Combat

Per my CMDR Stats, Im at 98ish% completion of Rookie and accrured I'm showing 47M Profit as opposed to 38M Profit for the rank and progression. Has there been a change to this?

I've always wondered, what are lawless ships and can I legally destroy them. I see them everywhere and they are labeled as red so I want to know if I'm missing out on those juicy bounties.

Recrntly I've been looking at combat oriented ships in elite and am having trouble deciding in which to consider buying, currently have an Imperial Eagle which I love tremendously, but I feel that there may be another ship out there with more combat capabilities, I have around 44 hours in elite so I'm still pretty new but I still feel like there might be a better ship out there for combat centered play, I'm looking for a small to mid sized ship (excluding the cobra mklll). Any suggestions?

I want to end up exploring there but also drink the blood of my enemies.