Why is the community population declining?

[Challenger]

I can make a billion credits trading while watching a season of BSG, only casually looking at FL on the monitor because nothing pops up. And should I be unlucky / foolish enough to get caught by pirates, I just pay them the 2 million and keep on grinding.

This is not what trading felt like in vanilla, it is not what trading would feel like if the server population were in the 500+, and it is not what trading SHOULD feel like now.

You've identified a problem. My proposed solution is to make trade routes much more profitable than they are now, but reduce the number of highly viable ones. You want more money? Go brave the pirates. You want to watch BSG? Accept a nerfed profit margin.

We've equalized all the houses in terms of trade (to a good approximation) and this is the result. I'm not a lunatic; I don't want us to cut the map in half. But some routes should be vastly more profitable than others, and it SHOULD be based on geography. There should be an incentive for me to run a liberty-gallia route, because I'm probably going to die if I do.