I think its basically needing NPC's stations to make up the numbers while the majority of the LN players are offline.
I mean until the day that we have 1000 player slots and every single pilot can efficiently stay on the server 24 hours a day 7 days a week 365 days a year each and every year then the full force of any house military is never going to be online all at one time.
And since we can't all be online we need somthing to bridge the gaps when theres little to no activity from that faction in the server.
Edit: Also who here would actually want to sit stareing at the same gate even for a few hours on the very slim possibility that a raid will actually happen during that time, usually the hostile forces wait for you to go offline before attempting especially if they know your there and can overpower them.