As a new player, I started with a positive reputation. I was wondering if there is a guide somewhere describing best practices for gaining reputation with outlaw factions. Any ideas?
It's quite easy: There are a ton of restarts available that make you part of just about any faction that is in the discoverse, including the unlawful ones.
You may want to look at tThis thread for the aviable restarts. Fore example to be a Red Hessian you just need to type "/restart RhHessian" ingame, and that's about it.
You can restart your character. And after the restart you have a nice reputation with the faction you've chosen
Use /showrestarts in game to see the available restarts. And after that you can use the /restart <faction name>