I think there should be a system opposite of contacts where you meet people and *** them off in some way resulting in them being 'out to get you' i.e. your nemesis.
I think you could wrap a lot of the existing random negative events (raids, expeditions, pirate activity, fleet inspections etc.) into this system pretty nicely too so that those events feel less like game mechanics and more like emergent events based on your interactions with the world.
A few examples:
- You kill a pirate bounty, and afterwards discover the captain sent a message before he died to his brother who now hates you and becomes a Nemesis. The brother holes up in a local pirate station and drives pirate activity and raids at your colonies until you deal with him.
- You increase food productional from your colonies beyond a threshold and the hegemony minister of agriculture takes notice of you cutting into his business, becoming your Nemesis, and sending expeditions and maybe even mercs to gank you until you deal with him.
- You get caught smuggling into a league port a few too may times, and the local station commander becomes your nemesis. Now patrols in the system are much more likely to stop/harass/inspect you, and maybe even attack you (in spite of your faction rep), and you also have higher tariffs until you deal with them.
What does 'deal with them' mean though? Well it can be different depending on the importance of the Nemesis and the context as well. Maybe that pirate can be dealt with by destroying the station (same as now, but integrated into the world more). The Station commander maybe can be killed (resulting in a loss of faction rep), or bribed, or maybe there is even a special quest to get back in his good graces. That hegemony minister of agriculture might require some special and very difficult missions/boss battle to deal with. Maybe you could also call in favors from your contacts to deal with a Nemesis, so if you do a bunch of work for the high Hegemon, you can ask him to get that minister of agriculture off your case (at the cost of your reputation with him of course), or maybe you could call on your TT friends to assassinate a certain annoying LC official whose been bothering you, if those factions are at war. Lots of cool possibilities to make contacts more useful as well, and ways to make contact (and Nemesis) 'importance level' have some more meaning beyond just mission quality.
The idea is to not only give in-world context/explanations for a lot of the negative things happening to you, but also to give you some more agency in dealing with those things. Also, it feels like it could be cool to tie Nemesis' and contacts in with the story/quest system, where your dialogue choices can result in the creation of contacts or Nemesis. Choose your words carefully.