People are probably repping, they go dock on a base who's faction they want good rep with, undock, kill a bunch of their NPC's until their rep goes down to neutral, then kill themselves to respawn and get a bribe, which only upons up when your rep is low enough. Its the only way to get in a base with your rep that low, and since it turns hostile to you as soon as you shoot the npcs. Repping 101 right there.
true, but its more so when you want to change a character's IFF, say if you're looking for a Zoner or Freelancer IFF. if you have full rep with them, its a matter of /droprep til you get it. But if you only have half rep with a group like Zoners, you can't just go kill guys to raise it like most factions, same with Freelancers, since they have no enemies. So you need lower rep than mid way to get bribes to pop up that will bring it up high enough to even get the ID, and full rep for the IFF. Sometimes its easy, sometimes it takes forever.