At the begining of the game you start out as a nobody more or less. There should be certain missions that give you Fame Points (FP). With these fame points you would gain access to certain types of missions. A mission to give you fame points for example could be destroying a hive or maybe freeing some POW's off of a prison ship.

Or maybe you could win a space race! (End flimsy transition)

Ever seen Outlaw Star? They have a few episodes dedicated to a space race. This consists of racers going through checkpoints. Whoever can do it with the fastest time wins. This would be a very interesting mission in my opinion. You could have solely fame as the reward and have an entering fee. Or you could simply give the winner a hefty cash prize (Personally I like optain a better, more honor). How you would run this race is completely up to you but I would suggest having "rings" you pass through in certain sectors of systems. And I would suggest you have the course go around the outside of the known universe, through Serco, UIT, and Itani space. This race is not meant to be easy.
You could set the mission so that the race is going on for a week. Whoever gets the fastest time in that set week is the winner. Keeps it interesting, But don't make it take too long.

Hopefully these will work themselves into the game.

EDIT: An offshoot of the space race would be to assassinate a certain racer mid-race. I would suggest an NPC for this but I won't restrict you from setting an assassination warrant on a player.

everyone would just use a valk with a fast charge battery and nothing else, and it would be boring.

and because of that, every week a Itani Pilot will win...

well we had races for a few months that were very fun, imo. They could easily be re-introduced. Not sure about the other stuff though.

My Centurion held speed records in two of the six old racetracks.

That was before the current weight scheme, correct?