I'm not too sure if any of the things imma say here have been discussed officially in the past or anything similar, but I'd just want to see what others think about these ideas;

1) Factories: The ability to purchase the rite from one of the in-game corporations to produce certain things at your base if you meet certain conditions. This will also spawn NPC raids on your base over time. This will effect production and thus profits.

2) Player Contracts: The ability to create more personal contracts outside of the beacon system. Possibly best implemented with base building, as anything done in your base such as docking, cargo transfers, and enemy naturalization will be possible to record by the server. But the player can chose more than just aUEC for rewards. Such as weapons, components, and other things. These contracts can also be posted when certain conditions are met, such as low inventory of a resource at your base or when an enemy raid at your base will start.

3) Ship Customization: Allowing players to add "rooms" that can only be added to the players cargo hold via the ship loadout manager. For instance, a medical room that takes up a 2x2x2 SCU Cube grid space in viable ships. Turrets could also be replaced with similar features such as extra shields, ladders to the exterior of your ship, docking ports for ship to ship docking, or extra fuel tanks/cargo grids for example.

4) Passenger Missions: Only open to luxury ships with crew quarters, the player will pick up "Rich NPCs" from a station and then travel to certain key locations for a certain amount of time at each location for the tourists on board to enjoy the sights. However with them being rich, pirates will be after them, so evading damage from pirates or taking them down before they take you down could land you a bonus from the scared tourists on board.

5) Capacitor Modification: Allowing power plants to alter the base capacity of the ships capacitors. Based on the type of power plant (military, civilian, industrial, or stealth) and the size of it, the capacitors should show different values at the start. The player can then further increase or decrease the power to each of the systems by using the power management system from pilots seat (F5, F6, F7 keys). Would allow for more customization and unique builds for ships.

6) Playable Arcade Games: Making the arcade games playable at the stations. And maybe creating a Casino ship or shop at space stations. If it was a Luxury Casino ship, it could dock at stations or park near them and players could board it and partake in the gambling life within the vers using their aUEC. Maybe the house doesn't always win? Would be a neat way to make money while not in game or could offer new opportunities for players to interact with each other.

7) Player Run Shops: Piggybacking from the factory base building idea from earlier and the contract system as well, having a shop at someone's base would be neat. Allowing other players to buy and sell goods at your base without you needing to be there. Offering perks for your store specifically as rewards to contracts, or being the only base in a system or planet system to offer certain size weapons or even ships for sale, that could be making player interactions more common.