It's been both. The mission target ones are just ridiculous. But I've encountered the persistent "random" NPC wanting my cargo. More so lately than I remember previously. It's just frustrating you have to jump out of a system and back in, just to travel 500ls from your original start point. If my ship had shields/armor upgrades, I'd have just rammed them.
The two hardpoints on my mining Python that don't have mining lasers have level 5 overcharged multicannons, that's also quite effective