CCP did something about it, they nerfed moongoo value, so that systems were more valuable to empires as living quarters than they were as empty buffer space around very-important-towers (tm).

Why is it good for nullsec

(a) rise in population
(b) rise in corporation units that are sized for small gang warfare, that are not deployed to strategic objectives, and thus are not fleeted up in strategic sized units.

ie its likely that a good 5 man crew will get a fight or at least intercept some unwary traffic in Vale, without much fear that the CFC will order a cleanup on aisle 9 and eject you with 100 ships when you finally made someone angry by shooting the wrong afktar. In fact they only come when you start with the SBUs or their goo towers, they don't do local security.

One imagines that careful observations of NA regions would also locate regions that provide content for small gangs.

I do think this is an intermediate phase for the game, a phase where the average bear has the opportunity to lose his or her fear of null, and if you are a risk averse highsec bear, this may be the best time ever to try nullsec life.

Hey, uh...
I think you should look at your corp.

Sounds like your problems centralise around AFK behaviour. When I was in CFC I observed 70+ people online at any time, but to type in chat and get a response? Maybe 2 people actually say Hi back. That's a pretty serious problem. Maybe sov should be more dynamic like FW where you can whittle down control instead of necessitating massive structure grinds all the time. Making towers consume 4x as much fuel too might help in cutting down the extraanneous grinding.

arr yes i remember now but there were plenty more heads of states back then but now were down to 3, are we going the way of the first china server where all of null sec was owned by one alliance? (so the rumours had it)

• maybe lose the standing markings so you don't know who is blue till you chat to them?
lose local maybe?
remove notifications of attacks (previous suggestion)
vastly high costs the more space you own (this could put renting out of reach to be cost effective maybe forcing to control smaller areas.
can only fuel pos's if you own sov? and you need to hold either military or industry 1 for sov to be claimed. + other mech to hold too.

throwing things out there lets see if this thread can be turned into best fixes rather than ask for a fix.