Mission board plays two critical functions in the game.
1. It acts as an introduction-vector to different activities for new players, which can then be done organically and for better outcomes, usually.
2. Is a semi-reliable source of all activity types, such that a player can come on and undertake the activity they enjoy, not spend 30 minutes finding the activity they enjoy.
Though to pick those two things apart a little more:
1. The missions on the board don't cover the full gamut of activities. There's no specific call to use wake scanners (to follow wakes) or use a variety of limpet modes in any missions.
2. This is only semi reliable due to the many edge cases that can exist, and it's not unreasonable for a new player to find themselves on a mission board which has a very limited set of mission types.
This could be fixed with new mission types or reworks of existing ones.
On illegal missions offered through the open boards, i agree, and think it should be done differently. To summarise many posts I've made about it:
1. Make anonymity protocols a toggle like silent running. If you are wanted or hostile, you are attacked on- sight without scan at a station. With it on, you are accepted in both situations
2. Introduce a criminal mission board, accessible only when using anonymity protocols
3. Move all illegal missions to this board
4. Make it such that instead of taking illegal missions from a particular faction, they are offered by anonymous contacts, and inflict negative effects on a particular target faction.
Smuggling more broadly needs a rework desperately, but i won't go into that... but the mission board is a crucial player experience component to allow them to do what they enjoy because the bgs and organic options are, by design, quite unreliable, or brokenly reliable. They also offer a baseline for earn rates in the game.