With the passive skills I believe that the game has got it right, As for the SP's which unlock items I believe as things stand the reward for having signed up earlier and having access to far better gear is far to great and leaves new players in a situation where there is too much to catch up on to compete. that being the case do you expect them to be around for very long?

ISK spend vs capability. in all honesty I can't really speak with too much knowledge in the spending side. my best suit costs 23k I believe and yes its a fat suit, my cheap fat suit is about 1/3rd of the price and is about 75% as good. the obvious question for me is when I spend 70k for the next fit above will it really be twice as good as my first? if that is the case then we are back to a player enjoyment and battle balance issue.

really I believe that the game should have tiered battles - tier 1 battles without great rewards so its just not worth the risk of bringing in great gear. tier 2 battles with average rewards where if you loose a few good suits you make a loss. tier 3 battles with high rewards where its worth bringing the best but being stomped will cost you. with this sort of system I believe players will naturally find their own lvl of battle.

Seriously though, we need tiercide. I'm doing some ridiculous stuff with my protoed out amarr assault. Can you say 425 shields, 574 armor? And thats not even maxed on some of it. Not to mention triple complex damage modded scrambler one shot charge shot to poor cal frames... We need tiercide. Its not a matter of gun, or suit, or vehicle, its a matter of tiers.

Welcome to Eve. A lot of catching up? You're half way there. I was able to compete (meaning I got my first protosuit) with 6 million SP. Also you are perfectly able to beat people with militia gear. People who have over 10 million SP use them, most of the time, to spec into alternate fittings, like another suit for example. Or training more core skills.

Eve Online has a rule: You pay double for something that's 20% better. And this is perfectly fine in my opinion. Why should double the price equal something that's also twice as good? This would be more of a balancing issue. I mean: You did complain about having to catch up. But why, when players who play longer don't have that much of an advantage anyways, because the advanced gear is only 25% better than standard gear?

Do you really want to split the community? We have 5000 active players at top times and you want to triple the amount of gameplay modes? This isn't a good idea, no matter how you look at. Because it would also just add a whole lot of new problems:

What do you count as Tier 1, 2 and 3? People can mix their equipment like they please. You can use a standard suit, but prototype shield extender. And after you got that problem solved you will find yourself in empty battles, because barely anybody will play in Tier 3 or TIer 1 for example. Especially with the new matchmaking this isn't worth it.