TBH I personally think it's better to look at the sides from a thematic perspective rather than a good/evil one. Thematically the competing factions look primarily to have been designed as complimentary sides of the same coins. Both the Federation and the State are two different depictions of classic dystopian universes, one in which the average person is free from want and so society loses its deeper meaning as mass consumption and hedonism settles in, where democracy is a lie because only a very small percentage of people actually care enough to vote, and the other being the corporate state owned entirely by megacorporations that exploit and brainwash their workers and cast out anyone that doesn't follow the rules as threats to carefully tended social stability, where meritocracy is a lie because only those who do what society expects of them will have their merits acknowledged. The State may be overtly dystopian while the Federation is portrayed as overtly utopian, making the State appear the worse of the two at first, but both are dystopias in reality. Read dystopian novels and you will find similarities of societies in those books to both the State and the Federation.
On the southeast side of the cluster you instead have the conflict of spiritual and national identity and as a result a far more volatile conflict than Fed/State. Unlike the above dystopian factions, where materialism reigns and the absence or insincerity of spirituality and the human soul is a central flaw, both Amarr and Minmatar have a deep spiritual and cultural core that is so central to who they are that they eventually feel the need to force it on others. They have spiritual, moral, ethical mandates. Neither side is capable of 'leaving things be', because unlike the northwestern factions they have a inner drive to not leave things be. It is a sin for the Amarr to not Reclaim and it is a sin for the Minmatar to not rescue the rest of the Minmatar. Refusal to engage in these central points of dogma result in accusations of treason and faithlessness, this is why there will never be peace between the two until one is destroyed by the other (and this destruction must be cultural, physical destruction fails when the spiritual core lives. Hence why the Minmatar nation did not end with the Day of Darkness, and why it was ironically the Amarr in the position of rebellion in Immensea when they felt their spirituality was threatened). Amarr and Minmatar need meaning to their lives, they need to feel spiritually fulfilled, and in most cases this fulfillment requires the enforcement of their beliefs on those who represent a threat to them. Both look to conquer people who they feel should be theirs, who they feel must be saved. "We come for our people," though mostly used by Matari RPers, is a slogan that fits both sides, because their beliefs demand that they bring what they view as "the lost" back into their fold whether or not the target people have ever actually been in their fold. For the other factions, both the Amarr and the Minmatar represent inherently dangerous elements because they will both refuse to compromise and will actively work against you should you appear a threat to their core beliefs. They have goals that grip their hearts and souls, heaven forbid if you try and get in their way.
As a whole, I'd probably still personally classify the State and the Empire as the darker groups within their thematic pairs, primarily because they've been written with more overtly bad aspects by the modern western perspectives most of us hold, which I don't consider an issue personally. They are more often portrayed as the black half in black-and-white scenes by certain writers though (hello Tony G), which can be frustrating. But I really prefer to just avoid quantifying good and evil as it's ultimately a rather irrelevent distinction for RP (and sometimes leads to OOC harassment of players); I'd rather focus on what each faction represents and believes because these are the things we are seeking to emulate in our roleplay.
Also, I think this bit of the thread should be split. It's a very interesting discussion IMO, but very offtopic for this thread.
