Reputation

Reputation decides what type of person you are. If you have low rep, you cannot pickup many (or any) colonists. The higher the rep you have, the more colonists you can pickup. Also, if you have -1000 rep points, you can dock at the pirate base and for 1.5mil you can buy the Sethdar Cruiser.

An easy way to get positive rep points is by contributing to someone elses bounty. Every 1mil credits u contribute, you gain 1k rep points. If you have 5000 positive rep points, you can apply for UN (if you have +5k rep, u always get it ). If you have UN commision and 2million credits, you can also buys the Isc ship. You can also look at the information for someone with a bounty for 200k. This will tell you their last known location.