when a new person comes in ask them if they read about the reward program on the forum, and set up a post like I think angelfire did (sorry terrible memory and can't find it now) if they answer yes you give them some questions to answer or find in forum and do monetay or item rewards based on that.
Please don't shoot at me if I got it wrong, or throw things either i'm trying to find it and do any corrections neccessary when I do.
I like the rewards idea too... better a carrot than a stick anyday.
Is there anyway of restricting the access to the best ships so that you would need forum activity?
I can only think of one way and that would require too much admin effort.... I.e.
Sell them only on guard bases
Disconnect the guard status that from the regular faction.
Get the admin to set the status of players with their desired guard faction after they had pm'd them.
As it stands admin would need to get involved and it would be too much of a manual task. But if someone could think of another way it may work.
(Actually at the risk of diverting this thread somewhere else, I would restrict the best ships to faction only... I still believe we have too many freelancers for community cohesion) .