Another brilliant "feature": Reputation.
So, you're hanging around, hunting pirates. This will make the police mad. At some point they will shoot at you for shooting pirates. They will tell you: "You're wanted in this sector!" Then you warp to a station in the same system and the police will tell you: "You're clean and free to proceed."
Not to mention Assassination missions by the Federation where actually hitting the target will put a bounty on your head.
Oh, and if you accidentally shoot one single stray shot at any ship (for example, a moronic police cruiser almost ramming you when flying straight across your bow while you're firing at a target), you immediately get a 200 credits bounty. This massive amount of money means that everyone, their grandmother and the kitchen sink will angle for a shot at you. For comparison: Smuggling weapons yields a 10,000 credits fine (fines are not a death sentence, by the way).