Another thing.
I see you responded to a comment about zombie pirates by saying that the player needs something to fight. This, to be honest, is B.S. of the highest order. Smart pirates would allow for much more interesting possibilities when trading, which would allow for legal trade as a viable activity, not a severely punished series of fetch quests. After all, when you could get accosted by a superior force of pirates at any time, it would be rather thrilling. Just make black market trade much harder to compensate. Exploring the possibilities further, pirates could be more finely grouped by star system, with individual gangs and their leaders,
(who would integrate rather seamlessly into the contact system, perhaps by having each leader hosted in pirate bases. They would be less difficult to reach, too, as the pirates would only attack good targets. That is, trade convoys, weak entrepreneurs, and anyone that wouldn't destroy a large number of their ships. Additionally, the leaders could have flag ships, mimicking the bounties, and you could even allow for hostile takeover of a group via destruction of their vessel. This would not be a easy way of making cash, not only because returns from such a business would be sporadic and entirely dependent on auto resolve encounters in the system, but also because pirate fleets could be severely increased in power level)
even if the overarching faction wasn't modified. As for combat opportunities, there are plenty, from hunting the Luddic path to fighting derelicts to attacking trade convoys yourself. Not to mention that you could just seek out the pirates if you did want to fight them. And they would still come after you if you were obviously transporting something valuable. The Luddic path has an excuse for being suicidal, but the pirates do not.
You might respond that this would inconvenience the player, but I simply see it as more opportunities for unique gameplay events, thus increasing the number of active elements involved in rather passive activities such as trading.
In the words of DF, !!Fun!!