It's taken a bit longer than you youngen's for me to get some of this, but I'm now able to grasp some more. I've finally got a set water wings and ready to test deeper water.
OK, so I find a station and choose a minor or major factions to do work for.
How does one keep working for the same minor or major faction unless after every mission, they dead head back?
Does one have to pick the right broker or will doing any mission for any of them suffice?
On occasion there's a little white half star associated with a mission, not always but sometimes, what is that all about, does it have anything to do with the particular broker or his afiliations or is it an indicator to assit in choosing a misssion for the desired factions.
Yeah you basically keep going back to the same faction(s) for more work, this may sound annoying but the fact is that the more a minor faction likes you the more credits they will give you to do missions so it isn't a waste of time.
When looking for a system to work in I'll look for several things.
• How many Federation (example) factions are present? if there's only 2 out of 6 then mission variety isn't going to be good because working for the 4 independent factions is essentially a complete waste of my time/cargo hold because they don't contribute towards my navy rank.
• What the outfitting is like, I'll usually go for a Hi Tech system so that I have access to good modules.
• How far is the station from the star? If I'm going to be returning on a regular basis I don't want to travel 30,000ls just to get to the station each time, that's a deal breaker. I want <2000ls.
Those are the basics. Then I'll look at the factions themselves, some factions (especially player factions) have expanded into multiple systems...
A good example are the Earth Defense Fleet (Okinura), last time I looked these guys are the most powerful Federation minor faction in the whole galaxy, they completely control or at least have a presence in more systems than any other Fed faction.
That means if I become allied with that one tiny minor faction I suddenly become allied with around 10 systems all at once in a 50ly radius, they'll always offer me good work and they'll never scan me when I enter their stations. A very powerful move for any CMDR, especially if you start to do smuggling or dealing with illegal passengers.