Well you probably don't want feedback from 'newer' players but I will brace myself for the onslaught anyway......
Player numbers, I will get to in a while but first some observations from our players who we have brought onto server....
Disco is a great mod, game looks beautiful with all the new content and upgraded graphics, new commodities, new ships etc etc, server is remarkably stable, considering the original player limit of 32 has been massively upped to 200.
We have chatted at length in our group and the main gripe that we, and we assume many newer players have is the limitations put upon them by the pre existing factions. These guys have been here years and believe that this gives them certain rights and priviliges. Newer groups are hounded and ground down on for minor errors and insome cases beastd by groups of players who just need an excuse to smack down the new guys.
In most cases, rather than offer guidance or support to help new groups/players get going there are more lolz to be had in making this an unfriendly and unpleasant place to play your game.
You talk about lack of RP from newer players, we found quite the opposite well established players doing the .... "Halt" "Pay me or Die" "5 secs" " Bang".
When attempting to converse with many players you are met with a sense of superiority bordering on contempt and considering this is a game to play for pleasure it is no surprise that newer guys just give up. Would be great to see the sever logs for new players who spent less that 2 hours playing the game.
The wiki is totally out of date, the RP in forums is confusing as hell and seems to be run by forum warriors who are hardly ever in game. Also the Disco forums and help threads are so messy and confusing that you can literally spend hours trying to find one useful piece of information.
Unless you DO want your game to die, long term players need to embrace the new guys a little more, mistakes will happen as the rules from server, rules of ID and individual faction laws are quite often at crossed purposes. It is no surprise that many newer players fall foul of these as you often need to know 3 completely different sets of rules to be in one system.
Case in point, just what I have read and from conversations with some of the parties on Teamspeak, the DarkWing/Hellfire thing..... Seems a group saw a dead faction and thought to resurrect it, suddenly from nowhere a pre existing group emerges from whatever faction they are currently playing to lay claim and hassle the newer guys. Now I am well aware several RP mistakes were made by those guys but at least they were trying.
Ourselves, we were lucky in finding some friends early on to help us out, this was more luck than judgement as we had spent a good 2 weeks trying to find our feet against a tide of hatred from various players on server. The attitude was 'how dare you try to come here with a group of friends' and I have commented at length about the pretty sorry rep in many different forums about Disco - NOT the MOD/ADMINS etc but the playerbase itself is seen as unfriendly and unwelcoming, a feeling we have iterated at some length.
maybe it is time for the game to have some sway over the RP rather than the other way round, actually play the game and Rp what happens, not write 1000 words on why your character has a particular ship/ equipment just play, this also counts towards the larger factions who sit in their systems doing nothing while RPing pointless non game affecting stuff like building theme parks or blocks of apartments.
You know there is 'in Lore' supposed to be a war going on, why is it then that all the major factions have their heaviest ships sitting in New York, New London, New Tokyo etc just ...... hanging around why not RP actually going to WAR! ?
There is nothing quite as good as a decent war to get people back in server, special events forum RP etc is all well and good but the game is stagnant without conflict (Space Combat and Trading) sound familiar?
Anyway Kudos to server owners for keeping it alive but maybe time for some of the houses to be re evaluated as to actual in game time, to make space and playability for the newer guys, and players stop being elitist snobs 17 year Old Admirals are not REALLY important and frankly us 30+s are getting a bit fed up with being dictated to by kids younger than my own