Jumping in late here... but one thing that I
personally find that will be helpful when boredom sets in, is all the choices of what you can do career wise. I'm focusing on Medical and Search & Rescue gameplay and have ships specialized for that. In that regard, I hope to make a name for myself as an amazing 'healer', being crucial for getting our people back into the fight, as well as discovering the latest cutting edge medical technologies, and being able to perform procedures most others cannot, etc. However, I already plan to take some time for money making opportunities such as Salvage (finding neat rare wrecks), or Info Running (doing teh hax, stealing your precious info, then trying to get away alive to sell it), or even assisting as a crewman (be it gunner, engineer, wtvr) for a larger TEST ship. Then for those who like role play... well the
sky's space is the limit!
Edit: Others already mentioned in-game reputation with factions. I'm all about that. In the end I guess it just is a nice ego boost, getting some high rank with a particular faction, and then reaping the benefits of such. I won't lie, I'm a bit of a whore for in-game titles
, running around in-game like 'ok how do I have to degrade myself to get this shiny new title' lol. Even though SC won't have titles afaik (at least likely not visible ones... maybe in someone's bio perhaps?), getting some arbitrary rank with UEE, or whoever, at least feels like an accomplishment to me.