getting back on course or keeping it...

[lousal]

Question is how separated should be what's happening on discovery 24/7 official server and what's happening in discovery mod.

Now there are lots of zoner caps (as many as LN caps, more than BAF and KNF combined, think even more than RM and BAF combined).
1. Does that mean that zoners are as strong as LN?
Maybe not....
2. That zoners are as weak as written on the infocards?
Maybe not...

now what?

The only thing you can do is to dig yourself into population scenarios, their growths, and the cornerstones of their prosperities (you can derive almost everything from these parameters). I wouldn't like to do it, but going this way the general problem of flawed populations could be corrected. Having the Disco Scenario populations it's easy to determine allowed players per NPC faction, thus restricting the available characters for each NPC faction according to the underlying numbers you've computed. Get some advanced version of Game of Life, feed it with your desired parameters (start at the colony ships 800 years ago), and see what's going to happen.

Until nobody in the dev team is able to apply realistic numbers, everything will remain flawed.