For me, and what I see in newbros, being the major issue retaining new players is the very limited options in ship and content early on.
They really should have all ships BC and under as a generic skill for all faction ships with race specific bonus skills…like how drones work.
Basically the impression your first month is “I should take a few months off to skill up so I can do stuff” which leads to many people doing exactly this…and thne forgetting to return.
I saw it before in null with players tiring of frigate life and always needing a support group to do anything…which is fine but sometimes you just want to logon chill and solo stuff.
Giving that new a faster route to variety in ships and content will nix that instinct to log off for a month when new…which isn’t a healthy instinct.
Happened to me when new. Figured id give it a few months and come back…5 years later I came back. Also not an easy game to return to when new.