In the recent AMA with Michael Wagner and UnixGaming there were two very interesting quotes that were originally posted by SnooCheesecakes9117 on reddit:
""But essentially the ability to deselect a faction and operate independently without paying taxes into the economy and just being a true pirate will exist in the deep space. "
Now, thats the spirit! Thats exciting!
Also, at 56.13 he says:
“There will be some npcs that are roaming around and navigating in the deep space. We have security sectors across our atlas that starts with a safe zone where everybody lands initially and there is no pvp there and people can learn how to play the game and navigate controls. You can explore out into a medium risk zone where there is non-permanent death pvp and then there is the deep space zone. Now the way that we are currently ideating around deep space is that you can kind of forfeit your faction selection if you intend to operate exclusively in deep space so if you know players will be pirates and their existence will be exclusively out in deep space looking for fleets that they can go destroy and capture some of the resources and value from those players.”"
That is some great news for those who want to make their own rules in the deep space of Star Atlas!