instead of: how can we eliminate content for our already small playerbase based on their playstyle preferences?
Botting devalues real-players participation on any level. It introduces too much volume to the market, prices drop, and the activity becomes meaningless for real players. Bot detection would be the best avenue, instead of nerfing activities that are 'bottable'. (citing the number of people that have mentioned this earlier).
However an alternative or additional measure against botting is like what was a major component of random assignments: the randomness! Now there is no guarantee on where you go, what you do, etc. I would argue this does not terribly decrease real-player's output from assignments now, vs earlier. So we have new and more content, arguably more entertaining than the monotony of the prior system, and it eliminates botting potential; huzzah mission success (good job devs)!
Also the Risk:Reward ratio. When it comes to alpha the risk is zero, so what is any reward/0? Well its invalid math, but what if we say risk approaches 0, then reward approaches infinity. Clearly some risk should be introduced.
However I must emphasize, real players autopilot, real players haul between market hubs, real players mine alone without pvp/pve support, new players live here at least for a while, mostly alone. So how can we introduce risk without completely making the game unplayable if a new player undocks at the wrong time, or walked too far from terminal wanting to explore (or do a mission, or mine, etc.)
First, as many noted, reds on alpha2 only, allowing alpha1 to still be safe from pve aggro, and decreasing resource amounts on alpha1's. But what types of reds, and what spawn mechanics on alpha2? Drones? Observers? L5's? I think most would agree, given that alpha is the only teleport pipeline between factions, having high level red gangs makes travel, even in reasonable company, very risky, too risky for the rewards.
My proposal is introduce red arkhe drone-types and/or L0's sparsely and with fixed 'homes' (like mission spawn mechanics now) with a generous but not infinite lasso radius (the distance they may chase their aggro'er from home coordinates). They can have some tricky ecm or enwar, and some dps (no demob: again to emphasize a player paying attention should survive more than a player not doing so). But a real player should be able to fit a gun and a tank on their miner (they have slots for it), go out, do their mining mission, pop drones as they aggro along the way (not unlike hi-sec eve rats). This way new players, and indy players, at least are introduced to fitting tanks, paying some attention so that they aren't slowly shot down, but not insta-popped because a red gang popped up on their radar while they were tabbed out.
This would mean you couldn't be completely afk, or you would sacrifice mining output or speed to fit a more robust tank. Which is reasonable, I think. But should alpha2's be populated with Red observers? I think not.
This is my opinion, and while from a personal perspective I would posit that at least some players also don't want to have a game monopolize their time, but still want to participate in some way and make meaningful progress in the game.
