Then... I'm going to actually make an effort and do some missions. Properly this time, instead of just randomly. Work up my faction rating in some system.
Really the only reason to upgrade your on-foot gear is to make doing the missions easier and more fun. If you're not doing them, there's not much point in upgrading your tools!
I found myself really enjoying the on-foot missions, so I've kept doing them and they give me reasons to upgrade stuff.
My faction rating never seems to go past cordial anywhere while doing on-foot stuff, though. I'm always focused on the material rewards, which means I'll take whichever missions give me what I'm after. This tends to have me working for different factions all the time, and many of the missions seem to raise my rep with one faction while lowering it with another. Over time they all just equalize at cordial or neutral, lol.
My rep also doesn't seem to affect the missions offered on foot, nor their payouts. I've tried going to places where I'm already allied with everyone, and it's the same missions as everywhere else, with the same rewards.
I've taken to working out of Anarchy systems, or systems near anarchies (so that some of the missions are to anarchy settlements). That allows me to (sometimes) bypass getting bounties and notoriety.
I don't care about bounties too much, but notoriety is a pain. It takes so long to decay and you have to be in-game the whole time. Meanwhile you are harassed by bounty hunters coming after you, your ship is hot and can't be modified (without huge 'cleaning' fees). Even if you go where you are not wanted, the notoriety goes with you. Switching ships doesn't help either.
I also see a fair number of those 'Restore Power' missions. I guess anarchy factions tend to have detrimental states more often, or something. Or I've just been lucky.
So that's where I do my dirty deeds these days.
I'm in Vesper-M4 at the moment. There are 4 Restore Power missions on the board.
Come to the Dark Side. We have cookies. Ok, we don't. But evil is it's own reward, right?
