You all keep talking about new mods, the-way-after-85 and such. How about trying some more or less obvious things first?
Remove or suspend player owned bases system as a whole. Move the "cloaks and shiny things" to NPC stations, set those sold for credits to encourage trade/mission-grinding/whatsoever. We need money sinks, not some jumphole-oneshooters or boredoom-machines. If someone wants a base, NPC stations IFF/affiliation can be changed, as far as i know.
Remove "mining fields capacity" and mining bonuses systems as a whole, let any miner-ID-ed players mine any of the desired related goods equally effective. We need activity, not "occasional safe mining and occasional roleplay tea parties", and we lack means to encourage people into being active. Mining billions and spawning swarms of hungry pie-rats are ones of those. In combination with above, it might actually prove productive. At least for some time.
Remove or suspend the technerf system as a whole and revert to any form of that old "equimpent must mach ID and roleplay". IDs allow the community to "filter" the "bad" lolwuts anyway by shooting them all over the place. While the funny ones may provide community with what it needs now. Other than that, earning yourself the "srp-like" combo will, suddenly, require something else but flying to a base.
Make some kind of "general amnesty" event and unban those who are banned for a week or two, maybe let them stay if they behave. Not all of those people were horrible. Some of them actually produced tons of interesting RP and all.
I know, none of those sounds anywhere close to "good ideas" and they are somewhat questionable, but that kind of stuff looks like it can bring some activity to me.
tech/nerf sys should be as it was in 4.85
remove infinite nomad cloaks ( it doesnt make them dangerious, it makes it boring and not worth playing with them )
welcome new ideas
welcome new players, factions, and faction ideas - dont tell them to piss off or listen to you, its a free society - dont gank them with your skype friends.
reduce the streching of systems ( omega-47 is still not a good job )
buff smuggs
nerf ores
buff dublin gold ores
buff unused trade routes, or trade items ( basic alloy, ablative etc )
bring back cap ship missions as they were
Sounds almost like 4.85 and we had 170 players on average, 4.85 had faults that I could live with - 4.87 does not, and before anyone tries to tell anyone else "if you dont like it you can leave" - people are already leaving, so its not the time to patronise and right now were the only ones who play alongside you, so have some respect and zip it.
with that being said, all of the above is unlikely to happen because, because its unlikely to happen.