It would be nice to have some sort of exploration missions
Universal Cartographics would be a self-evident source for such missions. While they have a science mission, they presumably make some kind of money from selling the whereabouts of earthlikes and terraformables to factions, as well as minables (planets, rings) to minig corporations. (Not asteroid belt mining, though -- or they surely pay bounties for mineral rich asteroid belts as well.) They probably have other, less visible, strings on their fiddle as well ...
Commercial interests: UG would probably be interested in ensuring that the immediate surroundings of the Bubble, Colonia and perhaps major asteroid bases -- i.e. likely expansion systems -- were mapped as to astronomical elements. (And perhaps even revisit Bubble-systems, to check that nothing untoward is going on, say, a planetisemal is showing signs of being thrown out of its old orbit.)
Scientifc interests: UG (together with Vista) probably wants to scan planets for new and undiscovered biology (such as puce or taupe variants of bacterium or plants), as well as ensuring a well-distributed sampling of galactic locales to serve as base for scientific conclusions. Or ensure that all systems within or nearby a nebula were mapped.
Other interests: UG might also be involved in ... other forms of intelligence gathering. This might involve scanning for changes in station faction adherence, planet settlements (rouge bases?), and perhaps even on-foot reconnaissance of a part of planet to check for rouge low-tech settlements. Some of this may involve infiltration, such as getting on more friendly terms with a local faction. This field of missions might also have upgraded scanning equipment unobtainable in general shops.
And there may be failed missions, in which an earlier pilot went out, but never reported back, and seems to be missing. (Idea: locate his ship, download scan data, and once downloaded, complete mission, and return alive. May be an escape pod around as well that could be picked up ... )
A possible form of mission (or sub-mission) would be to visit all systems in, say, a 20x20x20 LY cube (or some other cube size that is 'right' -- which probably means easy to see in the galaxy map), or a 'square' of a planetary grid (use some kind of planet short-range scanner?). A full mission would probably extend to 5, 10 or so such sub-missions.
Missions would probably be announced only at a specific spot, such as Cynthia Sideris. Some would be solo-missions, but it seems that it might be possible to send a UG fleet carriers to relevant spots, and then ask mission members to check out their sub-missions locally, as well as check in their findings with the fleet-carrier UG (and perhaps also Vista) office. (Some restrictions may apply: such as, when such a mission is announced, the system is locked, and only mission members may check in scan data, and only at the fleet-carrier.)
An interesting variant might be to allow for user-based exploration missions: fleet carrier owner decides where to go, mission members get sub-missions assigned to explore 9x9 cube of 20x20x20 LY squares around. Fleet-carrier costs would perhaps be recouped from on-board UG/Vista carrier representatives, but there may also need to be space miners along on very long missions. Or perhaps mining ships can be rented aboard? Added: This can probably be done already, except for the 'sub-mission' checkout/checkin which would be nice to add to avoid manual book-keeping.)
