Bring order to chaos within your team by having the team leader set "/team loot alpha." This will force teammates to take turns looting vanquished foes. Alternatively, "/team loot all" leaves the booty as a free-for-all, going to the first looter.
You can create macro objects--essentially shortcuts that will execute long commands for you simply by pressing a single key--at any time by typing "/macro macroname command," where macroname is the name you want to give the macro, and command is the command you want the macro to execute. This will create an object that you can drag into your quick action bar, and then use like any other item. For example, a popular macro is "/macro NxtTrgt Next Target: %t," which will read your current target, and send it in the form "Next Target: Current Target" to the chat box. This can be used to quickly tell your teammates what to attack next.
Creating scripts requires a little bit more work--and familiarity with Windows--than making macros, but you can do a lot more with them. In Windows, open up Notepad (click Start, then Run, then type "notepad"), and type in whatever commands you like, with each command on a new line. Save the file, with no extension, in a directory called "Scripts" within your Anarchy Online directory. (Create it if it's not there yet.) Then, while in the game, type "/scriptname" to execute the script. For example, the script...
/me is hungry.
/eat
/delay 3000
Still hungry…
/eat
/delay 3000
Man am I hungry!
/eat
/delay 3000
Uh oh; ate too much!!
/puke
...will tell everyone that you're hungry, then eat, wait three seconds for the animation to finish, declare that you're still hungry, eat some more, tell the world once again that you're hungry, eat even more, then cry out that you ate too much, and show the puking animation.
Nobody likes losing hours' worth of time, experience, and looted items, and if you go out hunting indiscriminately, that's exactly what you're asking for. Every time you level up, your character will automatically be saved. However, if you've been out and about for a few hours and haven't leveled up, you'd be wise to find a scanning terminal and save your character's state. The credit cost is well worth the peace of mind.
But speak it to those you want to hear you. Simply typing text into the chat box will only send messages to those around you. To increase the distance at which you'll be heard, prefix your words with "/shout." To decrease the distance, use "/whisper." To quickly speak to only one person, type "/tell playername," where playername is the name of the person to whom you want to speak. When on a team, click the "friends" icon on the upper-right hand corner of your screen, then click "team" on the subsequent menu. This will cause all of your regular text to be sent to all of your team members. If you're looking to sell an item or for whatever reason want other people to be able to view its information, you can simply drag the item to the chat box and hit Enter. People will then be able to Shift-click on the item's name in the box to view its description. Finally, if a friend is not online, you can leave him or her a message by using the "/tell" command. Your friend will receive the message the next time he or she signs on.