Just curious, do I have to hold a commission to get access to the other contacts/Queen etc even with high reputation, or can I bypass it either by being allied, or something else?
No. You 100% lose the queen's contact on Auroria. You have her in your contacts, but you can't initiate a dialog with her. Speaking to the Queen can only be done with a UAF commission.
You also lose all alliance programs - giving aid to Favonius and you lose the ability to build a bakery on the colonies. I think the bakery should work if you're in an alliance with UAF. Also closing markets for you - November Auxiliary and Automata Logistics.
The other npcs seem to work normally. But I'm not sure about this.
Yeah I'll lose certain access, but I meant gaining it in the first place. I don't think I can get access to the other UAF contacts before I do a period in a commission at all and I'm wondering if there is a rep threshold where I can ask for the other contacts that doesn't require commission.
Checked it out now on my save.
I have all the contacts, you can talk to them and get the reward. But the only problem is with the queen on Auroria. She requires access to the program from Vermilion station, which is available only with a commission.
Theoretically - it is possible to take the commission, get all the contacts and leave. But the queen has access to the supercapital - Solvernia. So after leaving the UAF commission you can't buy it or talk to the queen at all. It is physically impossible to contact her after leaving the commission. Raising reputation with her, getting quests and rewards becomes impossible.
Everything else can be obtained from npcs. Theoretically I can buy Novaeria from the Robo Queen. I can get Cherry Vanguard on Nur processing from npcs. But I can't get Solvernia from the queen on Auroria.
I do this in my games - first I take everything from other factions and at the end I get UAF commission and stay in this faction. UAF is too expensive faction but also very cool. To get all the cool ships in the UAF on quests need 190+ million credits.