I would second the suggestion to join the Kusari Naval Forces. You really don't need to be "in the big leagues" to join a faction. A lot of factions will take you and teach you how to play the game, how to roleplay, as well as their faction's own story.
And just to clarify, factions are just a group of players that got together, organized themselves around an NPC group or something of their own idea, and roleplay as part of that group. There's nothing really special about it, except for the fact that once you get established and respected, you have a lot of clout within the community.
There's a lot of stuff in this mod that is actually just in the forums, and not coded into the game. I suggest you and your friends read through the Rules of Discover (multiple times) as well as the rest of the forum. It's really an amazing community here, and we'd love to have you join us.
you can have more than one ship... just on different characters. And only 5 characters per account...
you send money (on the official discovery server) by typing in /givecash (player) (amount). So something like /givecash APM-Virgo 1000000 would give me 1 million credits:D
