*snipped also*

what you're saying is that his facts are not correct.

The things he said were not fact specific but a generalistic overview.

"Piracy isn't all that profitable either."

What you read was "piracy isn't profitable". What he said was "piracy is profitable but not exceptionally so".
What he said is true, its not the most profitable endevor to take up. Though it may be fairly profitable, there are other things you could do that are "all that profitable."

"Eve pirates don't really affect commerce at all."

Sure you've killed and looted lots of isks worth over a long period of time. But has that really affected commerce? You ask for statistics for that basis but this is a statement of a non-affect. The fact that there is no big news article or readily availible statistics is testament to its non-affect. On the other hand there is one example of one such event that impacted commerce. The Goon's ice interdiction had a huge impact on gallente ice commerce and it can be measured. Piracy in general has had no such effect.

As for the rancer thing. Yes its possible to go around it, but it requires a massive detour. Rancer is rancer because its the only effecient way to move between the two areas. Rancer is what we'd like to avoid with this kind of a change becuase it would put too much emphasys on too small of an area.

*snipped*

Yes. Yes, yes yes. Yes.

More regions like Solitude would be awesome!

If this happened you would have to revert back to full pay out on bounties to the killer, also anyone with a sec status less then 2.0
can not collect on bounties.
Besides this will never happen but I bet the OP feels like he is getting somewhere .

Respect.

I don't think the OP and some others have fully fleshed this idea out taking into account the full ten year history of this game and the perspective of ALL of the players that pay and play the game.

Luckily, the devs have and that is why you see hi-sec,low-sec, null-sec in their present forms.

As a Merchant of Death I encourage all kinds of increased player interaction, but must draw the line at something that would ruin the game entirely.

I think that player emergant gameplay is the answer, not the artifically induced non emergant forced sheep herding that was originally proposed.

There is something i want you guys to think about. What periods of time in history are the most interesting? Times of Peace or times of War? What period of time would you guys consider New Eden to be in right now?

Seriously though, who thought that peace time was the right time for the setting of this game in the first place?
Wouldn't it have been grand to be playing at the time of the Minmatar rebellion instead of reading about it? Or the Caldari-Gallente war. Or the Amarr Jove war?

Seriously, peace time is a time for the real world. Not video games. Turn Eve into the Warzone it should be!!!

Why not place command towers at the gates where one empire meets the other?

To enter into an empire's territory you would have to have the necessary standings plus an Empire Passage Certificate that would need to be purchased on a weekly basis.

The Command Towers would not allow a pilot to pass if they didn't have the necessary documents.

The borders between allied empires could be also insecure, since they may be frontier areas since this idea comes with adding new regions that disrupt gate travel, these areas would be a frontier, thus not very well secured.

There is nothing to shoot but other pirates. You don't make isk pirating, you make isk doing merc contracts or something completely unrelated to pvp.

The reason that nobody cross low sec in freighters except for the very rare extra stupid idiot is that you can do it afk with 0 risk through hi-sec. It does happen occasionally but it is a very rare occurrence to see someone enter low sec with a freighter. It isn't even a question worth asking really it is so obvious. Their is 0 advantage to using low sec for trade right now, what requires thought and actually being at the keyboard in lowsec is done in hisec without you even being there at the cost of only 5 extra jumps.

(some posts later)

You say that it would increase the price of all goods but how exactly would that happen?
You have to provide some justification, otherwise it is a completely baseless and irrelevant statement since this change would only increase the price of certain goods in certain areas.

To compensate, using the highway gates will be free of charge until all problems have been ironed out.