Zloth
I smell a... wumpus!?
Trade rep won't regress for eons. Battle rep regresses a little faster but it's still very slow. I think that feature is mostly designed to discourage parking yourself in some out-of-the-way sector, turning on the fast speed, and just leaving the game running overnight while your factories churn out money.
800K is quite a bit! That's actually enough to buy a small factory but probably not enough to get it on its feet.
Right now I think the thing to do would be to buy a tricked-out scout and do some scouting. Be sure to get a trade extension on it so you can keep telling your trader to buy and sell goods (having best buys/sells on the trade ship helps that out a lot). A mineral scanner is handy, too, as that will let you do asteroid scan missions. Those missions can pay out nicely and, since you are going to want to scan the sector anyway, you might as well do them.
Another thing on the "to do" list would be placing satellites. Having a nav or advanced satellite anywhere in a sector lets you see the prices for all the factories you know about in that sector. Personally, I like to place these in "safe" sectors only. Later on, I can tell all my traders to only trade in sectors that have a satellite in them as an easy way to keep them out of the danger zones.
Third thing on my 'to do' list would be to make nice with the Yaki. You'll see the occasional Yaki sitting in a sector offering a battle mission. It will likely be an assassination mission. The mission should be really easy early in the game so it shouldn't do much damage to your reputation. It only takes one or two of those for the Yaki to like you and that will pay off down the line.
Oh you could start going toward the battle route. You can get yourself a decent M4 with that kind of cash and start blasting pirates/xenon/kha'ak for cash.
The jump drive burns some energy cells to take you to the sector gate of any sector. The further away the sector is the more cells it burns. Works great for trade ships. Doesn't work at all well for small fighters because they don't have enough cargo space to carry many energy cells. (Though it can still be enough to pop the fighter over a nasty Xenon sector.)
You could certainly start the "main" Terran Conflict quest right now, assuming you know where Omincron Lyre is located, but you will need a fighter to do that one. An M4 would be more than enough. The Gonar's quest (which starts in a sector pretty close to Omincron Lyre) might fit your style a little better. Or you could do both at the same time if you like. Both of them are actually disguised advanced tutorials.
Egosoft's main quests are a bit like Bethesda's - there are plenty of opportunities to put the quest down. In fact, you're expected to do so. You definitely don't have enough on hand to finish either quest but you aren't supposed to have that much. If you did, the first two thirds of each quest would be really trivial.
P.S. Be nice to pirates and they will be nice to you! Well, that's over stating it. Be nice to pirates and they won't shoot you on sight ALL the time, just some of the time.
P.P.S. I wouldn't try starting the expansion until you were comfortable using TLs and M7s or M2s. You get an M6 in that game very quickly and an M7 not long after that. Those are some pretty serious ships for brand new players to be trying to control.
800K is quite a bit! That's actually enough to buy a small factory but probably not enough to get it on its feet.
Right now I think the thing to do would be to buy a tricked-out scout and do some scouting. Be sure to get a trade extension on it so you can keep telling your trader to buy and sell goods (having best buys/sells on the trade ship helps that out a lot). A mineral scanner is handy, too, as that will let you do asteroid scan missions. Those missions can pay out nicely and, since you are going to want to scan the sector anyway, you might as well do them.
Another thing on the "to do" list would be placing satellites. Having a nav or advanced satellite anywhere in a sector lets you see the prices for all the factories you know about in that sector. Personally, I like to place these in "safe" sectors only. Later on, I can tell all my traders to only trade in sectors that have a satellite in them as an easy way to keep them out of the danger zones.
Third thing on my 'to do' list would be to make nice with the Yaki. You'll see the occasional Yaki sitting in a sector offering a battle mission. It will likely be an assassination mission. The mission should be really easy early in the game so it shouldn't do much damage to your reputation. It only takes one or two of those for the Yaki to like you and that will pay off down the line.
Oh you could start going toward the battle route. You can get yourself a decent M4 with that kind of cash and start blasting pirates/xenon/kha'ak for cash.
The jump drive burns some energy cells to take you to the sector gate of any sector. The further away the sector is the more cells it burns. Works great for trade ships. Doesn't work at all well for small fighters because they don't have enough cargo space to carry many energy cells. (Though it can still be enough to pop the fighter over a nasty Xenon sector.)
You could certainly start the "main" Terran Conflict quest right now, assuming you know where Omincron Lyre is located, but you will need a fighter to do that one. An M4 would be more than enough. The Gonar's quest (which starts in a sector pretty close to Omincron Lyre) might fit your style a little better. Or you could do both at the same time if you like. Both of them are actually disguised advanced tutorials.
Egosoft's main quests are a bit like Bethesda's - there are plenty of opportunities to put the quest down. In fact, you're expected to do so. You definitely don't have enough on hand to finish either quest but you aren't supposed to have that much. If you did, the first two thirds of each quest would be really trivial.
P.S. Be nice to pirates and they will be nice to you! Well, that's over stating it. Be nice to pirates and they won't shoot you on sight ALL the time, just some of the time.
P.P.S. I wouldn't try starting the expansion until you were comfortable using TLs and M7s or M2s. You get an M6 in that game very quickly and an M7 not long after that. Those are some pretty serious ships for brand new players to be trying to control.