I'd like to weigh in, some of these points have been mentioned before:
1) As an Elite, I'm still getting harmless and mostly harmless missions with relative payouts
2) Economy and state don't seem to be influencing mission selection
3) High grade engineering materials (Bio-tech Conductors/Cracked Insdutrial Firmware) exist but are excessively rare and some of them send out to Colonia
I added numbers to you r post for reference...
1) Added already
2) I have not observed this, and am reticent to add it without understanding it myself, please can you be more specific about what the behaviour was before 2.4 and what it is now?
3) Hm...I don't see an issue that a mission that rewards a material you are looking for is sending you to Colonia. If ALL missions for that material were to Colonia, that would be another matter.