Sadly AE seems more focused on simply improving the graphics and adding new servers, I know they wanted to change the largest ships a bit, but I still doubt they will ever do anything to fix the problem that old players don't have a lot of things to do because everything becomes exponentially more expensive and time-consuming... (Or don't do anything, because they could attack each other, but don't do it very often)
Why don't I/we big players attack others? I think it's just too time-consuming, risky and takes too much planning. Moving a huge fleet takes days, securing the debris takes many hours or days, where you risk losing the fleet you've worked on for years... I don't know if I will have all that time, even in a vacation, I don't know if I want to spend time on AE in a few days either. Maybe it's a stupid and lazy excuse, maybe people like me just shouldn't play it.