First, all kudos to the developer for such a brilliant game, even at early release stage.

After 38 hours ingame and >200 skills trained, I've come to think that the training-time penalty for being out of station should perhaps be reversed. If training times were made much longer for those staying in-station, it would penalise any AFK (lazy) training; and conversely, somewhat shorter times when out there mining or shooting up baddies might be a better incentive for active gamers.

Just a thought. Absolutely not a criticism.

*speaking in a calm voice, not aggrevated at all*
Why would you care for penalizing AFK-players?
If i decide i want to max my skills while going shopping, that is my decision,
maybe i have to work all day long and cannot be bothered babysitting my game.
In Eve Online you can even train skills while being OFFLINE.
In fact, later skills in EO take DAYS to learn.

Your suggestion is totally weird, the penalty is given because of Realism/Roleplaying purposes.
You cannot read a book while operating a mining laser or a ion beam cannon.
You can read and learn much better in a quiet environment where it is comfy and warm.

This is a single player game.
There never will be any players for you to find, so there is no one you could "make more active"
with such a change.

The reasoning for your suggestion is obvious though :-)
By now, learning skills takes so long for you, you got bored.
But think of all the newbies who by that change kinda would be forced to fly around getting killed 20 times a day.
Or, if not killed, they fly around mining all day long (so their skills wont train slower) and they get 20 times
richer than those who stay at station, then the next guy comes along and says
"oh, that does not seem fair, lets penalize them by having only 1 small asteroid in a system" or somesuch weirdness.

Although.....

An idea:
Maybe some company or university manufactures a secret passive module
(maybe you even need to do a 3-part mission to get it) called
"Brain Enhancer 2000" that you have to buy at a very expensive price.

At that time, you have a big enough ship with enough spare passive slots
and a sixfigures account anyways.

Then you fit that module to your ship and can learn as fast in outer space
as on station.

But, because it is such a complicated machinery, you can only use it after level 25 or so.

Gosh, thanks for your totally calm and reasoned (?) reply.