Consequences of blowing up stations

Question

I'm curious about the consequences, or the actual reputation loss, of blowing up a NPC station. Let's say a SPP XL or a Cattle Ranch L.

I started as Humble Merchant, so its a little difficult for me to experiment since I literally have zero firepower in my fleet. And I really want to wipe a couple of stations to create a local monopoly on some wares.

Since I can't check out the answers in my game anytime soon, I'll mark the answer which has reliable links or personal screenshots.

Answer 1

Blowing up a station causes you to have a huge reputation drop with the faction that owns the station. On top of that, there's a high chance the station will eventually be rebuilt as there's an in game script that prunes unused stations and builds/replaces others.

There are ways, however, of destroying a station with minimal rep hit, even if you have no firepower yourself.

1. If there are any capital ships in the sector, you can get their attention by firing on them a few times and then use the station as cover.
2. If you accept a station defense mission, you can just fly away and let the pirates kill the station. However, early on this isn't practical as the pirates that spawn are usually tiny fighters so it'll take a long time to blow up the station. Also, the pirates may cause the local patrol to swing by to take them out as well if they take too long.
3. You can sacrifice a station by building it on top of an station you want to destroy and just let them collide until they blow up (I don't know how much rep hit this will result in, but it should be less than destroying it yourself).
4. Finally, similar to 3, if you have a tractor beam you can place a mine on an asteroid and then tow that asteroid into a collision with the station.